Identity crisis

On the podcast: In his cover piece for the mag this week, political scientist, Yascha Mounk has written about why identity politics has polarised our understanding of race. And why the left has come to divide groups into oversimplified categories of ‘the oppressors’ and ‘the oppressed’.  Also this week:  Can we trust photographs to paint a true picture of a story? The Israel-Palestine conflict has been one of the most documented wars to date. But with AI manipulation and staged imagery, is there a way of differentiating between real and fake news? Bryan Appleyard CBE and Eliot Higgins from Bellingcat discuss. And finally: There has been a new rise in Paganism over the past few decades and now students can apply for a degree in Magic and Occult Science – but how scientific really is it? Spectator writer Andrew Watts joins the podcast alongside Oxford PhD student Lois Heslop.