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Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Neil Maggs

Bristol Unpacked with Neil Maggs brings you fascinating and challenging conversations from characters of all stripes on big topics facing the city and beyond. Sign up to the Cable’s newsletter and follow us on social media to listen in. Subscribe for new episodes on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Presenter: Neil Maggs

Audio producer: George Colwey

Executive producer: Adam Cantwell-Corn

Illustration: Jazz Thompson

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Babbasa CEO Poku Osei on changing the system from the inside

In the wake of the recent murder of St Pauls teenager Eddie King Muthemba Kinuthia, Neil talks to Poku Osei from Babbasa who aim to empower young people from local income and ethnic minority households.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked, with activist Jasmine York on being jailed after the Kill the Bill riots

Jasmine York, who was jailed for arson after the 2021 Kill the Bill riots, discusses those days that rocked the city, and abolishing prisons.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked, with local political fixer Kelvin Blake taking a peek inside the city’s Labour party machine

Former councillor, now Labour campaign manager Kelvin Blake offers an inside perspective on the workings of power in our city.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked, with councillor Christine Townsend on taking on the Merchant Venturers over educational inequality

Green councillor and education rights campaigner Christine Townsend on fighting discriminatory school selection practices and the prospect of taking power in Bristol.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked, with leftwing rabble rouser and Bristol Transformed co-founder Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins

Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins has been a prominent Momentum activist and is a co-founder of Bristol Transformed, a festival of radical ideas. What next for the left – now on the back foot – in Bristol and beyond? 

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Bristol Cathedral’s city chaplain Phil Nott, a reverend on a mission for social justice

Reverend Nott does not fit the stereotypical image of an Anglican priest. How can this LGBTQ+ ally, and outspoken voice on the Church's historical role in racism and injustice, work with an institution steeped in conservatism? 

Listen: Bristol Unpacked on raising the next generation through a nursery crisis, with local head teacher Sam Williams

Nurseries are key to children's development, but the sector is facing a protracted crisis of funding and stability. Neil asks head teacher Sam Williams how to give kids the best start.

Labour’s Nicola Beech on who’s getting the best deal out of the city: developers or the public?

Why does it sometimes feel like developers are giving the council the runaround? Neil chats to councillor Nicola Beech about the crucial but complex world of city planning.

When Bristol City FC meets community and politics with James Edwards

Neil chats to James, who helps lead Bristol City's charity arm the Robins Foundation, about the role of football in the community and the furore over Gary Lineker’s criticisms of government asylum policy.

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