What hope for peace?
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2023
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amol and Nick turn their attention this week to what conditions will need to be reached before Israelis and Palestinians are able to sit down with each other in search of a lasting settlement.
They speak to Yossi Beilin and Hiba Husseini, who have spent decades negotiating peace – finding their hopes dashed each time but becoming friends with each other in the process.
And they look at what’s happened at the Covid Inquiry and what’s coming up next week.
Episodes land every Thursday and watch out for bonus episodes. Subscribe to The Today Podcast to get Amol and Nick's take on the biggest stories of the week, with insights from behind the scenes at the UK's most influential radio news programme. Get in touch by sending us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 4346 or email Today@bbc.co.uk
The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson, presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today, the UK’s most influential radio news programme. Amol was the BBC’s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC’s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor.
The producers are Tom Smithard and Stephanie Mitcalf. The editors are Jonathan Aspinwall and Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths. Studio direction from Dafydd Evans.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Okay, what might we have been talking about this week had it not been for the events |
| 0:09.9 | in the Middle East? |
| 0:10.4 | I find that such a hard question to answer because all, and I do mean all I've been doing |
| 0:15.4 | in my waking hours, is reading about, talking about, thinking about the Middle East, |
| 0:20.3 | and quite a lot of my sleeping hours as well. Same, same, exactly the same for me. Well, in a moment, we're going to be hearing what I think people want to hear is whether there is any hope in the Middle East. And yet, I know, speaking to people who are listening to this podcast, speaking to people of my generation, that the news agenda at the moment, war, |
| 0:42.3 | events in the Middle East, can be very dispiriting, can be a turnoff. There's no polite way of putting that. And I know that many of you, listeners, are thinking about that and you're sending |
| 0:45.9 | us fantastic voice notes. And that includes this voice note from Rick. |
| 0:50.2 | Out of all the stories we're getting through the news, there's a lot of stuff that isn't coming |
| 0:55.8 | to the surface. You know, Israel's dominating, as you might expect. Even Ukraine's taken a |
| 1:00.4 | backward step in the headlines. So what stories out there that aren't being covered on the |
| 1:04.8 | today program or that you're not hearing in the news? What stories are really catching your |
| 1:08.3 | attention that are happening in the world today? Rick, that is a fantastic question. My short answer is AI, artificial intelligence. I felt for years. It's the biggest story in the world. Barely an hour ago, I was talking to Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, about a big artificial intelligence summit, which is happening in the UK next week. As we record this, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is giving a speech about |
| 1:27.6 | artificial intelligence and I slightly feel like we're not doing enough on it. And there's climate |
| 1:31.9 | change, of course. We did talk to the UN chief climate scientists ahead of the next COP summit |
| 1:37.0 | and we heard from Armani Schwarzenegger about Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But the question |
| 1:42.0 | Rick asked is, what didn't we do at all? Yeah. |
| 1:44.3 | What would we have done? |
| 1:46.2 | Here's my guess. |
| 1:47.4 | I think we would have done a lot more on domestic politics. |
| 1:49.7 | I think in the aftermath of those two huge by-election wins for Labour and with the anniversary |
| 1:56.1 | of Rishi Sunat, the first anniversary of him becoming prime minister, the sense of |
... |
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