With American intervention in Venezuela, some are claiming that the Trump administration is simply invoking the Monroe Doctrine, or its corollary, the “Donroe” Doctrine. In reality, neither doctrine is an appropriate reason for US military intervention in Latin America.
How is Europe handling Trump's renewed threats against Greenland and who is behind Berlin's five-day power outage? Then: A preview of Oulu's 2026 Capital of Culture program, the work of a young Ukrainian and member of the Scottish Youth Parliament, a visit to the new Byron museum in Italy, and the strange case of the Greek monks illegally occupying a mountain monastery.
Whatever advances Great Britain made during the Margaret Thatcher years have long been reversed as the UK finds itself in decline of its economy and social fabric. Big government, once again, is the culprit.
The split-second confrontation between ICE officers and a woman driving a car that appeared to aim at one of them, leading to her death, threatens yet another unraveling of the American civilizational thread. Give a listen.
The team from the hilarious and incisive Bad Hasbara podcast, Daniel Maté & Matt Lieb, take a break from calling out Zionist lies to weigh in on how adult circumcision recipient and Bari Weiss' new pick to anchorCBS Evening NewsTony Dokoupil embarrassed himself right out of the gate both substantively and aesthetically. We also talk the Venezuela-Israel connection, and whether the left must hand it to the "antiwar" right now that so many of them have decided that capturing Greenland/Venezuela is putting America first. And we accidentally spend a solid chunk of the back half of this episode dating the politics of Apple TV's Plur1bus. Consider it a break from this punishing news cycle.
In his inaugural speech, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared an end to “rugged individualism” and the embrace of “the warmth of collectivism.” New Yorkers are about to find out that collectivism will not produce what they need to have better lives.
What kind of state does the UK find itself in as we start 2026? That’s the question Tim Harford and the More or Less team is trying to answer in a series of five special programmes.
In the fourth episode, we’re searching for answers to these questions:
Are one in four pensioners millionaires?
Is England’s education system performing better than Finland’s? And how does it compare to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Are our prisons going to run out of space?
Is the weather getting weirder?
Get in touch if you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Contributors:
Heidi Karjalainen, Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies
Harry Fletcher-Wood, Director of Training at StepLab
John Jerrim, Professor of Education and Social Statistics at University College London
Cassia Rowland, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government
Friederike Otto, Professor of Climate Science at Imperial College London
Credits:
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producers: Lizzy McNeill, Nathan Gower, Katie Solleveld and Charlotte McDonald
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound mix: Sarah Hockley and Neil Churchill
Editor: Richard Vadon
In this episode, Damian Thompson joins R. R. Reno on The Editor's Desk to talk about his recent essay, “Canterbury Fails,” from the December 2025 issue of the magazine.
President Trump claims Venezuela stole American oil. Is that true? We trace Venezuela's oil industry from its 1920s birth through nationalization and then collapse. Today on the show, how did the Venezuelan oil industry get to a point where it’s barely pulling from its reserves? And will anything change now?