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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: Priyanka Raval

Illustration: Jazz Thompson

Listen: Bristol Unpacked, with Labour councillor Kirsty Tait on the Just Transition and how best to spend £20m in Hartcliffe

Neil asks Hartcliffe and Withywood representative Kirsty Tait about the government money the neighbourhood is getting – and about the importance of putting working-class voices at the centre of climate conversations.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked – from Wigan to LA, via Eastville, with Bristol Northern Soul Club

Neil chats to Bristol Northern Soul Club’s Levanna McLean and Eve Arslett about the scene’s resurgence – and how the Eastville Club has become an unlikely place of pilgrimage

Listen: Bristol Unpacked – high sheriff Kalpna Woolf on connecting people through food and battling for boardroom diversity

Neil chats to Kalpna Woolf on her journey from west London migrant kid to BBC head of production, cookbook author and boardroom diversity advocate – as well asking what exactly a high sheriff gets up to.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked – council leader Tony Dyer on a year of Green power in Bristol

Neil asks Bristol City Council leader Tony Dyer about his year at the helm in the city and the challenges of being in power, how the Green Party can widen its appeal, and the threat from Reform.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with David Jubb of Citizens in Power – can citizens’ assemblies relight our democratic fires?

Neil sits down with David Jubb to talk citizens' assemblies: how do they work, why are they a better way of doing politics, and what's the new one he's helping run here in the West of England all about?

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with the BBC’s Pete Simson on the WECA mayoral election, making politics interesting and why snacks matter

Neil talks to Pete Simson, BBC Politics West editor, about the race to become the new mayor of the West of England Combined Authority and whether an upset in the 2025 election is likely after Arron Banks' entry.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with photographer Colin Moody on documenting the city, and the threats to its nightlife

In the first of a new season of Unpacked, Neil talks to Colin about his new book collaboration with Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley, celebrating Bristol's nightlife – and the challenges venues face in the post-Covid era.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked from the archive, with Green co-leader Carla Denyer on taking on Labour and tackling lazy views of her party

In our second raid on the Unpacked vaults, from 2021, Carla and Neil discuss overturning Green Party stereotypes, aiming for a kinder local politics and conquering the left-wing territory being vacated by Labour.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with barrister Lucy Reed, on opening the secretive family courts to scrutiny

The family courts, which make orders for children to be taken into care, have long been a hidden world, but that's now changing. Neil talks to barrister and transparency campaigner Lucy about why this matters, and how the system needs to change.

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