• Oscar-winning director: West Bank situation 'escalating' after friend shot dead
    Jul 29 2025

    The world's eyes are on Gaza as the enclave faces mass starvation, but the war there is also emboldening Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.Odeh Hadalin is a Palestinian teacher and activist who campaigned against illegal Israeli settlements and settler violence. He also helped make this year's Oscar-winning film No Other Land which documents Israeli attacks on the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta.It was there that he was shot dead, reportedly after a confrontation between villagers and settlers who were using a bulldozer to destroy property.An extremist settler, previously sanctioned by the US, has been arrested.Around a thousand Palestinians have reportedly been killed in the West Bank in the last two years amid an increasing wave of settler and Israeli military violence.Joining Matt Frei on this week's episode of The Fourcast is the Palestinian film-maker Basel Adra. He co-wrote and co-directed No Other Land and was a friend of Odeh.

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    20 mins
  • Will UK anti-migrant protests explode into riots again?
    Jul 28 2025

    A year ago, towns across Britain were in flames as far-right anti-immigration protests turned into riots, while this week the Police Federation called recent protests in Epping a 'signal flare’ for further unrest.

    So with the number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats actually up and social media - not to mention certain MPs - pumping out inflammatory comments, is another summer flare-up inevitable?

    And how do the police , the politicians and the protesters themselves distinguish between the genuine concerns of dispossessed communities, and the gratuitous violence of far-right racists?

    On this episode of The Fourcast, Jackie Long is joined by Sunder Katwala, director of the think-tank British Future which focuses on diversity and social inclusion, the academic Lisa McKenzie, who writes primarily about working-class communities and class inequality, and Adam Kelwick, imam of the UK's oldest mosque in Liverpool who came to prominence during last year's riots with his attempts at dialogue with protesters.

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    33 mins
  • 'It's ripping MAGA apart': David Pakman on Trump, Epstein and Dems future
    Jul 23 2025

    Donald Trump is under pressure, again, this time over his alleged ties to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. As the scandal grows, the Speaker of the House has shut down Congress, seemingly to avoid any further questions being raised on the floor.

    Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s and Epstein’s longtime pilot, Lawrence Visoski, has testified that Trump flew on Epstein's private plane multiple times. Trump has denied ever being on the plane and there is no evidence he was involved in wrongdoing.

    But now, even Trump’s usual allies in the alt-right world of podcasts and influencers are turning on him. So what happens when the support base that’s shielded Trump for years starts to crumble?

    On today's episode of the Fourcast, David Pakman, host of The David Pakman Show and author of The Echo Machine, joins us to break it all down.

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    27 mins
  • Do Democrats need to move right to take on Trump?
    Jul 16 2025

    In America the Democrats are in crisis — leaderless, divided, and drifting after Donald Trump’s return to power, and on the left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Bernie Sanders and the Democrat's New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani are seizing the moment, but is their radicalism the way to beat Trump's Maga bandwagon?

    Or will they end up alienating the majority of working class America? Tim Ryan, a senior advisor for the Progressive Policy Institute, is the former Ohio Congressman who stood for the senate but lost to JD Vance. He also threw his hat in the ring for the Democrats Presidential nomination when Joe Biden won it. He wants to haul his party back to focus on what he sees as the central concerns of working class voters - their cost of living and the fairness of the system, as well as working with business not against it - what he sometimes calls more of a Bill Clinton style. But is that really the answer to a Democrat resurrection?

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    39 mins
  • Ukraine war: will Trump’s threats really scare Putin?
    Jul 15 2025

    Donald Trump says he's 'disappointed' that Vladimir Putin keeps knocking down buildings in Kyiv despite all the great conversations they are having about ending the war in Ukraine, as the First Lady Melania Trump keeps pointing out to him.

    So the president is ramping up the threats, offering 'top-of-the-line' weaponry to Ukraine and promising severe tariffs on Russia if there's no ceasefire within 50 days.Is that enough to get Putin to the negotiating table? Or just escalating an intractable conflict? And is Trump even serious about bumping his bestie in Moscow?On the latest episode of The Fourcast, Matt Frei is joined by Channel 4 News’ International Editor Lindsey Hilsum and historian and author Anne Applebaum.

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    34 mins
  • Will the UK-France migration deal work - explained
    Jul 10 2025

    Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have announced a "one in, one out" migration deal which would see France send one asylum seeker with a British family connection to the UK for every migrant sent back.


    Under the terms of the deal, up to 50 people a week could be sent back to France.


    But what impact will the new deal really have?


    In today's episode of the Fourcast, Senior Political Correspondent Paul McNamara speaks to Charlotte Khan from Care4Calais and Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, about whether we can really expect to see a change to the number of people crossing the English Channel by small boat.

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    22 mins
  • ‘A child killed every hour shouldn’t be normal’ - UNICEF on Gaza
    Jul 9 2025

    What comes first - a peace deal or a peace prize? The war rages on in Gaza - another 40 Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli airstrikes, but Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been unable to thrash out a ceasefire deal despite two days of talks in Washington, though he did nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize.

    Meanwhile in Gaza families continue to struggle for food and water amid the constant bombardments and with an aid system that is failing to deliver. Israeli officials say they are working with the UN and other bodies to “ensure necessary aid crosses the border”. So who is to blame for this catastrophe? And what needs to be done to alleviate it?

    In this episode of The Fourcast, Cathy Newman speaks to James Elder, global spokesperson for UNICEF, the United Nations agency providing humanitarian aid to children worldwide. He is just back from Gaza - his fifth visit to the territory since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023.

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    33 mins