Fiona, hello. Hi there. How are you . Im very well, thank you. And welcome back to newscast. Thank you. But in previous, well, in previous episodes where weve had about 50 minutes, weve now got about a0 minutes. So good job. The world is quite chaotic at the moment. Theres plenty of Trouble Spots that we can that we can look at. Um, but before we go on a tour around the world, ijust wanted to do a bit of a bit of your, your kind of personal history. And so what was happening in County Durham in the 80s, when you were a teenager and you decided that russian was the thing that you wanted to get into . Well, look, that was the period that actually its the subject of a Netflix Series at the moment about the Cold War and the bomb, where we had the War Scares with the Soviet Union, the 1980s, you know, there were several. But the most memorable, at least from my perspective, was about 1983, when you just could palpably feel the sort of tension internationally, even, you know, as a kind of a kid, a teenager in school in County Durham. I mean, it was thanks to the bbc, you know, which we were watching religiously, you know, every day at teatime or the 9 00 news or, you know, kind of later episodes. You could really get that sense that things were happening geopolitically. And, you know, i was growing up, not that too far away from Air Force bases, is constant, you know, sorties of everything from harrierjumpjets to, you know, otherfighter planes that would kind of whiz, you know, kind of across the skies. And, um, you know, i was spending a lot of time in discussions at school with, you know, people basically feeling that there was no point to continuing, you know, studying towards our A Levels because were all going to get blown up. And theres a memorable occasion where i met with one of my elderly relatives who we called Uncle Charlie. He was actually my dads cousin. But in the north of england, you know, everyones related to everyone else. You know, you just call them uncle or aunt, you know, kind of on the off chance that they are the most likely to be or at least, you know, a long standing, multi generational family friend. And wed run into my Uncle Charlie down in the town in bishop auckland, where i grew up. We didnt have telephones. So, you know, it was all a kind of market days on wednesdays or saturdays where you banked on meeting your relatives. And hed fought in World War two. Hed had some really crazy experiences as a young man, you know, being on a ship that was sunk and he was blown to the surface in the mediterranean by depth charges. He always had a Fantastical Tale to tell. On this particular day, he was kind of worrying about, you know, the whole situation you know, the whole situation with the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Union. And we had this long and we had this long conversation in the conversation in the marketplace, and he basically marketplace, and he basically said to me, hey, fiona, said to me, hey, fiona, youre good at languages. Youre good at languages. You should go off and try to you should go off and try to figure out why the soviet Union Figure out why the Soviet Union is trying to bloody well is trying to bloody well blow us up. Blow us up. And i thought to myself, and i thought to myself, well, maybe i could, well, maybe i could, which is a bit of a daft idea. Which is a bit of a daft idea. You know, when youre, you know, when youre, you know, kind of a teenager you know, kind of a Teenager North of england. North of england. First of all, there was first of all, there was russian, wasnt taught russian, wasnt taught in the local schools. In the local schools. And, you know, how do you get a job trying to figure that out . And i thought, well, maybe i could become a translator. I could work on, you know, i could work on, you know, arms control, um, negotiations arms control, um, negotiations somewhere or other. So i had that bee in my bonnet so i had that bee in my bonnet and decided i would go out and decided i would go out and try to figure out how and try to figure out how to study russian eventually. To study russian eventually. And it seemed like a more and it seemed like a more practical thing than, you know, practical thing than, you know, sitting and panicking sitting and panicking and wondering, you know, and wondering, you know, whether wed all fit whether wed all fit into the closet, under into the closet, under the stairs, the cupboard under the stairs, the cupboard under the stairs, you know, the stairs, you know, time to unscrew the Door Kind of harry potter esque, kind of harry potter esque, you know, in the event you know, in the event of a nuclear war. Of a nuclear war. Because thats also, because thats also, i mean, it might be too i mean, it might be too young to remember this, young to remember this, but others were listening to this might remember but others were listening to this might remember where they would have these where they would have these basic Public Service announcements on the telly, basic Public Service and then theyd also send, because this is such primitive days, you know, these Reel To reel films around to schools for assembly, you know, basically trying to inform you on what you should do in the event of a nuclear attack. And it seemed to be mostly kind of rolling into a ditch and hoping it would pass over announcements on the telly, or again crowding into the cupboard under the stairs. Well, i always remember one where it was. Russian might be helpful. Well, i always remember one of those where it was like, oh, Unscrew The Door and use the door to turn it into like a little shelter and then huddle under that. And im like, whos got inchoate thinking that was kind of like going on in this, you know, kind of period. And my A Levels, you know, didnt really kind of set me up for this, but i was pretty determined that i would try to study russian. And, you know, because i was growing up in the North East of england, my dad was a former coal miner. By this time, shed been working many decades in The Local Hospital as a porter. My Uncle Charlie had been a coal miner. Pretty much every relative had been. Uncle charlie, who had given me this idea in the first place actually also told my dad on a later occasion that this is, you know, fast forward a few years. Uh, by the time of the miners strike, which was about when i was about to go to college, that the durham Miners Association had some scholarships and bursaries for the kids of miners. And he thought that that would be one way that i might be able to study russian. And indeed, you know, my dad and my sister and i went on a bus to durham to, um, the durham Miners Association headquarters, a place called red hills, which was a kind of a parliament that was built by the miners back in the day and is about to open again, by the way, hopefully as a unesco type heritage site. And, you know, wejust went to a man in an office and gave him this kind of idea because id learned about, um, a Language Course that i could take at the university of East Anglia. And, um, he, you know, kind of looked at my dads work record, said, indeed, yes, sir. They gave this money. Some of this money had been donated by the miners of donbas, of all things, in solidarity with the miners of County Durham. They had links going back to the 1920s in exchanges. I mean, its a Bit Mind boggling now to think about it, but. Miners, miners, miners in ukraine, then in the Soviet Union, putting money in a tin that got then sent to the uk that you ended up being able to go to study russian with . Exactly. And i got 100 out of this to pay for all of my, you know, my expenses. And it was given to me in an envelope and i was just about to come back and report and, you know, show my homework that id been, you know, studying russian. Ijust, it was the most, you know, kind of amazing, you know, opportunity and all because of, you know, these chance encounters with, you know, relatives in, you know, the marketplace in bishop auckland. But, you know, Thats Kind of its because, as you said, what was happening at that time, everybody was really concerned, you know, about the whole prospects for nuclear war. I mean, this is the time when sting had his, you know, song about do the russians love their children, too . There was threads the day after all of these, you know, various, you know, series about nuclear armageddon. I mean, it was the perpetual concern. You know, you think of, you know, The Famous Song by nena, 99 red balloons. I mean, all of this is sort of coming back into kind of vogue again because sadly, you know, here we are, a0 odd years on. Um, more than that, of course, which would make me feel old now. But were back to the same kind of perspective. And you have, you know, other, you know, Pop Stars from the North East of england, the kind of stings of their generation, Sam Fender Singing about hypersonic missiles. You know, there are plenty of other young people, i think growing up in County Durham and elsewhere who are thinking about the same dilemmas now because we see, you know, Vladimir Putin going rogue, you know, in terms of, you know, particular people around him in threatening nuclear response to whats going on on the ground in ukraine. In a way, its even more dangerous now than it was then, seemingly, because, you know, we dont have that kind of Set Piece of interactions that we did have back in the Cold War. So i feel in many respects, weirdly enough, that everything has gone full circle from, you know, 1983, 1984 around to 2024 again. But the thing that makes it scarier now is kind of like the lack of off ramps or guardrails or kind of like an Emergency Press here, sort of institutions and structures that existed then. Thats right. Or at least, lets say, the lack of faith in those institutions. Now, the way that they have eroded, because, i mean, thats one of the reasons why we have so much conflict now that weve simultaneously lost our confidence in the international system as well as into many of the domestic systems. And youve got, in the case of Vladimir Putin in russia, someone whos kind of unchecked, you know, in their power and in their, you know, ability to do things like Declare War against ukraine and, you know, invade back, you know, two years ago. Whereas in the soviet period, you had a politburo of the Secretary General of the communist party, who was also the kind of the head of state, you had a lot more checks and balances in the system. And ironically, you know, we knew better how to interact with them than perhaps, you know, we do today with you know, someone whos, you know, seemingly more of a Rogue Actor like Vladimir Putin. And well come on to lots of those issues in a second. Butjust sticking with your cv, which ijust downloaded from the Brookings Institute website. Its five pages long. It does not have an extra wide margin like my cv does. And scrolling through it, obviously theres all the greats there of like going to saint andrews, working in the White House, being at the Brookings Institute, the eurasia foundation, studying at harvard, teaching at harvard. But the thing thatjumps out at me is my favourite entry on your cv. June to September 1989 and 1990. Assistant to the international office of Durham County Council. Indeed. Was that your Summer Job . It was actually the best, you know, kind of Summer Job in many respects. I mean, most of my summerjobs were working in restaurants, cleaning in, you know, The Local Hospital where my dad, you know, worked as a porter and, you know, various other, you know, grab bag of, you know, the typicaljobs that, you know, kind of most people, you know, in the North East of england have and sometimes Peoples Permanentjobsjust to be, you know, very clear as well. And then it turned out that Durham County Council, which, um, you know, i have to say, they always kept trying to keep the international flag flying. I mentioned these 1920s, um, exchanges with the Donbas Region of the Soviet Union. Now, of course, you know, one of the featured Arenas Forwarfare in ukraine, as you rightly mentioned earlier. But they were always very serious about exchanges, cultural exchanges. Id gone on a whole host of them. And then, you know, they actually approached me and asked me if i wanted to kind of come, as you know, one of their participants previously in exchanges to germany and france and All Over The Place to work on an exchange that they had been building up with the costal margin of the russian federation. And so i get this, you know, kind of great opportunity to work for that period of time. Its my first real russian job, uh, you know, helping Durham County Council think through, you know, kind of a series of exchanges with this Town And Region in russia, a kind of counterpart. And it was just pretty fascinating. I mean, it really gave me the bug, and i was really grateful to be approached with this. I cant say that it was perhaps, you know, kind of the best above board in terms of applications because it, you know, turned out that they approached me, which, you know, kind of has been a bit of a, you know, a theme in some other positions rather than me really applying for it. But, you know, iwas, you know, delighted to be able to, to do this. I mean, it really gave me a boost and a lot of insights into, you know, how these kinds of exchanges worked and, you know, all the difficulties in getting them in motion. It was all done without exchanging any money because, you know, at this point, um, you know, with the Soviet Union and, you know, obviously didnt have, um, an Exchange Rate to kind of floating, um, currency. And so it was all kind of done on, you know, Everybody Sort of paying their own way, you know, setting up people for the visiting, Uh Soviet Russian delegation to stay with. And we also tried to do a kind of a Business Event around this with the department for trade and industry, and that fell flat enormously because we actually thought that they were going to bring over some, you know, real, you know, kind of manufactured goods. This was actually an area where they were quite famous for their linen and also some of the, you know, the manufactured products. And everybody brought basically cardboard boxes of kind of russian trinkets, which didnt kind of quite pan out as, as people had anticipated, which also gave me, you know, again, some of the insight into the kind of the vagaries of, you know, working with russia and russian regions in that time. But whats interesting about all of that is all this effort going in to try and improve relations with the russian people, and then the Soviet Union collapses and theres, what, a decade where relations are okayish, but then itjust goes downhill and downhill and downhill and downhill, like was it was all that worth it that the attempt to build a relationship. Its always worth it right . I mean, to try to build relationships and to, you know, kind of look for a more positive trajectory and it still will be worth it and would be worth it to, you know, try to think about what that might look like, you know, in the future here. I mean, its hard sometimes to think beyond Vladimir Putin, but, you know, he wont be with us forever, just as, you know, nobody is, frankly, even if it seems to be the kind of permanent, you know, setup. Um, as we look out to, to the future here of animosity and confrontation again, but, you know, theres people to people relationships, do, you know, eventually pan out . You know, eventually pan out. I personally believe i made a lot of really great contacts in that time, got a lot of insights. But also, you know, i think russian history has shown us that, you know, there are lots of ups and downs of these relationships is always very rocky. But, you know, there can always be surprises. And, you know, Behind The Scenes in russia, theres a lot of people who would like to have a different set of relationships with the west. Putin himself is still convinced he can make some grand Bargain Deal with the west on his own terms. Obviously, and especially over ukraine and perhaps the division of europe again, in the same way that happened after World War two at yalta, when essentially Churchill And Stalin exchanged, you know, notes on bits of paper about, you know, divisions of, you know, europe during the Cold War. I dont think thats, you know, likely to be the outcome. But i think, you know, things could change quite rapidly in russia in unexpected ways. And we have to be ready for that. And having those contacts, those relationships and that deeper understanding of the dynamics there is going to be very important. And look, we can learn a lot from the mistakes that were made. You know, theres a lot of people casting blame here, there and everywhere for you know, how the relationships ruptured. I think fundamentally it comes down to the fact that were on very different pages. We might have had those people to people ties and found, you know, bonds of friendship on a Human Level on you know, kind of basic life outcomes, but the structures of the systems were so different. The perspectives were very different, the worldviews were very different. And what we really kind of needed was more strategic empathy in the sense of really kind of understanding how putin worked and what makes him tick. I wrote a book about that with a colleague, you know, a few years ago when putin had already been in office for about ten plus years. I mean, hes been in there for a quarter of a century now, could be there, you know, longer. Its important to understand the worldview. He doesnt really understand ours either, to be frank. And so i think, you know, thats going to be, you know, very difficult. But its al