It might seem strange to encourage others to listen to a podcast about Brexit when the subject dominates just about every other aspect of our lives right now, but this is inevitably what happens when you listen to Brexitcast.
The BBC podcast has been a revelation, two years old but thundering up the podcast charts in the past eight weeks. The reason is simple: it offers impartial analysis about what has been going on in Westminster and Brussels, with none of the formality and pomposity that usually comes with the topic.
When you first listen, you might be surprised at how spontaneous it feels. Having been there, I can confirm that this isn’t an act. Brexitcast has no scripts, nor a running order. On the day I visit, Dino Sofos, the show’s editor, doesn’t even know exactly when that day’s recording is going to start, relying on WhatsApp and watching the BBC News at Six to confirm when Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor and one of the show’s presenters, would be on her way.
In the meantime, the show’s other hosts convene. Political correspondent Chris Mason is dragged out of the nearby newsroom, Europe editor Katya Adler calls in from Berlin, and reporter Adam Fleming does the same from Brussels. Two guests are already here, Tory Brexiter Andrew Percy and Labour MP Anna Turley, who has brought some shop-bought brownies to share. A minute after Kuenssberg arrives, the recording starts. Mason takes off his tie. Kuenssberg whips out a massive red book, full to the brim of her notes from the past few months, and starts paraphrasing all she has learned that day. The brownies are secretly tucked into on-air, the presenters chewing off-mic. Everyone seems to forget, in a good way, that they are being recorded.
The show is extremely reactive. Brexitcast used to be weekly, a sequel to the BBC’s 2017 election podcast. But the tumultuous events of the past few weeks has pushed the show into releasing near-daily “emergency” episodes, recorded after the day’s events have concluded, sometimes after midnight (or 1am for Fleming and Adler). Kuenssberg has had to record from the back of a taxi, while Fleming has provided analysis in bed, just before going to sleep. Surely that must be weird? “Not as weird as you think,” he says. “Once you have done the first four or five like that, it gets quite normal.”
It sounds exhausting. Mason recounts a late episode when everyone was really tired and Kuenssberg temporarily lost her train of thought, which, he adds, is “unheard of for Laura”. It is even harder for Sofos, who has to edit and upload every episode after recording. Last week, he got to bed at 4am after one episode and was so deliriously tired that he decided to edit in sound effects over one of Fleming’s monologues. “I’m not very popular with my girlfriend at the moment,”Sofos says, “because she sees the news as well, and she’s like: ‘OK, Dino is not coming home tonight.’”
But in emphasising how exhausting it must be, I am reminded that they have not been forced to do this. If and when they record an “emergency” episode, it is squarely down to them. “As a journalist, you want to be there when something big is happening,” says Fleming. “You’re adding what you can to a massive news event.”
“We’re absolutely not obliged to do one every day, so yesterday we concluded we wouldn’t do one,” Mason adds. “Is that right?”
He looks a bit puzzled. Did they actually record an episode?
They didn’t. “I lose track,” he admits.
“I couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is,” Kuenssberg jokes .
If everyone is tired, they tell their listeners. “I guess, bluntly, if you’re at the end of a very long day, you’re a bit more tired and probably that comes across more naturally because you really are,” says Mason. “In a format like this, we can be honest – if we’re tired or whatever, we’ll say it.”
Brexitcast is also remarkably informal, something its presenters say came about by accident. Although podcasts are, of course, usually quite casual, political correspondents on news programmes are not. Yet the team’s authority on Brexit is not undermined by this informality. Fundamentally, it makes politics sound more human.
Kuenssberg relates it to her Brexit documentary, which aired on BBC Two last week. “You couldn’t watch that film and think: ‘Actually, politicians, oh they are just treating it like a game.’ You can see how much people care. It doesn’t mean everyone is going to agree, but you can see they are people.”
“When you are doing a 90-second TV piece, inevitably there’s a sort of, not a caricaturing, hopefully, but certainly a crushing down of somebody’s rounded set of views into a single soundbite,” adds Mason. “Hopefully, Brexitcast has been the sort of outlet for that, seeing people in three dimensions, because all human beings are three-dimensional and certainly all 650 people in the Commons are.”
In the episode recorded when I visited the studio, Andrew Percy talks about the mental health impact Brexit is having on MPs, saying he thinks they are all drinking more and sleeping less. “I’ve been listening to the particular episode that you’ve been hearing,” Kuenssberg tells me. “Andrew and Anna talk really humanly, funnily and also kind of worryingly as well about what it is like to be living through this time.”
They acknowledge that Brexitcast has had an impact in Westminster and Brussels. “We know, through lots of Adam’s contacts in Taskforce 50, that some of them listen,” says Kuenssberg. “I also know that some of Theresa May’s diplomatic protection listen to it, and some staff in the Commons.” But they are equally pleased that it has an impact beyond the political bubble, particularly with younger people. Kuenssberg mentions a 17-year-old from Glasgow who sent her an email about how much he enjoyed the podcast – so much so that they rang him up on one episode.
But what of the podcast’s future. Will it always be as consistent as this? It is a bit unclear. Then again, so is Brexit. They see a time when, eventually, it remains an issue but “drops down the league table for a bit”. If that happens, the podcast will evolve into “a Politicast or something”.
In the meantime, Brexitcast will continue with its unpredictable schedule. “We’re like The Avengers,” says Fleming. “We’ll assemble when required.”
Listen to Brexitcast on BBC Sounds. New episodes are on Thursdays or whenever the hell they feel like it.
