The Bunker – News without the nonsense

What can the Spanish Flu of 1918 tell us about coping with Coronavirus – and maybe the next pandemic too? Nick Cohen of The Observer talks to Laura Spinney, author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu Of 1918 And How It Changed The World, about the lessons from possibly the greatest public health disaster in history.Did populations weakened by the First World War provide a fertile breeding ground for the Spanish Flu? Is democracy really at a disadvantage when dealing with pandemics? Will post-COVID generations have to face up to the inherent viral dangers of eating meat? And the myth of a new Roaring Twenties: will we go from a new Spanish Flu to a new Wall Street Crash without a an intervening Jazz Age?  “What matters is the level of trust in a society. If it’s not there when the outbreak happens it’s very hard to create it.”  “Populations tend to bounce back rapidly from pandemics for the simple reason that pandemics tend not to destroy your capital cities.”  “This is the first digitally-witnessed pandemic. Every detail has been tracked and traced.” “Every strain of flu that has ever circulated began as a pandemic. But the Spanish Flu was at least 25 times as virulent than most strains.” Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofrenijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How does a band make widescreen, forward-thinking communal rock music when they’re suddenly locked down miles away from one another? And when your keyboard player has moved to Australia? Paul Smith of Newcastle postpunk adventurers Maxïmo Park tells Dorian Lynskey about finding inspiration in strange places, recording an album on WhatsApp and jerky FaceTime calls, writing about Brexit and Grenfell… and the myth of levelling up the North.  “Whatever we might do to try and conceal it, our true nature always comes up through the cracks.” “My faith in Boris Johnson to roll out the vaccine and save the live industry is low – and it wasn’t high to begin with.” “I don’t want to be the North East guy with a chip on his shoulder… but it’s going to take a lot of levelling up to level up Stockton.”  “The live music industry is worth a lot to the Chancellor, whether he knows it or not” Presented by Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How does it feel to work in the thick of the pandemic and spend time with patients you know will die? Rachel Clarke is a doctor in Oxfordshire who works in palliative care and her new book is Breathtaking: Inside The NHS In A Time Of Pandemic. She talks to Ros Taylor about the incredible personal stress of frontline medicine in the pandemic, the price Britain has paid for Boris Johnson’s “unforgivable” refusal to take the hard decisions, the death threats she’s had for telling the truth about COVID, and why we’re still so determined to look away from Britain’s appalling death toll from Coronavirus. “I feel murderous with rage and blind with fury when I hear the Prime Minister trot out his glib claims of success.” “I never in a million years thought we’d ever let things get as bad as 2020 again. Yet now we’re in worse conditions than that first peak.” “Boris Johnson knows he promised to protect the NHS and he has manifestly failed.” “The cruelest aspect of this pandemic is that all the ways we show our love are the ways that COVID spreads.” ““The unforgivable thing is not learning from your mistakes, and in Britain we’ve had a litany of mistakes” “If our Prime Minister wasn’t being given the science, or worse decided to juggle it for his own political imperatives, then that’s inexcusable” Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Government’s shoddy EU Deal means the live music business will have to cope with mountains of red tape it thought was in the past. Singer FISH, ex- of prog rock legends Marillion and now a successful solo touring artist, set out the details of this nightmare in a blistering social media post at the weekend. Now he talks to Andrew Harrison about how the strangling complexity of permits and visas will choke off emerging British talent even when COVID lifts, and why the Government isn’t even pretending to help small businesses I one of Britain’s true global industries.Find out more about Fish and buy aptly-titled new album Weltschmertz at fishmusic.scot “This will kill new bands wanting to establish themselves in Europe.” “We could be playing seven cities in ten days before we know someone is infected.” “Most Europeans learned English through rock and pop songs.” “Our albums are three times more expensive now – they cost 31 euros on the continent” “I was supposed to retire in 2022. That’s out the window.” Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is the UK’s vaccination effort finally an actual British success story… for the NHS, not the Government? Exactly how are the vaccines different and how do they work? Special guest Sathnam Sanghera joins us to talk about his new book Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, how the British Empire still haunts our present, and the unsurpassable joys of blanking Julia Hartley-Brewer. Plus should we all stop saying woke?Miatta Fahnbulleh and Arthur Snell join Dorian Lynskey for the weekly Bunker panel show. “In the middle of a pandemic, Robert Jenrick takes time to talk about defending statues? That’s Imperial thinking.” – Sathnam Sanghera “There are loads of reasons to be totally disappointed with this government… but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of saying everything they do is a failure.” – Arthur Snell “We’ve never confronted the British Empire simply because it’s so painful. Massacres, wars… and a few railways. It’s not fun.” – Sathnam Sanghera “Churchill said the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre was a crime. Was HE woke?” – Sathnam Sanghera Presented by Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Britain approaches the horrific landmark of 100,000 COVID deaths, will lockdown hawks force the Government to reopen the economy too soon – again? Plus the worsening mess in customs, import and export. Best for Britain launches a campaign to get COVID support to the 3m workers that Sunak forgot. And it’s bad news for hedgehogs as Chris Grayling takes up their case. Naomi Smith sets out the week ahead with Andrew Harrison.  “The Covid Recovery Group is no more interested in our recovery from Covid than the European Research Group was in researching Europe.”  “The best things in life are free, but for everything else there’s ‘sovereignty’.” “People won’t wake up until they have to pay customs via chip-and-pin at the doorstep.”  “Rollback of workers’ rights is a Brexiteers’ wet dream.”  Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does Englishness even mean in a land so splintered by class, geography, language and even post-colonial neuroses that it barely understands itself? And how far back would you draw the North-South divide? To 1066? Or maybe to the Jurassic period? James Hawes, novelist and author of the riotously readable Shortest History Of England, talks to The Observer’s Nick Cohen about England’s murky past and murkier future in a new occasional series of one-to-one conversations. “The Norman Conquests were a long, grinding and demeaning process for the English. It was the slow annihilation of a culture.” “England hasn’t existed as a separate state since 1707… Instead you had a polyglot empire of different nations.” “When English people stand up and say ‘We’ve lost our Empire’, well you never had one in the first place, mate.” “We were able to beat the French because we’d created this extraordinary combination of aristocrats and businessmen that we call ‘gentlemen’.”  “Even now, we automatically fall back into Northern gits and Southern bastards. This stuff runs deep.” “It’s been so long since the English have had to look at the problems of being English that I can’t see it ending peacefully.” Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofrenijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

America’s new President faces four overlapping crises – the COVID pandemic, the teetering economy, festering racial inequality and looming climate change. Does Joe Biden have the political resources to turn them around? And what about the fifth crisis, the poisoning of American democracy under Trump? The FT’s Associate Editor Edward Luce – Author of The Retreat of Western Liberalism – tells Andrew Harrison about the horrors in Biden’s in-tray.  “The left wants heads on pikes – but Biden will resist that.”  “Biden is inheriting low hanging fruit with Trump’s poor vaccine policy.”  “Expect an information war, as much as anything else.”  “Rejoining Paris on day one is very symbolic. But Biden’s environmental policies are more ambitious than that.”  Presented by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dorian Lynskey, author of The Ministry Of Truth, talks to DJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The Life, about Blair’s underrated works and over-cited quotes, David Bowie’s 1984: The Musical, and why Orwell would have baulked at the modern misuse of 'Orwellian'.

On the last day of Donald Trump’s warped presidency, his niece Mary Trump – psychologist and author of Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man – reflects on the making of a man who impressed his psychopathologies on a nation. How does a person get like this? What is it like when a family member places the entire world in peril? And could a defeated Trump represent an even worse danger to American democracy? “For the first time in his life he can’t spin a loss into a win. And it’s driving him crazy.” “At a very deep level, Donald knows he’s never been truly successful and has no skills.” “When Donald was elected I knew he would do to my country what he and his father had done to my family.” “What shocks me is that there are people on this planet who are weaker than Donald. I didn’t think that was possible” “In the election, if he was going down, he would try to take the rest of us with him. And that’s exactly what he did.” “Failure to live up Fred Trump’s demands got you destroyed. And that’s what happened to my dad.” “If the cameras disappear, Donald ceases to exist.”  Presented by Jude Rogers. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices