Legacy

How does a man go from calling Donald Trump a kook and a jackass to becoming his closest ally in the Senate?

What do you give up to keep a seat at the table, and what do you actually get for it?

And when the obituaries settle on calling you a pilot fish, has anything you did survived you?

Lindsey Graham flew home from Kyiv on a Friday and was dead by Saturday evening, aged 71 — Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch on a career built almost entirely on proximity to other people's power.

He was orphaned in his early twenties and raised his younger sister. He was the first in his family to go to university, served in the Air Force, and reached the Senate in 2002 by taking Strom Thurmond's seat. For a decade he was the Republican who legislated with Democrats: the Gang of Eight immigration bill, one third of the three amigos alongside John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Then he called Trump a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot and said the party would be destroyed and would deserve it. Then McCain died. A year to the day before January 6th, the Republican strategist Steve Schmidt gave Rolling Stone the line that has followed Graham ever since: he is a pilot fish, the small fish that swims beside the shark and takes on its colouring. Peter and Afua on whether that is the whole story, and on what a seat at the table is worth.

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[0:00] A flight home from Kyiv, a cardiac arrest on Capitol Hill, and a death nobody saw coming
[6:14] A restaurant, a pool hall, two funerals, and a younger sister to raise
[9:13] The three amigos, and the decade Graham spent legislating with Democrats
[11:42] A kook, a jackass, and a party that would be destroyed and would deserve it
[12:46] "McCain died" — the two-word answer to how everything changed
[17:24] The pilot fish, the shark, and what a seat at the table actually costs

Stay connected with Legacy:
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who decided that the thing stopping people travelling was not money, but choice?

What happens to a country when the holiday is designed so that the visitor never has to leave the compound?

And of every hundred dollars you spend at an all-inclusive, how much do you think actually stays there?

Gerard Blitz opened his first holiday village on a Majorcan beach in 1950 on the theory that what people wanted was not adventure but the removal of every decision — Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch follow that idea all the way to the gated resorts of the present.

The all-inclusive is now worth close to a hundred billion dollars a year. In the Dominican Republic it accounts for more than seventy per cent of hotel rooms and helps generate over forty per cent of GDP. And of every hundred dollars a guest spends, roughly five stays in the local economy. The rest is repatriated to foreign operators, international airlines and global supply chains, along with the food flown in so that nobody has to eat anything unfamiliar. In water-stressed places, guests can use ten times what a local resident uses in a day. In Jamaica there is now a movement against the privatisation of beaches that local people can no longer reach. Afua has just come back from an Arawak village in the Guyanese Amazon where all-inclusive means something entirely different. Peter, who has enjoyed rather more package holidays than he lets on, is not convinced the answer is to take them away from people.

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[0:00] Sun lounger wars at dawn, and the buffet as a way of life
[7:58] Gerard Blitz, a Belgian on a Majorcan beach, and the founding of Club Med
[14:59] A hundred billion dollars a year, and the country where all-inclusives are seventy per cent of the rooms
[16:39] Five dollars in every hundred — where the rest of your money actually goes
[17:54] Ten times the water a local resident uses in a day
[26:47] The beaches in Jamaica that Jamaicans can no longer reach
[31:07] Plantations sold as celebratory places, and what the industry assumes you cannot handle
[34:14] Afua in the Amazon: an all-inclusive of a completely different kind

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
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Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why does a kettle cost less than ten pounds?

What kind of official refuses to send the army against protesters in one decade, then puts thirty million people out of work in the next?

And when the man who built modern China spent his last twenty years saying nothing at all, what was he saying?

Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch disagree, at length and on the record, about whether the architect of the modern cheap economy was brave or simply ruthless.

Zhu Rongji died in Beijing in August, aged 97. Outside China his name means very little. Inside China, and inside every container ship leaving Ningbo, it means a great deal. He trained as an electrical engineer, was expelled from the Communist Party for speaking approvingly of economic reform in Hungary and Yugoslavia, spent five years doing manual labour during the Cultural Revolution, and came back to run Shanghai. In 1989 he refused to send the army against the city's protesters and went on television to talk them down instead. Then, as premier, he dismantled the iron rice bowl and cost somewhere between thirty and forty million people their jobs. Peter thinks that took nerve. Afua thinks ruthless and callous are the better words. Neither quite talks the other round.

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[0:00] Three deaths in eight weeks, in Havana, Washington and Beijing — and why the deputy often tells you more
[4:30] Zhu Rongji, dead at 97, and why a kettle costs less than ten pounds
[6:08] Expelled from the Party, then five years of manual labour
[8:38] Shanghai, 1989: the man who would not send in the army
[11:47] Grasping the large, letting go of the small — and the end of the iron rice bowl
[17:00] Brave or callous? Peter and Afua fail to agree

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When did flying stop being the most glamorous thing a person could possibly do?

What kind of industry fixes its own prices by law, and then competes on how much champagne it can pour?

And what happened to the man who broke it?

Sir Freddie Laker swept floors at an aircraft factory, worked out that the entire airline business was upside down, and got taken apart for it — Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch on the man whose bankruptcy made your budget flight possible.

For most of the twentieth century the airlines ran a legal cartel. IATA fixed the fares, so a London to New York ticket cost the same on Pan Am, TWA or BA, and the only thing left to compete on was luxury: forty inches of legroom, professional chefs, sterling silver, a side of beef carved in the aisle. It was magnificent, and roughly eighty-five per cent of people never got on a plane. Then Laker put a transatlantic seat on sale for fifty-nine pounds and let people queue on the pavement outside Victoria for it. The industry drove him under inside five years, then adopted everything he had done. What is left is a world where five billion people fly each year, three per cent of them internationally, and the seat in front of you gets a little closer every season.

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[0:00] Peter hates airports, Afua loves them, and the words "you're a Terminal Five girl"
[5:19] The legal cartel — how IATA fixed every fare and left nothing to compete on but champagne
[6:39] Forty inches of legroom, a chef, and a side of beef carved at your seat
[8:13] Nail polish, posture, and the finishing-school standards applied to an air hostess
[11:36] Freddie Laker, the Canterbury boy who swept factory floors and broke the cartel
[13:23] Fifty-nine pounds to New York, and people sleeping on the pavement outside Victoria
[21:57] Four per cent of climate change, and the cities buckling under weekend visitors
[30:57] Why business class keeps improving while your seat keeps getting thinner

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens to a person when the country they were born in decides they were never really from there?

What does a play about the women of a sacked city, written 2,400 years ago, have to say to an actress walking out of Syria on foot?

And how do you stand on a stage in Edinburgh and make an audience laugh about the worst thing that ever happened to you?

At the Edinburgh Fringe, Peter Frankopan meets Arwa Omaren, whose one-woman show sets her own escape from Syria inside the story of Hecuba, Queen of Troy — along with William Stirling and Charlotte Eagar, who have spent a decade staging Euripides with refugees.

Arwa Omaren found out she was a refugee at twelve, in a playground fight in Damascus. She graduated top of her class from Syria's leading drama school in 2011, signed a television contract, and then the war took all of it. She walked for five weeks through the mountains of Kurdistan. Britain granted her asylum, then she was evicted, and she slept on the street with her dog. Hecuba: Why Am I In Your Country? is what she made of it. Euripides wrote the first play about refugees in 415 BC, the year after Athens massacred the people of Melos. Twenty-four centuries later it is still the play that fits.

Hecuba: Why Am I In Your Country? runs at the Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh Fringe, until 31 August: edfringe.com
More on the Trojan Women Project: trojanwomenproject.org
Peter has written about the play at peterfrankopan.substack.com

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[0:00] Peter at the Fringe, and a performance he could not stop thinking about
[3:23] Oxfam, 2013, and the Greek tragedy that turned out to be about refugees
[9:50] Who Hecuba is, and why a queen reduced to nothing is the right story for now
[16:18] A playground fight in Damascus, and the day Arwa found out she was a refugee
[17:24] Five weeks walking, and the paperwork that told her she belonged nowhere
[33:13] Jacko: the dog she left behind in Syria, and the charity that brought him back

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.