Rafael Behr talks to Demos' CEO Polly Curtis about the urgent case for upgrading our democracy and repairing the broken relationship between citizen and state.

The conversation is loosely based around this new Demos paper released today (2 July) that sets out the challenges of the global democratic emergency, how this is threatening the political landscape in Britain and what we can do about it.

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

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Host Rafael Behr is joined by political scientist Prof. Michael Bang Petersen, whose research challenges the common belief that those who share misinformation are simply uninformed or gullible.

Instead, Petersen suggest that many of these individuals are politically savvy and highly motivated, not by truth, but by the usefulness of information in advancing their political goals.

The conversation also explores the concept of the "need for chaos": a psychological drive found in a significant minority who actively seek to destabilise political systems, not just support one side over another.

Petersen also talks how status anxiety, feeling stuck or left behind in a rigid social hierarchy, fuels this destructive impulse.

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

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A conversation between Rafael Behr and writer and broadcaster David Aaronovitch, about ripples from the pandemic that still shape politics, with a digression on the ways that Britain is not America and whether that makes 'Maga-populism' less contagious.

Links

David Aaronovitch's substack - https://davidaaronovitch.substack.com

BBC's Briefing Room presented by David Aaronovitch - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002bj77

This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

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An anniversary episode in which host Rafael Behr and producer Philip Berman look back over a tumultuous time and ponder what they have learned from putting politics on the couch.

Links to Politics on the Couch episodes discussed in this podcast

Anti-vaxxers – fear, anxiety and the psychology of misinformation

The authoritarian personality - why some voters feel drawn to populism and how to lure them away

The Madness of King Don - a journey to the dark side of charisma, with Drew Westen

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

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To coincide with the launch of her new book (The Ideological Brain - A Radical Science of Susceptible Minds) Rafael Behr talks to Dr Leor Zmigrod, a political psychologist and neuroscientist, about the ingredients of dogmatic thinking, why some of us are more prone than others, and how we can protect ourselves.

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

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Rafael Behr talks to Paula Surridge Professor of Political Sociology about the fragmentation of support for the two big parties since Brexit, what's causing it and what it means for parties trying to maintain their voter coalitions.

Questions also covered:

1. What drives support for Reform UK, and how vulnerable is their voter base?
2. Are the Liberal Democrats benefiting from tactical voting, and can they sustain their recent gains?
3. Why the Conservative Party faces so many difficulties in defining its identity?
4. How are changing media consumption habits and voter expectations reshaping political engagement?

The discussion also touches on the impact of non-voters and the potential for electoral reform to become a more prominent issue.

This is a Rafael Behr and Philip Berman production.

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Rafael Behr talks to author, policy expert and podcaster Sam Freedman about his new book Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It

Sam Freedman is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and an Ark Schools adviser.

He writes about policy and politics for numerous outlets, including the Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and New Statesman.

With his father, he runs ‘Comment is Freed’, Britain’s most popular politics Substack.

He has spent his career working in different policy-focused roles around Westminster, including as an adviser to the then opposition leader, David Cameron, and as a senior policy adviser at the Department for Education for three years, working with (friends of the podcast) Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.

Feedspot has chosen Politics on the Couch as one of the Top 25 UK Psychology and Political Science Podcasts on the web.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_psychology_podcasts

https://blog.feedspot.com/political_science_podcasts

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Do please take a moment to complete our listener survey which will only take 2-3 minutes.

It will help us work out a sustainable funding model to make more Politics on the Couch episodes.

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a week of protests, counter-protests and riots in the UK, 5000 miles away in Bangladesh student-led uprising led to 300 people being killed, the toppling of a corrupt PM and violent regime, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner being installed as head a new interim government.

In this edition, we're talking about the violent and momentous events in Bangladesh with award-winning British-born investigative journalist David Bergman, who has been following and reporting on the country for almost 30 years.

He's written widely about Bangladesh for The Daily Telegraph, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and The Times.

Between 2004 and 2017, he lived in Bangladesh, writing for several Bangladeshi newspapers, including New Age, The Daily Star and bdnews24.com.

He was forced to leave in 2017 due to his critical writing about government corruption and human rights violations.

Since then, he’s lived in London and helped found Netra News, a media platform based in Sweden that published investigative news and analysis on Bangladesh

He’s also won a Royal Television Society award for a documentary he worked on about the atrocities that took place during Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Independence.

In the episode, David explains what happened there, what sparked it off, what’s next for the country, what we know about the next potential leader and the fascinating links between a new Labour Minister and the now deposed Bangladeshi PM and her party.

Links mentioned in the podcast

https://x.com/TheDavidBergman

https://x.com/muktadirnewage

https://x.com/nomhossain

https://x.com/taqbirhuda

https://www.facebook.com/shafiqul.alam.71216

Help shape the future of Politics on the Couch

Do please take a moment to complete our listener survey which will only take 2-3 minutes.

It will help us work out a sustainable funding model to make more Politics on the Couch episodes.

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This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.