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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 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.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Labour’s Nicola Beech on whether developers or the public are getting the best deal out of our city

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.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Bristol City’s James Edwards on football, community and politics

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.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with new Green leader Emma Edwards 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?

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Paul Simmons, armed robber turned TikTok addiction mentor

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.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with 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.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with 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.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked on welcoming refugees amid the culture wars, with Fuad Mahamed, Ashley Community Housing CEO

The man who founded Ashley Community Housing discusses navigating the fraught political landscape of immigration.

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