Fox, a Henry Jackson Society research fellow, agrees: “A lot of people in the West as a whole … have concerns about immigration, defence, the economy, the culture wars, education, politics – people feel like we are approaching an edge in the dark,” he said.
Andrew Fox completed three tours in Afghanistan, including one attached to the US Army Special Forces, with additional tours in Bosnia, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland.[Missing Credit]
Promising the the podcast will be “serious and grown up” and “the antithesis to the click-bait rage merchants who simply look for the viral moments and the social media engagement” Fox said: “We’re trying to take a tone that is very balanced and mature and present something useful rather than cheap thrills.”
And Wallis Simons was scathing about the centrist mainstream, and the politics podcasts popular with the British public: “We’re appealing at the core to the sorts of people that say ‘thank god it’s not Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell.’”
The Brink, he says, is the “antidote” to the Stewart and Campbell approach.
“The world view that is articulated by the ‘centrist dad’ type approach – it produces a funhouse mirror backlash from the rage-filled Piers Morgan side,” Wallis Simons added.
Piers Morgan Uncensored has faced criticism from pro-Israel advocates for hosting antisemitic guests, while The Rest is Politics sparked controversy when it interviewed Syrian leader and former Al-Qaeda terrorist, Ahmed al-Sharaa. Both shows have also hosted United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.
"I think they’re both two sides of the same problem. We're trying to find a third wave,” Wallis Simmons said.
He is hopeful that The Brink will offer new ideas – or remind people of the “old ideas” that some have forgotten.
The pair will be joined by numerous high-profile guests.[Missing Credit]
Fox added: “Managed decline, the idea that everything is fine, keep doing what you’re doing... we need people willing to shake the paradigm up a bit.”
“It will give us lots to talk about into the future.”
Episodes, which will be released every Thursday, will feature conversations with major thinkers, including Douglas Murray, Tom Holland, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Ed Husain, Niall Ferguson and Bari Weiss.
“The genesis for the podcast is that I was doing a lot of interviews for my book, and I thought it would be nice to have the interviews in full available to people as podcasts as well,” he says. “I began to think it would be fun to have somebody else host the podcast with me.”
His agent initially suggested a co-host who would “fit the right identity box” – a woman, or a non-white co-host, for example.
But Wallis Simons resisted. “Why am I thinking in terms of identity first? Why don’t I think about the person and what they’re going to bring to the conversation – and whether we get on.” He chose Fox, a friend who has became a prominent military analyst after October 7.
While the Hamas-led massacres turned many in the community inwards, reaching for Jewish friends and family, the pair are an example of another way of doing things.
“Whereas before [October 7], your Jewish identity could sit alongside your position as a reporter, as a mother, as a father, as a football fan, as a left-wing person, as a right-wing voter, now it's something that everything's been condensed into. It is this one badge that everyone is attacking.
“But people are increasingly multifarious. So we’re trying to look at things sensibly and do justice to the complexity of everything rather than reduce it to Jews against Christians, or Jews against Muslims. It’s complicated,” Wall Simons said.
“We’re moving away from kind of identity-based stuff in many ways,” agreed Fox. “It is coincidental that I'm Roman Catholic, and Jake is Jewish, but it does give us both a slightly different perspective, which I think is helpful.”
Both hosts draw on their own experiences. Fox served on the front lines and later helped evacuate civilians as Afghanistan collapsed into Taliban hands, while Wallis Simons spoke of helping an Afghan interpreter who had worked for the King – then Prince Charles – to gain asylum in Britain: “I was able through my reporting to bring him over.”
Jake Wallis Simons travelled around the world as a foreign correspondent.[Missing Credit]
On 28 October the pair will be joined at JW3 by Telegraph journalist and British Friends of Israel founder Alison Pearson, where audiences can watch the show being recorded live.
