Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Warning: moderate strong language
Ece Temelkaran is an award-winning journalist and novelist who has spent years warning that the collapse of democracy rarely announces itself with a bang. Instead, it happens gradually - institution is weaken, truth is eroded and what once felt unthinkable becomes normal. 
Ece knows this first hand. After being fired from her newspaper in Turkey amid mounting political pressure, she watched her country slide towards what she says is authoritarianism, a story she believes is no longer uniquely Turkish but part of a wider global pattern. In her writing, she argues that the real danger isn't just strong men or populist leaders, but how easily societies adapt to them. Her latest book, Nation of Strangers, explores belonging and exile. But beneath it lies the same urgent question that has defined much of her work. How do democracies fail? And can they still be saved? 
On this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Ece about democratic backsliding, the moral crisis she believes sits at the heart of modern politics, the experience of exile, and why rebuilding democracy may require not just political change, but a deeper transformation in how we see ourselves and each other.
This interview was recorded on 13 February 2026.

Katharine Viner has spent the past decade running one of the most influential news organisations in the world, steering it through profound industry change, digital upheaval and intense political pressure. She became the first woman to lead The Guardian in its 205-year history. Under her editorship the paper has transformed its funding model, expanded globally, and fought to preserve the idea of independent public interest journalism at a time when trust in the media is under sustained strain. 
On this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Katharine about defending liberal values in a polarised age, navigating internal editorial battles during turbulent political moments, and why The Guardian sees itself as a global mainstream newsroom.

“It's really a deep irony that this guy who has really never set foot in a normal American street was mistaken as a man of the people”, writer George Saunders says of the US President, Donald Trump. His work has long centred on the very people who live with the consequences of decisions made far above them, ordinary and fallible individuals navigating increasingly hostile conditions.
In a world marked by political lies, climate denial and the erosion of shared reality, Saunders’ fiction interrogates moral ambiguity, human weakness and the forces that draw individuals toward destructive choices.
In this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Saunders about the collapse of truth in public life, why satire no longer pierces political leaders who feel no shame, and whether storytelling can still help us understand one another in an age of polarisation.

Clara Mattei is an economist who wants us to rethink the idea that capitalism is simply the natural order of things.
She is an author and professor of economics whose work explores how economic ideas become tools of power, shaping policy while masking the political decisions beneath. 
Her new book, Escape from Capitalism, argues that many of the problems that we see as inevitable - poverty, unemployment, inflation - are built into the system and shored up by models and theories designed to convince us that there is no alternative.
On this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Mattei about whether there is an alternative to capitalism.

For decades veteran Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani has challenged what he sees as Western complacency, warned of the irreversible rise of Asia, and argued that the global order must adapt to a world no longer dominated by Europe and the United States.
And now it appears Western leaders have caught up with him as a new world order is declared in the wake of the “rupture”, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it, of President Trump’s second term.
Born into poverty in Singapore, he rose through the country’s foreign service to become its ambassador to the United Nations and then president of the UN security council.
He joined Krishnan Guru-Murthy on this episode of Ways to Change the World.