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WORLD NEWS 
Tomiwa Owolade

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This is not America. Why we need a better conversation on race

Tomiwa Owolade writes about social, cultural and literary issues for the New Statesman, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Observer, UnHerd and the Evening Standard.

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For too long, discussions around race and diversity have been too simplistic. If we care about the inequalities in our society, we need to stop focusing only on race, because race is not the only thing that shapes inequality. And many of the discussions on race do not reflect the fact that black and brown people are more than the racial categories they happen to belong to: that other things, such as class, geography, religion, nationality, gender and many more, shape their identity too; and that even all these categories can't get at someone's irreducible sense of self.
 

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FOOD

Alissa Timoshkina

 

Alissa Timoshkina is a London-based food writer and historian specialising in Eastern European food culture. Originally from Siberia, Alissa comes from a Ukrainian-Jewish lineage, with her family history forming an important part of her culinary writing. Alissa holds a PhD in Soviet film and Holocaust history, however, her love of cooking pulled her away from an academic career. Since 2015 she’s been curating and hosting immersive dining experiences, offering cooking classes and authored a cookbook ‘Salt and Time’. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Alissa initiated a global fundraising campaign, #CookForUkraine which raised over £2 million. She is now writing her second cookbook, out in early 2025.

 

In conversation with Sunday Papers Live host, Robin Clyfan, Alissa discusses the trajectory of her campaign in an update from her previous talk in April 2022.

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UK NEWS
Chris Atkins

 

Chris Atkins is a three time BAFTA-nominated film-maker. His documentaries Taking Liberties and Starsuckers were critically acclaimed and made front-page news, and he recently made the hit film Who Killed the KLF? He has also worked extensively with Dispatches for Channel 4 and BBC Panorama. He has just finished a film about James Blunt, and published a new book on reoffending called Time After Time.

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Documentary maker, journalist and ex con Chris Atkins will talk about his crazy time in HMP Wandsworth - one of the most dangerous and dysfunctional prisons in the UK and the scene of the daring prison break in September this year. When Chris was incarcerated for tax fraud in 2016 his only knowledge of prison was from Shawshank Redemption and Porridge, and he was thrust into a dangerous and surreal world of mentally ill drug addicts, flatulent cellmates and grossly inexperienced officers. Over nine months he got a front row seat of the worst prison crisis in history, and kept a diary of his surreal and often hilarious experiences which has since become a bestselling book A Bit of a Stretch.
 

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TRAVEL

Tim Fitzhigham

 

Tim FitzHigham is a Perrier nominated, multi award-winning comedian, explorer, presenter, and author. Among TV credits as a comedian, he has presented several documentaries for BBC1 and Super Human Challenge for CBBC. His diverse interests have led him into film appearances include being the baddie in Paddington 2 and Wonka, writing and performing in his highly successful Edinburgh Fringe show and also setting many unusual records, including rowing the English Channel in a bathtub.

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Tim's travels include: running across deserts in a suit of armour, racing against race horses, rowing the channel in a bathtub, unfeasible distances in a paper boat, arrow catching, accidentally getting caught up in a revolution. This is a travel section - as you'd hope at Sunday Papers Live - with a difference.
 

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BRITISH CULTURE

Polly Toynbee

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Polly Toynbee is a journalist, author, and broadcaster. A Guardian columnist and broadcaster, she was formerly the BBC's social affairs editor. She has written for the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times and been an editor at The Washington Monthly. She has won numerous awards including a National Press Award and the Orwell Prize for Journalism. While for generations Polly Toynbee's ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality? 

 

In conversation with Mark Damazer CBE (ex Controller of BBC Radio 4, Radio 7 and Editor of the Nine O'Clock News at the BBC), Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.

 

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POLITICS

Rafael Behr

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Rafael Behr is an award-winning political columnist for the Guardian and regular commentator on the BBC and Times Radio. He is a former political editor of the New Statesman, a BBC online business reporter and a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in the Baltic states and Russia. He hosts the Politics on the Couch podcast. Rafael's first book, Politics, A Survivor's Guide, was published in April 2023.

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Do you feel like turning away from the news in despair? Or struggle to quit the screen although you know doomscrolling gets you down? It doesn't have to be like this. In an era of political meltdown when each new crisis erupts before the last one has finished it can be hard to stay engaged without being consumed by rage. Rafael Behr has reported from the political front line for nearly 30 years - and it nearly killed him. He talks about the way politics drives us apart and the way to keep hope for a healthier, better way of doing things.
 

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MONEY

Rachel O'Dwyer

 

Dr Rachel O’Dwyer is the author of Tokens, Longlisted for the FT Schroders Book of the Year Award 2023. Her research focuses on the intersection of cultural and digital economies.

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Rachel will discuss the rise of new-money like tokens that are circulated and exchanged on digital platforms, a new economy where platforms are the new bank and how they are utilised to make payment for online marginalised and extra-legal sex related work.

 

In one way tokens are part of a new economy where the likes of sex camming platforms are the new banks, exploiting online streamers and cam girls. But in another, tokens are part of an age-old economy where women and housewives have always made do with invisible dollars, treats and gifts.
 

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HEALTH

Nick Dearden

 

Nick Dearden has been trying to change the world for nearly three decades. He’s been a particular pain in the neck for big businesses – taking on some of the giants who run our food, energy, financial, fashion and medicine systems. He believes our politicians have allowed these giants far too much wealth and power, fundamentally undermining our right to make democratic decisions about the way we live. Challenging this power isn’t easy, but it is possible. It can even be fun.

 

America’s opioid crisis has woken the world up to just how dangerous the pharmaceutical industry can be. But the problem goes deeper than one family’s ruthless profiteering from a highly addictive drug. In fact, the Big Pharma corporations as a whole are failing nearly all of us. Addicted to sky high profits, Big Pharma is not providing the medicines we need at a price we, or the NHS, can afford. Rather, the industry has become a cash machine for already wealthy investors. It doesn’t have to be this way – learn about the ideas of a new way of producing medicines.

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MUSIC

Eammon Forde

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Eamonn Forde is an award-winning music business writer and author. He has been writing about all areas of the music business since 2000 and currently writes for Music Ally, Music Business Worldwide and The Guardian, among others. He is the author of three music business books – The Final Days Of EMI: Selling The Pig (2019), Leaving The Building: The Lucrative Afterlife Of Music Estates (2021) and 1999: The Year The Record Industry Lost Control (to be published in March 2024).

AI is going to kill all new music and make every songwriter and musician in the world instantly redundant! That's what some say is the best-case scenario as artificial intelligence software grows and improves at a rapid rate. Worse than that, AI can, and will, put words and tunes in the mouths of dead pop stars in a desperate attempt to keep them earning money. 

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A moral, ethical, musical and financial storm is brewing and dead artists could be the ones most exploited here. Or maybe, just maybe, such Black Mirror-style dystopian thinking is overblown and AI will become a creative aid rather than a creative replacement. 

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LIFESTYLE
Harriet Gibsone

 

Music journalist and self-professed creep, Harriet Gibsone, lives in fear of her internet searches being leaked. Her latest book, Is This Ok? is an outrageously funny and painfully honest account of trying to find connection in the age of the internet – from bad MSN boyfriends, to the tyranny of Instagram mumfluencers. Harriet’s talk delves into the question of how far is too far when ‘stalking’ someone on the internet.

 

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LIVE MUSIC
Palace Avenue
 

Stalwarts of the London jazz scene and National Treasures in the making; Palace Avenue play the best in hot New Orleans jazz, good time swing and down low blues, guaranteed to get feet tapping. We are blessed to have their outfit as our Sunday Papers Live ‘house band’. 

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CROSSWORDS

Sons & Sons

Barely more coherent than toddlers themselves, our crossword gurus have been running the sillier side of Sunday for 5 years. Brush up on your charade skills for the live crossword challenges, but also pop down to their pub quiz and crafternoon crafts table full of crafty crafts. 

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THE WALK

Antony Robbins

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Antony is a former director of the Museum of London and loves the city of his birth. His tours delight in the discovery of the hidden, the secret and the lost. As Mr Londoner, Antony combines his fascination with the traditional and the quirky - alongside the ancient and the modern.

 

Mr Londoner explores Soho’s origins as monastic lands-cum-royal hunting ground. He then delves into the area’s rise and fall, and rise and fall – and rise again. Today Soho is one of our most diverse, creative and surprising London neighbourhoods. And we celebrate it, warts and all.