The latest episode of Politics On the Couch, in which I discuss the brain’s innate tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good things, with honoured guest Tali Sharot, professor at the department for experimental psychology, University College London.

This week’s column: on the one thing Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal is good for, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of euroscepticism that isolates the UK from its neighbours.

A column on the way Russia’s now incarcerated anti-corruption campaigner gets under the skin of the president in a way that no previous opposition figure has managed.

A Guardian column on what the pandemic should be teaching the Conservative party, but isn’t.

Here is the latest episode of Politics on the Couch, visiting the front line where science and truth are defended against the massed battalions of weaponised lies and hatred.

Not a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. An essay about a personal brush with cardiac calamity and the connection with a toxic atmosphere in British politics at the time.

This week’s column is about the reasons why no-one is listening to Keir Starmer. The pandemic is a big one, but far from the online one.

A column about the Secretary of State for Education, why he shouldn’t still have his job and why Boris Johnson has kept him anyway.

This week’s column is on the prime minister’s habit of letting procrastination do the heavy-lifting, letting a crisis build to the point where decisions get easier because the options are fewer, although the downside is that the good options have run out.

The latest episode of Politics on the Couch is now live – on nostalgia, how it works, what we get from it and why political campaigns love to exploit it.

https://politics-on-the-couch.zencast.website/episodes/nostalgia-canvassing-the-politics-of-memory-lane