This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, it's Nick here in the Today podcast, do you? And it's a mole here alongside Nick. And Nick, we've got this wonderful tradition, haven't we, on the Today program. It's been going for many, many years where the Today program hands over the editorial reigns, astonishingly, frankly, to a group of guest editors. Yeah. And those lucky people get to work with our team of producers to create a program that explores the ideas and the issues that they really care about.
So this year we've got Baroness Floella Benjamin. She's now a Liberal Democrat peer, but of course she spent nearly 50 years on television. Dame Laura Kenny, Britain's most decorated female Olympian. Dwayne Fields. He's the explorer who has appointed a few months back as the Chief Scout. Professor Irene Tracy, Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Frank Cottrell Boyce, Screenwriter, Children's Author, and UK Children's Laureate. And the former Conservative Chancellor, Sir Sajid Jaffin.
And they've been working up some absolutely magnificent goodies for you. So those special editions of today go out from Christmas Eve until New Year's Eve. And at the end of each program, the guest editor sits down for an interview with one of the presenters. So that could be Nick, could be me, could be our colleagues, Justin Webb and Emma Barnet. So what we're doing between now and the end of the year is bringing you extended versions of those conversations here on the Today podcast.
And there's something we do quite rarely on today, which is have the chance for a really relaxed, extended conversation with somebody about what they're thinking and why and what they learned from editing three hours worth of material to go out on the today program. So we do hope you enjoy them. We'll be both back with an episode on the 1st of January with a look at what to expect in 2025.
Our third guest editor this Christmas is Sasajid Javed, the former Conservative Chancellor, Home Secretary and Health Secretary for his programme. He looks at the rise of artificial intelligence, the possibilities and dangers ahead. What he calls the good, the bad and the ugly. And he also revisits his favourite childhood TV programme, Grange Hill. I asked him how he'd found guest editing today.
I have really enjoyed it. You know, I've always been on the other side. You might be interviewing me for five minutes as a minister or something, but I'd be spending two hours preparing, and I hope this is going to work out. I have not prepared at all today. It's the first time ever. Politicians worry when they come and sit in that chair in the Today Studio, don't they?
You're up on this chair, the whole country could be listening. And although I saw it as a very important part of the job, important part of democracy, I always had this feeling that sometimes, maybe not unique, but sometimes people are trying to catch you out more, trying to make news rather than, you know, get to the facts.
Well, you've had the chance to get to the facts. Why did you choose of all the things you might have chosen? It was your choice to talk about AI over the last three hours. Why that? Because I think it is going to have such a profound, dramatic effect on society. So AI is going to change everything, particularly because it's converging with big data, with cloud computing, with the internet of things, with autonomous devices, all of that put together.
What interests me is, despite dealing with some of the nuttiest problems we'll talk about in a second, child abuse, despite hearing from the founder of AI, one of the big three godfathers, as they're now in Jeffrey Hinton, that it could destroy us as a species, you said, I'm still an optimist. Why? Because this technology, where you will have machines probably smarter than humans probably quite soon,
can solve problems and help mankind in a way that we just haven't been able to. So, for example, you're in healthcare and education.
in productivity and basically reducing the prices of production and making things cheaper for us all. So I think there's a lot of good things that could come out of this to be excited about. And you said when you started as our editor for this edition, you wanted to look at the good, the bad and the ugly, and you've seen some really ugly sides of AI, haven't you? That discussion about child abuse imagery, for example,
Yes, and like all technology, you will get bad actors that will exploit technology to do nasty things. And in this case to what I consider the most vulnerable, most precious people in our society, which is our children. Do you sat down with a group of year 11 children? Yep. It was quite a remarkable sort of roundtable discussion with young women, ages 15 to 16.
They are very tech savvy alert to the latest technology and they're all using it. We had a discussion about AI and they talked about how it's benefiting them, for example, in their education, but they also openly talked about some of the sort of downsides from it. A point that came up again and again was fake news, deep fakes.
including the use of what's called nudification apps, and there's a real concern about that around the table. They can just take an existing image of someone and nudify that individual. People will believe it's a real image. You know that some people say, we've seen it in the Australian Parliament, ban under 16s from using social media altogether. Would you be tempted if you were still in Parliament by that sort of idea?
My instinct is not to, because I would worry if I think about my own children, something like that happened. They might try to find ways to get round it and maybe they end up in a place on the internet or something that's even less regulated. It can be more dangerous in a way, but we should all closely follow this experiment by Australia and see how it goes. But currently I'd say my instinct is not to.
And if you don't mind me asking, as a dad, what sort of decisions have you, your wife, taken about? Your kids. I think like all parents, we try to do what we can. One thing we did with my son, I was worried, I think, probably like a lot of parents that he would be able to access inappropriate content as a child. So I told him that I'd put a special program on his phones and the home Wi-Fi, and I would know if he ever did it, that we held to pay.
years later and he said it worked out, it worked. Where did you get this software from? It's amazing. And I said, I didn't. I was just made it up. You believed it. And that's all that mattered. So, you know, you've got to be creative as parents if you can. But actually other more serious point in this is that in the discussions I had with both Simon Bailey, the former police chief that looked into online abuse and Susie Hargreaves, who used to
run the internet watch foundation when i asked them both about these issues they both said look there's a huge role for education and awareness in this for both parents for teachers because regulation isn't going to solve all the problems policing isn't and getting parents and carers to speak to their children is super important
Simon Belly also said to you, didn't he, that tech companies put profit before child protection. Do you agree with that, or do you have some sympathy with an old colleague from politics, Nick Cleggo now works for Mark Zuckerberg, the boss and founder of Meta, behind Facebook, of course, and Instagram and WhatsApp, who says, we give parents lots of powers, we give them the ability to control of what's in, and they just don't use them, and then they claim that we're all the problem.
I think in that regard tech companies are probably not dissimilar to any other company where profit is the name of the game. What that means though is there's a role for government and that's not just banning things or being very sort of granular as it were on regulation. It's about also requiring companies to be more transparent. It's about creating more competition as well so parents and others get more choices. But I do think back to my own experience as home secretary,
And when I introduced the online harms as it was the white paper and had a lot of discussions with tech companies, that there are some tech companies that will go to the end limit and profit will be everything and governments must where needed, crack down on such behavior. You've just mentioned that you were home secretary. I was having to remind myself of this staggering list of jobs you've done, home secretary, health secretary, chancellor, housing secretary, business secretary, culture secretary. Do you miss it? Now you're out.
No, I'm happy with the decision that I made. Yes, they did though. Is that because there is something you do with? If you have the privilege of being in an office like those that you just mentioned, where you can actually make a difference and set the right priorities and get things done, I found it hugely rewarding to be able to do that. I realized that most people, my party wasn't going to stay in power much longer, and therefore I felt the right time to leave, but also to make room for the next generation.
Yes, most people did, as you say, know the Conservatives weren't going to survive in power, but there are some who now wonder whether they will survive at all. Your old mate, Tim Montgomery, well-known political commentator, came on the Today podcast the other day, has chosen to join Reform Nigel Farage's party. Tricky moment for you in a friendship, and you see many others following Tim.
Tim is a, as you say, a very old friend and a very deep friend. And I love him. In terms of his political choices, it doesn't affect our friendship. I don't agree with it, but it's not something I think is right for the country. But on the broader point, I think the Reform Party is a threat to all other major political parties, not just conservatives. Threat that might one day lead its leader to be a proper contender, to be prime minister.
Politics is so volatile. Look at the United States. Look at many other countries. Look at the France recently. I don't think you could sensibly rule anything out. And I think that that should make politicians that then respond to that a lot sharper. It's really important whether it's a conservative course, but even labor and others to think about where you have, let's say, reform doing better than maybe they had expected. Why is that happening? And how can they try to answer some of those concerns that are coming up?
It's partly a challenge, isn't it? It's a challenge you talked about in your past three hours, about how we discuss immigration and how we discuss race in this country. And you talked about your own experience of racism at school, reflected on what you'd learned from that hit series, Grange Hill. Have we got to change the way in which we have this national conversation about who we are?
I really love that discussion that we had on Grange Hill because it was just a reminder with that particular program how there were no taboos. It was a comprehensive school like I went to a working class neighborhood for me as a child when I was watching it, reflecting what was really going on, including the racist scenes that it had. When I was at my comprehensive school, I had racist taunts all the time being called
and much worse. There was one boy in particular that used to call me that word all the time. Obviously we weren't friends. I would just typically ignore him one day because of Grange Hill because that's what he told me afterwards. He came up to me and said he just didn't realize that using that word was so offensive and that might have hurt me and he wouldn't use it again.
I ask you about language because some argue that the rise of parties like reform, all parties all across Europe, is in part because people feel they're being told what they can't say and what they can't think and what they can't argue for.
And that if you want to defuse that, you've got to have a more candid conversation. Is that your view about how to deal with that political? Yeah, yeah. More seriously, broadly, yes. Someone asked me the other day whether to help answer your question about, are you wokeish? Are you woke? And I said, look, if woke means
you believe in equality based on race or gender in sex, then I think we're all woke. But what I think has happened in Britain, in America, in so many places that people have taken that idea of equality to such an extreme that it becomes inequality.
And that is something I don't believe in. I think people are reacting to that. So, for example, when you have, let's take their recent US election, because it came up a lot, and I think it is reflected here as well, when you might have some kind of what people call positive discrimination. So if you're black or brown, but you're as qualified as a white person, you're more likely to get a job or get a university place. I think that's completely wrong.
I think that everyone should be treated equally based on their talent or what they are, regardless of things like race and gender. You're saying this as someone who at school was told you can be a TV repair man, not a contender to be prime minister of this country, which is what you became.
That's right, I was told that, and luckily I completely ignore the advice. And even when I said to the school, actually, I want to go on to sixth form and do A-levels. And they said, well, well, you know, you can only do two A-levels, don't you? In a sense, there's a link, isn't there, with that sense of aspiration, with the choice of music you've got to close the programme today? It's the Concerto de Adamwes by Rob Riga.
We were an immigrant family living in working-class part of Bristol. I first heard it in the early 80s. I would have been about 11 or 12 and it was because of a cassette I came across called Hooked on Classics. It's a music I kept coming back to when I was 18. I'd met the love of my life who is now my wife.
Because she was white, some members in my community, as in the British Pakistani community, didn't like that. And so as a couple, we had to go through a lot of challenges, a lot of ups and downs. And that was a piece of music that became very meaningful to me. But one performance that you got to go to.
was utterly ruined, wasn't it? Which we've tried to repair for you. Tell us what went wrong.
And I had happened to mention that I really like this piece of music. A few weeks later, one of the staffers comes in and says, look, you know, at the Royal Albert Hall, there's a special performance and they're going to play this music. So I go with my wife. I just can't wait. I'm going to hear it live. And as it starts, and throughout the whole movement, there was a woman sitting next to my wife. So one down from me, humming, her humming got louder and louder.
it was so annoying. Well, we've now put on a performance for you so that you can hear it without the humming. Thank you so much. Well, and thank you, Sir Sergeant Javit, for being our guest editor. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
I was definitely too young when I was leader of the opposition. A lot to do many of the other jobs I did in Kathmand. Admissions and insights from the people who shape how we think. I would say my family gave myself and my two siblings a critical eye. And because it's not just politicians who mould our lives, we also hear from economists, comedians and best-selling authors.
It's the fastest way to change things. You do need politics, but if you want to change something overnight, culture is the quickest way to do it. Conversations not newsy interrogations. That's political thinking with me, Nick Robinson from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.
Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes, I felt amazing.
But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing. The passport being taken, being in a house and not feeling like they can leave.
World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.
and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that
whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network, I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice.
and further people to not be hurt for things to be different in the future. To bring it into the light and almost alchemise some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of Secrets Season 6, the Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
