Neil McRobert

speaker

8,757 appearances 17 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 14 Aug

Neil McRobert’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 17 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 7.

Appearances

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Talking Scared · 289 – Annie Jacobsen & Be Afraid… Be Very Afraid · 4 Aug 2026 podcast

I'm assuming that the UKs are in port and down, I'm guessing.

It's good to know you had good preparation for this conversation anyway.

completely and i think that's the purpose that narrative serves and this is something that i champion and ring the bell for on this podcast all the time i think narrative is essential to how human beings understand and deal with the world i mean you can take this kind of um

for want of a better word, polemic, but, you know, Jonathan Swift with, you know, a modest proposal, the satirical narrative about eating babies as a way to deal with the problems in Ireland and stuff like that.

We've always used narrative to bring a point to power, you know, where people get too lost in the weeds with data and statistics and the impersonal face of crisis.

If you can characterise it and make it characterful,

it's so much more powerful, right?

planning and at the other end of government you have or rather the other end of society you have all of us well you said quite rightly i understand why keep politics out of it i have one question to ask you um

The president is an interesting persona in your book because at times early on, I thought he was Trump because things like there's a reference in watching a documentary about his wife.

And he seems at times flippant and also dumb enough not to know that Haiti is part of the same island as the Dominican Republic.

And I was like, OK, this is Trump.

But then you make reference later to the previous administration in ways to suggest that your president follows Trump.

So where are we in time and in personnel?

Well, it means you need to really take seriously who you elect as your leaders, right?

And I obviously understand that the work you do requires you to have a journalistic distance.

But I don't.

So I'm going to ask this.

Are you more scared under this cretinous administration than you would be otherwise?

I think you've answered that question beautifully.

And I will say this, in terms of narrative, in terms of pure story, quite aside from the facts of the case,

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