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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 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.

The city’s new Green Party leader on being the biggest political force in these parts

The Greens are now the council's biggest party, but given their limited experience of being in power, how will they work with others under the new committee system, including their antagonists on the Labour benches?

The armed robber turned TikTok addiction mentor Paul Simmons

After more than 20 years in prison, Paul has turned to TikTok to work through his own trauma and regrets, and help others along the way.

The doctor prescribing ketamine to assist therapy

We chat to Dr Ben Sessa, co-founder of Awakn, a company leading the burgeoning movement offering therapy assisted by psychedelic drugs.

Bristol 24/7 editor and Hotwells election hopeful Martin Booth

We sat down with the journalist to discuss his plan to run as an independent candidate in February's Hotwells and Harbourside council by-election, before he pulled out of the race.

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