“The truth is, our brains – mostly – aren’t great with trends. We think, and we talk, about moments that have something to say about the big trends. So what we’re going to do in this series of podcasts is take a big idea and look for the moments that shine a light on it.”
In the technology great game there are plenty of battlefields, but TikTok has been the most public, and the most revealing. This addictive, Chinese-owned video-sharing app has exposed a paranoia from governments in both the east and west over who controls access to information and the power of social media. What does this mean for the future of the internet?
How dangerous is China? Are the growing fears that China might attack Taiwan justified, or are the two countries facing an eternal standoff; a prolonged state of fear?
What does the story of the difficult search for the origins of Covid-19 reveal about China? The unresolved question of whether the virus occurred naturally or escaped from a laboratory, and the contortions of the Chinese authorities under scrutiny are a parable of our times
China’s national security law has dismantled freedoms and silenced dissenters in Hong Kong. What does the strangling of freedom of speech reveal about Xi Jinping’s China?
Universities in the UK rely heavily on students from China, and on Chinese money and academic collaborations. But does it all come at a price? A chipping away of academic freedoms and a gagging order on discussing sensitive issues? It’s a dilemma which brings the China problem much closer to home
China stands accused of committing crimes against humanity, and possibly even genocide, against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Yet Beijing compares its system of “re-education camps” to the West’s war on terror and says it’s entitled to protect its citizens from domestic terrorism. This is the sharp end of the China problem; exhibit A of Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism and the West’s impotence to defend human rights within China’s borders
For a long time in the UK, the arguments about our modern-day responsibility for empire and slavery – the acknowledgements we might make, the debts we might owe – seemed muted. The silence came to a noisy end in 2016 with an argument over a tiny statue on the front of an Oxford college. It was a taste of bigger arguments to come.
Is cancel culture a way to wrest the mic from the powerful? A means of stifling debate? Or both? Late last year, Suzanne Moore left the Guardian after a letter signed by over 300 staff was sent in protest of the newspaper’s alleged “pattern of publishing transphobic content”. Moore and other guests join us.
Public inquiries have been an important clearing house in the battle for truth. They’ve settled arguments about who was responsible for national scandals and tragedies and, crucially, taken the pen away from people in power and given it to victims and campaigners. In the age of social media, when anyone can hold the pen, can the idea of the public inquiry survive?
In theory, it’s the crucible where politicians encounter journalists and a story is revealed in the white heat of the moment. In practice, critics would have it, it’s a cooked-up charade co-produced by the media and politics. What role does the political press conference have now in the battle for truth?
In the court of public opinion, Facebook is Exhibit A in the battle for truth; the most powerful example on the planet of the damage unregulated social media is doing to the public square. Facebook’s response has been to set up a higher court, its own supreme court in fact. Whatever it does, whatever it says, it won’t be the last word.
You will never again see a Tweet from Donald Trump. He’s been banned from Twitter for life without the right to appeal. The world feels quieter, but is it better? The power to hand out megaphones in our democracies, and the power to take them away, now rests in a tiny number of hands