Woman’s Hour (R4) | iPlayer
5 Live News (5 Live) | iPlayer
World at One (R4) | iPlayer
Adrian Durham | TalkSport
Today (R4) | iPlayer
Revisionist History | podcast
The voices, the voices… can anyone stop the voices? Crowding into our lives, unceasing, argumentative. Last week was nothing but disagreement and complaint. Experts – politicians, bankers, journalists: everyone, in fact, except Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – were lining up to talk at us, tell us what is definitely happening, what has happened, what will. On Tuesday, Woman’s Hour held a Brexit special featuring three MPs and two journalists. We heard that the NHS would definitely suffer (“I’m very concerned,” said Sarah Wollaston, Conservative), and that it definitely wouldn’t (“£350m is the gross amount that is due to the EU,” from Andrea Leadsom, Conservative).
On Monday afternoon, 5 Live News went live to a Commons debate at Westminster. Cameron sounded different: simultaneously kinder and more pointed. I liked him admitting publicly that Nick Clegg’s tenure as deputy prime minister meant that Clegg had “paid a very great personal and political price”. On Tuesday, World at One asked listeners how Brexit had affected them (one caller, part of a building firm, needs to import bricks from Europe. He informed us that his bill had gone up £10,000 in a matter of days); and then, on Wednesday, gave us Ed Miliband to tell us how Jeremy Corbyn had affected the Labour party.
Over on TalkSport there was similar speculation, anger and finger-pointing, but about Engerland, after the team’s ignominious exit from Euro 2016. Adrian Durham’s rant about each member of the team on Drivetime was on the nose (Joe Hart: “Schoolboy errors”; Kyle Walker: “Basic defending seems beyond him”; Gary Cahill: “He might as well have had three kittens on his chest”; Harry Kane: “Suddenly thinks he’s a set-piece specialist”; Daniel Sturridge: “You play in a team of one. You still have no right foot.”), but also on the money.
I like to hear people talk. I don’t mind them ranting. But I have a problem when talking is combined with not listening. And everyone is polarised, post-referendum. Each person seems to think that he or she is right and everyone else is wrong. These strange days, with their complex, uncertain, fluid problems, have been reduced to an either/or question. On Wednesday morning, Today’s Mishal Husain spoke to Sajid Javid, who has put his name in, with Stephen Crabb, in the Conservative leadership contest. “If you had to decide which was more important, the single market or immigration, which would you choose?” she asked. Javid demurred, rightly. She asked again. Is this what interviews are now? A football match where you have to choose your team, even if you don’t like football, or understand the new rules? Remain v Leave. Trade v Immigration. Corbyn v the World. I wish we heard more from those who Don’t Know. People who talk, but listen as well, and admit to not being certain about everything.
As an interesting sidenote to all this, Malcolm “Tipping Point” Gladwell has a new podcast, which is due to last for 10 weeks. It’s called Revisionist History and there have been three episodes so far: one that links a 19th-century female British artist with former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard; one that concerns three people affected by the Vietnam war; and the most recent, which looks at the great US basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, and wonders why he didn’t score even higher. Each episode examines an overlooked aspect of a past event, unpicks it and then extends it, so that a story becomes a trend, a concept, a trick of human behaviour that has established itself over time. Gladwell is very good at talking and listening. He views changes over time, in the long term rather than by the hour. What a relief after last week!
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