Today is January 26th. If you’ve listened to the show for a while you’ll probably have an idea about where I view the significance of this day. If there’s one thing I wish for 2026, it’s that two things can be true at the same time. It is vitally important to celebrate a national identity, the story which binds us together as a community. The current day we’re celebrating this concept causes a great deal of pain to a significant number of people in our country. I’m not putting forward at all that we sholdn’t celebrate who we are as a nation, far from it - i think it’s incredibly important to be proud of who we are, what we’ve become and also to recognise where we’ve come from. We can do that in a way which unites us. The current way we’re going about it doesn’t really do the job. What kind of community do we want? A community divided along ideological lines so stark that we may as well be separate communities? Or a community united by values which we consider at the core of our national identity, and those ideological lines branch from there, as a way to put those values into action in our daily lives? For context, today we’re revisiting one of my favourite people in the world - the incredible Stan Grant. LINKS: Listen to the full interview with Stan from 2021 here Listen to my other chat with Stan from 2019 here Watch episodes of Better Than Yesterday on YouTube Watch Story Club on YouTube and grab tickets to Story Club's next show My books So What? Now What? and Back After The Break are available here Send a pic of what you're looking at to [email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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