Hello, this is the Red Box Podcast. I'm Matt Jolly. Now, when do the pollsters get it wrong?

How badly do they get it wrong? Can we trust polling today as a result? A cracking chat

coming up with Mark Pack. He's the president of the Lib Dems, but don't hold that against

him. He's also a polling, I think nerd is probably the right word. And he's written a

new book called Polling Unpacked and he's going to take us through when pollsters have got

things wrong and how they are getting things better. So that's coming up on the podcast

in just a moment. But first, as ever we kick off with our columnist panel and on a Thursday,

it's nice at the Marriott. It's India night and James Marriott.

James, let's talk about your column first of all. It's basically, what is it, a thousand words

your column today? Yes, it's a thousand words. Have you just explained why you haven't come into

the studio today? That was exactly it. I was planning well in advance. I was getting my excuses

in early. So can you have harshly were judged on the on the match will he show? So where are you now?

Judging by your column, you're either lying on the floor at the end of your bed or walking along

the regents canal. I'm actually standing on my bed. I am. Yeah. I find it a useful place to talk.

So explain why you're standing on your bed. Or at least give us give us the outline of your

column today. Well, I was just thinking one of the kind of weird things about a weekly column is

that you have to have at least one thought per week, which is actually I think a kind of annoyingly

high number of thoughts to have to summon. So you kind of become obsessed with how to think.

And I don't know, I think sort of the last six months of doing this column has been the increasingly

wondering how on earth do I make thoughts occur to me? Where can I find thoughts? What can I do to

have thoughts? And basically concluding that a lot of a lot of modern life and what work

and practices seem like they could have almost been specifically designed to stop you having thoughts.

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