Old ideas, newly in play.
Reasons Revisited is an occasional archive-led companion to Reasons to be Cheerful, using past conversations to illuminate current arguments. It connects new Labour government moves, devolution debates, public investment, English identity, and cultural anxieties back to older exchanges with experts, activists and thinkers.
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Reasons Revisited is a political archive with a pulse. It returns to conversations from Reasons to be Cheerful when old arguments suddenly feel current again. Geoff Lloyd frames the episodes around moments in the news, especially the first moves of Keir Starmer's Labour government. The approach is simple and effective. Instead of treating policy as something that appears fully formed, the show asks where the ideas came from, who has been thinking about them, and what earlier conversations can still clarify. Devolution is a natural fit. An episode on handing power away from Westminster brings back discussion of English local government, mayors, unitary authorities, and the awkward constitutional shape of the UK. Public investment gets similar treatment. The National Wealth Fund episode links Rachel Reeves' announcement to broader questions about green industry, housing affordability, regional inequality, and the need for institutions that can act over decades. The tone stays warm and plain-spoken. Serious material is handled through direct questions, quick summaries, and the occasional dry aside rather than a heavy policy lecture. The wider archive also keeps the show's reunion feeling intact. Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd can move from listener emails and running jokes to memories of guests, reflections on public life, and the strange vocabulary that built up around the old show. Guests broaden the range. Lauren Child brings children's worry, optimism, plankton, and creative risk into the conversation. Tom Baldwin and Mark Stizz talk through England's myths with the ease of people who know both politics and one another. Ben Ansell turns a discussion of the Reith lectures into a friendly story about surprise and old academic ties. The result is not a rolling news show. It is more like a shelf of useful conversations being reopened at the moment they matter again. Listeners get policy context, cultural memory, and a reminder that many public ideas have long, winding routes before they become legislation, speeches, or arguments in the country at large.
Made for: For listeners who follow UK politics but want more than reaction and Westminster theatre. It especially suits people interested in how policy ideas, public institutions, and cultural arguments develop over time.
What sets it apart: The show uses a deep existing archive as its engine, revisiting earlier conversations when their themes return to public debate. That gives it a lived-in, reflective quality most current-affairs shows cannot easily copy.
An occasional series revisiting conversations and ideas from Reasons to be Cheerful (2017-2024), formerly hosted by ex-Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, and Sony Award-winning radio presenter Geoff Lloyd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd turn policy, food, nature, and creative work into curious conversations grounded in telling details.
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd move from policy argument to personal curiosity without losing their conversational footing. A discussion of Britain's economy tests imported ideas against local conditions, while exchanges about comfort food, insect classification, childhood worries,…
British economic reform meets brown bananas and beetle taxonomy, so your curiosity never stays in one lane.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A comic hiatus announcement turns into a warm, unresolved reflection on memory, overlooked voices, and whether the podcast is ending at all.
Ed and Jeff treat the podcast's pause as less a farewell than a running joke that keeps finding reasons not to land. The presidential-campaign framing, the debate over whether suspended sounds better than hiatus, and the detours through Chatteroo, Danger Mouse's crumbs, and…
A measured, engaging look at how an unfamiliar insect becomes a defensible scientific discovery.
The episode takes a deceptively simple question, how scientists know an insect is new, and turns it into a lucid tour of taxonomic judgment. A beetle in Indonesia becomes the way into a larger process: building a mental filing system for known fauna, checking the literature,…
Lauren Child links children's worries with the playful, accidental work of making books.
Lauren Child appears in person for a relaxed conversation that moves from the oddness of Zoom to the worries children carry, then into Smile, the Clarice Bean book shaped by those concerns.
A careful debate on what Britain can borrow from Germany without pretending it can become Germany.
The review frames the episode as a practical test of economic borrowing: whether ideas associated with Germany can survive contact with Britain as it is.
Comfort eating becomes a funny, tender tour of memory, secrecy, and indefensible snacks.
A sixth-birthday conversation turns comfort eating into a small archive of memory, embarrassment, and the snacks people admit to when nobody is really watching.
A near-daily politics rundown from Dana Goldberg and Alison Gill on Trump-era legal fights.
Three Slate journalists debate the week's politics, plus live shows and author interviews.
Mike Pesca opens with a monologue, then digs into Supreme Court ethics and Iran policy.
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd visit the Resolution Foundation to discuss Britain's economic challenges with think tank directors Torsten Bell and Carys Roberts.
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd discuss Ed's recent Glastonbury experience, including performances, selfies, and sleeping arrangements.
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd celebrate the sixth anniversary of their podcast Reasons to be Cheerful.
Ed Miliband lists Brexit, the pandemic, and ChatGPT as markers of the podcast's six years and eight months.
Professor Dave Bilton from the University of Plymouth explains why the 2024 overlap of 13-year and 17-year cicadas matters, noting that it last happened in 1803.
["Lauren Child talks about Smile, the 10th Clarice Bean book, and how the series began with Clarice Bean, That's Me in 1999.
Reasons Revisited hosts a discussion with Tom Baldwin and Mark Stiz, former colleagues of Ed, about their book England’s Seven Myths That Changed the Country and How To Set Them Straight.
Ed and Jeff discuss a Horrible Histories boat tour on the River Thames, Ed's repeated encounters with people who mistake him for Ed Miliband, and a Canadian doctor's two-year qualification process in Britain.
Hosts Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd interview Ben Ansell, the 2023 Reith Lecturer, about his experience and ideas.
A revisiting of past conversations from the political podcast Reasons to be Cheerful, hosted by Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd.
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd discuss autumnal colors and Miliband's experience at Labour Party conference.
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd celebrate the podcast's 6th anniversary by reflecting on personal changes since 2017.
Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd interview Henry Dimbleby about his book on food, health, and the planet.