Die Hard is a perennial of festive TV, but is it really a Christmas movie? James Butler and Eleanor Penny explore what the 1988 action comedy reveals about corporate power, class antagonism, mid-century terrorism and women in the workplace. Who is Bruce Willis’ shoeless cowboy cop out to rescue? And what is going on with Hans Gruber’s accent?

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Almost 140 or so years ago, Germany invented the car. In the subsequent century, it was central to two world wars; its manufacturing was the envy of much of the world, and in the latter half of the 20th century, it was vital to European integration. Now, just 2 months before a general election, Germany finds itself in a much more precarious position. The European project is fragile, innovation has stalled, and their dependence on Russian resources has become, quite obviously, disastrous.

So what will happen to this once deeply consequential world power, and what does its story tell us about the future of Europe and the upending of global power in the 21st century?

This week’s guest has a thorough understanding of this story. He wrote for the FT on European and German matters for over 20 years, and his new book ‘Kaput’ tells us an awful lot about why Germany is in the state it currently is.

In the 2010s, we found out that we were all being watched. A series of leaks, from Wikileaks and others, revealed that our governments were conducting mass surveillance operations on their own populations.

But what were the longer term consequences of those leaks? And why hasn’t something of equivalent size stepped in to replace Wikileaks since?

Stefania Maurizi is a journalist who worked with Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald on the Edward Snowden revelations. She’s also the author of Secret Power: Wikileaks and Its Enemies.

She sat down with Richard Hames to explain how Wikileaks achieved so much, how the state tried to destroy them, and how they fought back and won.

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When the Taliban retook all of Afghanistan in 2021, it came as a shock to much of the West. The day after the last American soldier left, journalist and filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at flew into Kabul to spend a year filming with their senior military leadership. What he found was a Taliban drunk on power, in control of far more territory and with better weaponry than ever – courtesy of the Americans, who left it all behind.

Ibrahim joins Ash to talk about the making of Hollywoodgate, which is currently available to watch in the UK on BBC iPlayer as part of the Storyville series.

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Which side are you on? Keir, Nadia and Jem consider the ebb and flow of political commitment with ideas and music from Jodi Dean, Gramsci, John Coltrane and the Raincoats.

Is cultural production the same as political action? What’s the difference between an ally and a comrade? And why do some communists end up as right-wing turncoats?

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In 1891, the French drew the borders of what became Mali. Like many colonial borders, they were arbitrary, absurd to the many nomads who supposedly lived within them.

Now climate change is ravaging the Sahel region, and many of those nomads are being forced to settle down. And Russia and China have arrived to replace the long tail of French colonial domination. As has Al-Qaeda.

So what does this all have to do with the far-right anti-imperialism of Steve Bannon?

James Pogue is a journalist with an extraordinary range. He has reported from Mauritania and the Central African Republic, from the private gatherings of JD Vance and the militias of Oregon.

In this episode, he tells Richard Hames about how violence, money, racism weave together at the end of an empire – and perhaps the beginning of another.

Humanity has long pursued an elixir of youth, and dreamed of eternal life. For the Abrahamic faiths physical immortality was lost in the Garden of Eden, with only the soul remaining of permanence. More recently, futurists and thinkers have speculated about the possibilities of radical life extension.

For neuroscientist Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston there is another alternative, however. He believes that the human brain could be fully mapped and digitally reproduced – with the first part of that process possible within a century. Once your brain is modelled, and you die, you might think of it as a kind of time travel into the future.

Also discussed: what is ageing, identity and consciousness? And why, given we live in an age of comparative comfort, are so many becoming socially disillusioned?

Imagine a person arrested for keeping a brothel. Who are they? An abusive pimp? Such people exist, no doubt, but the law isn’t set up just to catch abusers: it also targets sex workers working together to stay safe.

With Labour in power, big changes could be afoot, but legalising sex work could harm sex workers as well.

That’s the view of the English Collective of Prostitutes, one of the leading sex worker right organisations in the UK. Their new report ‘Proceed Without Caution’ shows how the law keeps women in sex work, and keeps punishing them for being there.

Their spokeswoman Laura Watson joined Eleanor Penny to discuss poverty, power, whether sex work can ever be abolished, and the case for decriminalisation.

While the first modern trains were built in the early 19th century – more people travel by rail today than ever before. Not only have passenger numbers risen in the UK but the likes of China, Iran and Uzbekistan now have high-speed networks.

On this episode of Downstream, Aaron Bastani is joined by author and railway engineer Gareth Dennis. They discuss the rationale behind HS2, why Hyperloop was always destined to fail and the real reason Britain has so many potholes. Plus: does every major city really need a tram system? And how come Britain is so bad at building new infrastructure?

In October 2024, SpaceX caught a rocket. An astonishing feat of engineering, it took humanity one giant leap closer to the era of everyday space travel – and possibly one small step closer to its own obliteration.

Despite a long list of treaties attempting to prevent it, space is now a militarised zone. Nuclear-laden ICBMs and weapons systems on satellites are just the tip of a secretive iceberg of new risks, whose enormous power threatens us all. And next year Elon Musk, avatar for this new era of space expansion, will take up a key position alongside the Trump administration.

Eleanor Penny sat down with Daniel Deudney, author of Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity to talk about the perils, promises and progress of our expansion out into our vast and indifferent universe.

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Global heating is a serious problem, but the question of just how urgently to fight it is a fraught one. Should 2C or 1.5C of warming be our limit? Or can we blow past these limits now, and come back down to them later, using technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? There’s […]