The New Society | culture from the New Statesman

“The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”

Andrea Wulf joins us to discuss her new book The Traveller, about George Forster - the forgotten naturalist who sailed with Captain James Cook at seventeen and came back convinced of something radical: that all human beings are equal.

We ask why that idea was so scandalous in the Enlightenment, why Forster has been largely written out of history, and whether travel really does broaden the mind - or whether, as G.K. Chesterton suggested, it might do the opposite.
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There is in Britain today a widespread mood of public despair, a deep premonition of imminent national decline. According to Ipsos, just over half of Britons feel worse off since Keir Starmer was elected. Going further back, 60% feel the country has gone backwards since 2022.

Are Britain's best days really behind it?

Pratinav Anil, Rachel Clarke, Tanjil Rashid, John Kampfner, Gary Stevenson, and Polly Toynbee debate the issue.

This debate was chaired by Anoosh Chakelian and recorded at the Cambridge Literary Festival.

Find out more here: cambridgeliteraryfestival.com
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What is the relationship between politics and the built environment? between the spaces inhabited by the public and the policies that govern them?

From parliaments to monuments… from open squares to closed off palaces… there clearly is a connection, but how that manifests itself remains deeply contested.

Tanjil Rashid is joined by Jan Werner-Muller, a German philosopher and historian, whose latest book, Street, Palace, Square: The Architecture of Democratic Spaces investigates this relationship between place, people and politics.
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Political instability, democratic decline, the rise of populist movements - politicians and headlines today are quick to diagnose things as modern day Weimar. But what was Weimar actually like, and how did a city associated with culture and intellectual life become bound up with the rise of Nazism?

Historian Katja Hoyer joins us to discuss her new book on Weimar, the process of fascism taking hold at a local level, her previous book Beyond the Wall, and what today’s politics, including the rise of Alternative for Germany, may and may not have in common with the past.
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Donald Trump’s political style has often been compared to reality TV - but what if the better comparison is professional wrestling?

Satirist Munya Chawawa joins Luke O’Reilly to discuss his new documentary, Wrestling With Trump, which explores the connections between WWE spectacle and modern American politics.

Wrestling with Trump is available to stream now on 4.
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