111. Why aye, man

You'll be delighted, I'm sure, to learn this podcast is not about Brexit.

I've been in Newcastle, capital in the north east of England, for a couple of days: partly for work, partly just because I wanted to get out of London for a bit, and it was the largest British city I'd never been to, and people kept telling me it was cool.

And it is. It really, really is. Stunning architecture, great cultural offering, some seaside, a metro and the best collection of bridges you will find pretty much anywhere. You should go there at once.

So – why did it take me so long? Or to put it another way: why don't we talk about it more? To find out, and to discuss the region and its politics more broadly, I spoke to local journalist Chris Stokel-Walker, and recorded it on my phone.

While I'm here, some housekeeping. This is sort of a good news/bad news thing. The bad news is that Skylines is going fortnightly: I'm moving to a new role, and just won't have time to put out a podcast every week any more. If there's enough of an outcry - or even better, desperate promises of cash - we may reconsider this decision in the new year; but for the next few months at least we're cutting back.

The good news is that it isn't going anywhere: we'll still be talking about cities, transport and other such nerd ambrosia. And the even better news is we're getting a proper producer, so it should sound better than it does when I'm in editing it.

Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.

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