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by Mark and Pete
A weekly British podcast about news, politics, culture, faith and the peculiar things people do. Mark and Pete tackle the big headlines and the smaller stories that probably tell us rather more about ourselves than we’d like. Theme music: Title by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
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- 1 weeks ago11 min
How to Have a Horrible Halloween.
How to Have a Horrible Halloween! Britain's Craziest Costumes, Creepy Traditions and Halloween Madness 2026Halloween 2026 is upon us, and Britain has apparently decided that the best way to celebrate is to dress like a complete lunatic, frighten the neighbours and spend over a billion pounds doing it. Marvellous. But what are the most popular Halloween costumes this year? Why do we enjoy being frightened? And when did a harmless pumpkin become a full-scale financial commitment?Welcome to Mark and Pete, where we're asking one very important question: How do you have a properly horrible Halloween?Not just mildly unpleasant. Not the sort of Halloween where somebody puts a bedsheet over their head and calls themselves a ghost. No. We're talking spectacularly horrible. Frightening decorations, ridiculous fancy dress, outrageous quantities of sweets and perhaps a neighbour dressed as something that really ought to require planning permission.And the costumes! Oh, the costumes.Apparently, among Britain's preferred Halloween outfits for 2026 are Dolly Parton, Count Binface, Claudia Winkleman and characters from Wicked and Stranger Things. Dolly Parton! Quite why dressing as a country music legend should terrify anybody is beyond us. Unless she starts singing outside your bedroom window at three in the morning. That might do it.Meanwhile, the traditional Halloween witch, vampire and skeleton are apparently becoming terribly unfashionable. One survey suggests that 87% of people find the usual costumes rather unimaginative. Poor old Dracula. Centuries building a reputation as the prince of darkness, only to be upstaged by a television presenter.And what about the money?British Halloween spending could reach an extraordinary £1.16 billion this year. That's pumpkins, Halloween decorations, costumes, sweets, parties and all the other essential equipment required to make your home resemble a reasonably unsuccessful haunted house.Mark and Pete explore the extraordinary commercial growth of Halloween in Britain. When did we start celebrating it quite so enthusiastically? Has American Halloween culture completely taken over? Is Bonfire Night losing out to trick-or-treating? And why are otherwise perfectly sensible adults prepared to spend good money looking absolutely ridiculous?We'll also offer our thoroughly questionable guide to the perfect horrible Halloween. What should you wear? How scary should your decorations be? What makes a genuinely frightening horror film? And should you give trick-or-treaters chocolate, sweets or, if you really want to be unpopular, a nice healthy apple?There is, though, a more serious question lurking beneath the fake cobwebs.What should Christians make of Halloween? Is it harmless fun, an unhealthy fascination with darkness, or simply an opportunity to bring a bit of light into the neighbourhood? The Bible says that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Perhaps that's worth remembering amid all the plastic skulls.So join Mark and Pete for a funny, occasionally thoughtful and gloriously peculiar journey through Halloween costumes, British traditions, spooky celebrations, Halloween spending and the strange business of deliberately frightening ourselves for entertainment.We promise a horribly good time.Listen now, and tell us in the comments: What's the worst Halloween costume you've ever seen? Better still, what's the most ridiculous one you've actually worn? We won't judge. Much.And do subscribe to Mark and Pete, share the episode and join us for more British humour, current affairs, cultural commentary and those wonderfully absurd stories that make modern life such an endless source of entertainment.Happy Halloween. Have a dreadful one.#Halloween2026 #HalloweenUK #HalloweenCostumes #FunnyHalloween #HalloweenTraditions #TrickOrTreat #BritishHumour #MarkAndPete #HalloweenIdeas #HalloweenPodcast
- 2 weeks ago9 min
The Great British Poo Cruise
Danny Dyer, Britain's sewage scandal, polluted rivers, failing water companies and an enormous floating turd. Yes, really. The actor has taken to the River Thames with a giant inflatable poo, demanding an end to sewage pollution and calling for Britain's water industry to be returned to public ownership. It's a serious environmental campaign, apparently. Although it's difficult to maintain an entirely straight face when your principal political argument is floating past Parliament looking like something produced by a constipated elephant.But is Danny Dyer genuinely fighting for cleaner rivers, or is this another celebrity publicity stunt? And, more importantly, does it matter?In this episode of Mark and Pete, we plunge into Britain's sewage crisis. Not literally, obviously. We're not completely mad.And the figures are staggering. England recorded 450,398 sewage spills in 2024, falling to 291,492 in 2025. That's an improvement, certainly, although unusually dry weather helped. Meanwhile, water bills are rising, ageing infrastructure needs billions in investment, and ordinary customers are left wondering why they're paying increasingly enormous sums for a service that sometimes appears to involve pumping the contents of their toilets into the nearest river.Lovely.Danny Dyer's Thames protest attracted considerable attention, with a petition signed by hundreds of thousands demanding water industry nationalisation. And fair play to him, perhaps. He has a platform and he's using it. But there's something faintly ridiculous about modern celebrity campaigning. Everything must be a spectacle. A stunt. Something enormous and inflatable. Preferably photographed from seventeen different angles and distributed across social media before anybody has examined what the proposed solution might actually cost.Mind you, perhaps that's unfair. Perhaps a giant poo is precisely the level of political sophistication required nowadays.We also investigate the history of water privatisation in Britain, the profits and debts of water companies, sewage dumping, environmental regulation, Thames Water's financial troubles and the argument for public ownership. Would nationalisation genuinely improve Britain's waterways? Or would we simply replace private-sector incompetence with government incompetence, which at least has the reassuring familiarity of being paid for twice?And what about the shareholders? The regulators? The executives collecting substantial salaries while the infrastructure beneath our feet quietly deteriorates? Somebody, somewhere, surely ought to be responsible. It can't always be the weather. Although blaming the rain for sewage entering rivers does have a certain British charm.There's a serious moral question underneath all this unpleasantness. The prophet Amos declared, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." A rather more attractive image than Danny Dyer's inflatable contribution to the Thames, but the principle is remarkably similar. Those entrusted with something essential should not exploit the people who depend upon it.So join Mark and Pete for a lively, occasionally exasperated look at Danny Dyer's sewage protest, Britain's polluted waterways, the water industry crisis and the future of water privatisation.Is Danny Dyer making a difference, making a point, or simply making a splash?Whatever the answer, Britain's sewage problem is a complete mess. And this time, we really do mean that literally.
- 2 weeks ago14 min
Royal Mail to Royal Fail
Royal Mail is failing Britain. First-Class prices, Second-Class service, and a postal system that seems increasingly incapable of delivering the post. Quite an achievement, really, for an organisation whose principal purpose is, well, delivering things.A First-Class stamp now costs £1.80, compared with just 41p in 2010. That's an increase of nearly 340%. And what do we get for this rather impressive rise in postage prices? According to the latest annual figures, only 75.7% of First-Class letters actually arrived the next working day. Which means roughly one in four didn't.Perhaps First Class now refers to the price rather than the service.In this episode of Mark and Pete, we investigate the extraordinary decline of Royal Mail, Britain's historic postal service, and ask a fairly straightforward question: how can something become so much more expensive whilst becoming so much less reliable?Royal Mail has been part of British life for over 500 years. From Henry VIII to the Penny Black, from red pillar boxes to the familiar postman trudging through the rain, it's one of those institutions that seems almost inseparable from Britain itself.Or was.Because the modern Royal Mail is a very different beast. Delivery delays, missed targets, rising stamp prices, job cuts, privatisation and regulatory fines have turned a once-trusted institution into a national source of irritation.And the statistics are fairly astonishing.Only 90.2% of Second-Class mail arrived within three working days in 2025/26. Royal Mail has received more than £37 million in Ofcom fines for previous delivery failures. Now another 2,500 jobs are potentially disappearing as the company attempts to restructure.Meanwhile, the regulator has actually lowered delivery performance targets. Yes, lowered them. Apparently, when you keep missing the target, the solution is to make the target easier.One wonders whether this approach might catch on in schools.But there's another side to this story, and it's worth considering. Letter volumes have collapsed from around 20 billion annually to just 6.5 billion. Emails, WhatsApp and online banking have changed everything. Royal Mail still has to serve millions of addresses, including isolated rural communities, whether delivering to them makes commercial sense or not.So perhaps the problem isn't quite as simple as incompetent management.Then again, perhaps it is partly that.We explore Royal Mail privatisation, its takeover by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, postal workers' struggles, the future of the universal postal service, and whether Britain should consider bringing Royal Mail back into public ownership.Would nationalisation improve things? Or simply give us an expensive government-run failure instead of an expensive privately owned one?And what about the postmen and postwomen who still get up early, work in miserable weather and keep the system functioning despite everything?This isn't merely about late birthday cards. It's about medical appointments, legal documents, elderly people and the basic expectation that a paid-for service should actually work.Join Mark and Pete for a funny, occasionally furious and distinctly British examination of Royal Mail's decline.Because when something costs First-Class money, expecting First-Class service really shouldn't be considered unreasonable.
- 3 weeks ago14 min
Britain's Banknotes: Churchill Out, Hedgehogs In
Winston Churchill is out, hedgehogs are in, and the Bank of England has decided that Britain's greatest heroes should make way for wildlife. Yes, really. The man who helped save Britain from Nazi Germany is being replaced, eventually, by something that curls into a ball when frightened. Which, come to think of it, might be a fairly accurate description of British political leadership these days.The Bank of England has announced that Britain's new £5, £10, £20 and £50 banknotes will feature animals instead of famous historical figures. Goodbye Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, JMW Turner and Alan Turing. Hello hedgehog, barn owl, puffin and bumblebee.Now, we like hedgehogs. Who doesn't? Delightful little creatures. Excellent at eating slugs, although rather less impressive at winning world wars. But why, exactly, are we removing the people who helped make Britain great from the money we use every day?In this episode of Mark and Pete, we explore the extraordinary decision to replace Britain's national heroes with British wildlife. Is this simply an innocent redesign, a celebration of nature, or another symptom of Britain's increasingly uncomfortable relationship with its own history?Nearly 480,000 people participated in the Bank of England's wildlife consultation, choosing from 18 shortlisted animals. The bumblebee received more than 360,000 nominations. Apparently, the nation has spoken. Although, curiously, it wasn't asked whether Churchill ought to be replaced by a hedgehog in the first place. That decision had already been made. Bank of EnglandAnd there's the rub.For over 50 years, British banknotes have celebrated outstanding individuals who contributed to our national story. Scientists, writers, engineers, reformers and statesmen. People who achieved remarkable things, occasionally made dreadful mistakes, and generally behaved like human beings. Flawed ones. Rather like the rest of us.But have we reached the point where celebrating British history is considered embarrassing?Of course, the Bank of England argues that wildlife makes excellent banknote imagery, particularly for security features. Fair enough. Nobody wants counterfeit currency. And Britain has some magnificent wildlife. But surely we can appreciate a puffin without forgetting the achievements of Alan Turing?This raises a much bigger question about British identity, national pride, historical revisionism and our cultural heritage.Are we becoming ashamed of our heroes? Is political correctness quietly erasing our history? Or are Mark and Pete getting unnecessarily worked up about pictures on bits of plastic?Quite possibly. But those pictures tell us something about what a country values.We discuss Winston Churchill's legacy, the importance of remembering our national achievements, the strange business of judging historical figures by modern standards, and whether Britain is gradually losing confidence in its own story.Because a nation that forgets its history may eventually forget what made it worth celebrating.And while hedgehogs are undoubtedly charming, they haven't, so far as we're aware, defeated Hitler.Join Mark and Pete for a lively, irreverent and occasionally exasperated discussion about British banknotes, British history, national identity and the peculiar priorities of modern Britain.
- 3 weeks ago9 min
The Elgin Marbles: Is It Time to Give Them Back?
The Elgin Marbles, the Parthenon sculptures, the British Museum, Greece, cultural ownership, restitution and one of the longest-running arguments in European public life. In this episode of Mark and Pete, we ask the awkward but increasingly unavoidable question: should Britain finally give the Elgin Marbles back to Greece?The debate is back because Greece has renewed its pressure for the return of the Parthenon sculptures, and with a new Prime Minister in Britain there is, inevitably, the suggestion that perhaps this is the moment for a deal. The argument has been running for more than two centuries, which is impressive even by diplomatic standards.The sculptures were removed from the Parthenon in Athens in the early nineteenth century by Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Greece was under Ottoman rule at the time. Elgin claimed permission. Greece has long argued that an occupying power had no moral right to give away part of the country’s most important ancient monument.And that, really, is where the whole thing becomes interesting.Because this is not simply about whether Britain owns some old statues. The Parthenon sculptures were part of one architectural work, created in the fifth century BC and designed to be seen together. Today, many of the surviving pieces are split between London and Athens. The Acropolis Museum has deliberately been designed so that the surviving sculptures can be viewed in relation to the Parthenon itself, while the British Museum argues that placing them in London allows them to be understood within the wider story of world civilisation.Both arguments have some weight.We look at how much of the original sculptural decoration survives, how much is in Britain, how much remains in Greece, the legal restrictions under the British Museum Act, and why a straightforward permanent return is rather more complicated than simply putting the marbles in a van and pointing it towards Dover.There are also wider questions. If Britain returns the Parthenon sculptures, what happens to other disputed objects in museums? Should modern nations be held responsible for decisions made under empires that vanished generations ago? Does returning something weaken a museum, or can it actually demonstrate confidence rather than guilt?And then there is the slightly uncomfortable British instinct to say, “Well, we’ve had them for ages now,” which is not normally regarded as a watertight argument for ownership.Perhaps the most sensible solution is some form of permanent reunification in Athens combined with substantial long-term Greek loans to Britain. That would preserve access in London while acknowledging that these particular sculptures belong, artistically and historically, with the building for which they were made.Or perhaps Britain should keep them.Mark and Pete will, naturally, settle a 200-year diplomatic dispute in about twenty minutes.Probably.
- Oct 7, 202613 min
Esther Rantzen: The Consumer Queen Who Changed People's Lives
Esther Rantzen, Childline, The Silver Line, That’s Life!, consumer campaigning, British television history and the extraordinary legacy of one of the most recognisable broadcasters of the last half-century. In this episode of Mark and Pete, we look back at the life of Dame Esther Rantzen, not simply as a television personality, though she was certainly that, but as someone who used fame, rather unusually, to make life better for people who were being ignored.Rantzen became a household name through the BBC’s That’s Life!, which mixed consumer complaints, investigative journalism, odd little human-interest stories and, every so often, a dog that appeared able to say “sausages”. It was a very British mixture. Slightly chaotic, occasionally ridiculous, but often surprisingly serious underneath. And that was really the point. The programme made consumer rights feel like something ordinary people could actually understand and act on, rather than a matter for committees, clipboards and somebody in a beige office saying they would look into it.But Esther Rantzen’s greatest legacy goes far beyond television.In 1986 she founded Childline, after a That’s Life! investigation exposed the scale of child abuse and the desperate lack of somewhere safe for children to turn. What began as a response to one programme became one of Britain’s best-known charities, giving children a confidential place to seek help, advice and, sometimes, simply somebody willing to listen.Then, decades later, came The Silver Line, created to tackle loneliness among older people. Again, the idea was disarmingly simple: answer the phone. Listen. Be there. Which, when you think about it, is often what people need most, and yet seems increasingly difficult for modern society to manage.We look at the statistics, the millions of calls and counselling sessions, the scale of both charities, and the remarkable fact that one broadcaster managed to leave behind institutions that carried on helping people long after the television lights were switched off.We also ask what has happened to that sort of public-service broadcasting. Could a programme like That’s Life! exist now? Would broadcasters today give so much airtime to ordinary people with genuine problems, rather than celebrities with highly polished opinions about them?There are questions too about Rantzen’s later campaigning, including assisted dying, where Christians may strongly disagree with her conclusions while still recognising the immense good she did elsewhere. Human beings are inconveniently complicated like that.This is, above all, a retrospective on a woman who made consumer campaigning entertaining, gave vulnerable children a voice and refused to accept that loneliness was simply part of getting old.Esther Rantzen may have been Britain’s consumer queen. Her real achievement, though, was persuading millions of us to notice people we might otherwise have walked past.
- Oct 4, 202631 min
Trump, Greenland & Day One: Did We See It Coming? | Mark and Pete
Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, his return to the White House, an extraordinary first day in office and his ambitions for Greenland. This Mark and Pete compilation revisits the beginning of Trump’s second term and some conversations that sound, listening back, suspiciously like advance notice.We thought we were recording a podcast. Parts of it now sound rather like a trailer.Bringing together episodes recorded around Trump’s second inauguration, we consider what his election victory meant for America and the wider world. What had Americans voted for, exactly? What did Trump want to achieve? And how much of what sounded like campaign theatre was about to become everybody else’s Tuesday?Then came his first day back in office. A quiet introduction, perhaps. Find the stationery, settle into the chair. Apparently there was a different plan. We discuss that eventful opening and what it suggested about the pace, priorities and ambitions of the new Trump administration.And then there’s Greenland. Yes, Greenland. A place with people in it, its own future to consider, and rather more going on than its sudden appearance on an American presidential wish list. We look at Trump’s moves over Greenland and the questions they raise about power, territory and what “America First” might mean beyond America.The slightly unnerving thing is how familiar some of these early observations now sound. Comments made while events were still unfolding have acquired a certain weight. We’re trying not to look pleased with ourselves. It’s a struggle in places.Expect British humour,
- Sep 25, 20269 min
OpenAI Cracks 90-Year-Old Maths Problem
OpenAI may have cracked one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics.In this episode of Mark & Pete, we look at the extraordinary claim that an OpenAI research system has solved a 90-year-old problem connected to the Navier–Stokes equations, the equations used to describe how fluids move.That means water, air, blood flow, turbulence, weather systems, aircraft, oceans and quite a lot of the physical world around us.The Navier–Stokes equations themselves are not new. Mathematicians and engineers have used them for generations. The problem was something much deeper: nobody knew whether, in three dimensions, a perfectly smooth fluid flow could eventually develop a singularity, effectively a mathematical blow-up where velocity becomes unbounded in finite time.That question became one of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s famous Millennium Prize Problems, with a $1 million prize attached.OpenAI now says its system has produced a proof showing that such a finite-time singularity can occur under permitted smooth forcing.And this is where the story gets really interesting.This was not simply ChatGPT being asked a clever maths question and producing a dazzling answer in thirty seconds. OpenAI reportedly used a huge coordinated system involving thousands of AI agents, all exploring different mathematical routes, checking ideas, discarding failures and sharing useful results.In effect, it was like putting thousands of mathematicians into one vast virtual research department and allowing them to work continuously, at speed, for days.The result was then translated into Lean, a formal proof-checking system designed to verify mathematical logic step by step.So has AI finally become better than human mathematicians?Not quite. Human researchers had already developed much of the underlying mathematical framework. The striking thing is that AI may now be able to push through enormous numbers of possibilities, combine ideas from existing research and test routes that no human team could practically explore at the same scale.That is perhaps the real breakthrough.We ask what exactly has been cracked, why Navier–Stokes matters, whether this really counts as a historic mathematical discovery, and what it says about the future of artificial intelligence in science.And there is a deeper question too.If mathematics describes an ordered universe, are we inventing mathematical truth or discovering something that was already there?Our Bible verse is Proverbs 25:2:“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.”OpenAI may have found something remarkable.But the order was there first.
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About Mark and Pete
A weekly British podcast about news, politics, culture, faith and the peculiar things people do. Mark and Pete tackle the big headlines and the smaller stories that probably tell us rather more about ourselves than we’d like. Theme music: Title by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
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