The Week Unwrapped - with Olly Mann
406. Robowolves, birds and sleeper trains
Will China's military robots change the military landscape? Why are Britain's birds in decline? And are sleeper trains making a comeback? Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, Irenie Forshaw and Holden FrithImage credit: Chen Jimin/ China News Service / VCG / Getty Images
It's the weekending Friday the 15th of November and this is The Week Unwrapped. In the past seven days we've seen Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigning over a church abuse scandal, Kear Starmer committing to a reduced carbon emissions target at COP, and Donald Trump naming Matt Gates, Pete Hesceth and Elon Musk on his controversial top team. You can read all you need to know about everything that matters in The Week magazine, but we're here to bring you some stories that passed under the radar this week. Big news not making headlines right now, but with repercussions for all our lives. I'm Oli Mann, let's unwrap the week. And joining me today from The Week's Digital Team, we have Irene Forshore and the boss man, Holden Frith, and we welcome back journalist, campaigner and Labour counsellor Elizabeth Carr-Alice. Liz, if you could elect a billionaire adviser to your top team, who would you choose? I don't know if he's a billionaire, can I have a multimillionaire? Depends who it is. I'll have the guy who owns Hotel Chocolat and I think that's self-explanatory. Holidays in St Lucia, fair enough. Yeah. I think I'd probably go Bill Gates just for the computer support. Elizabeth, you're actually up first, what do you think this week should be remembered for? Will the next termination be saying I need your lead, your collar and your can of pedigree chum? What's your position? What's your position? What's your position? What's your position? What's your position? A reporter on China's government-funded CCTV channel demonstrating what? Elizabeth. Is your Chinese not a furred? Oli, obviously. She was demonstrating the new Robowulf, which is a four-legged robot that they've unveiled at the China Airshow 2024. It's an airshow, but forget Raymond Baxter and Farnborough and lovely Spitfires flying overhead because this is heavy military duty, which is why these robot wolves were introduced. They are four-legged robots that can carry weapons, obey commands, she was telling it to sit by the looks of it in that clip and, scarily enough, they can also carry weapons. And the idea is that these robots behave in packs, which is why they call robot wolves. They can coordinate with each other and move, so you get a whole pack of robot wolves going out to infiltrate the enemy, do reconnaissance missions, take supplies, but also carry huge big guns on their backs, which is frightening. It is. I mean, they're basically drones, aren't they, but on four legs. But we have seen this sort of thing before, people who are sort of geekishly interested in this kind of thing will remember videos from like a decade ago that Boston Dynamics put out. Irene, what are the Chinese saying about this model that sets it apart from what the Brits and the Americans already are working on? Yeah, so I think the kind of robot wolves, as they're calling them, they're capable of operating together in packs, so they can carry out much more sophisticated missions that can obviously be quite dangerous. And, you know, it means that they can carry out quite complex clearance tasks, so they could go in to kind of try and find a bomb in streets or on caves. They can run up and down steep flights of stairs. Whereas, meanwhile, the kind of British made robot dogs, which are currently being used by Ukrainian units are being used for more basic tasks, so things like transporting ammunition and supplies, which is obviously important because it still reduces the rest of the soldiers, but the Chinese robot wolves seem to be operating on a completely different level. Yeah, you may be surprised to hear that they are currently being used in that reference Irene just made to Ukraine. Hold on, they are, aren't they? Versions of these autonomous dogs are being used in military combat as we speak. Yeah, that's right. And Ukraine has got a lot of attention for the way it's been using aerial drones, but they do have some limitations on what they can do. You know, they get a good bird's-eye view of what's going on over a large scale, but if you want to check inside a building, you obviously can't use something that's flying. You also can't necessarily use wheeled robots, because particularly on sort of rough ground or somewhere where there might be rubble from a previous attack, they just very quickly get stumped, whereas one of these sort of legged dog-like robots can clamor over all of that rubble, get into tight spaces and send back a live video feed. So you can see if there's a trap. They also can be used for checking for trip wires, looking for landmines, so they can clear a safe path that soldiers can follow in behind. So these could, theoretically, whichever army has them, Elizabeth, and obviously, you know, lots of international participants are going to be wanting to develop their own versions of these. They could save countless troops, couldn't they, if they're going in to do the work that you wouldn't send a human troop to do? They could save countless troops, but in a way, is that not part of the problem in that we would then make war something which has no consequences? It becomes something where the robots are making life or death decisions, for example. And we're stepping away from the real-life human consequences of war. You know, you could then become desensitized to the horrors that are going around if we're just sending in robots. I mean, we just have to look at the Daleks to see where horrors could come from that. They can't climb stairs and the robot wolves can. I do wonder as well whether, actually, the way that these things are being built is to play into that sense of fear, the way that they're being promoted at this airshow. They are covered, after all, in like camouflage, style, beige paint. As you say, they can have a gun mounted to them. I wonder if the propagandistic purpose is to induce a bit of fear in the enemy, rather than necessarily their practical use? I think that's true. I was quite struck with how much they did remind me of a dog. I mean, they are metal. You can tell they're not, they don't have any furry bits on them. They haven't been made up to look like a dog. But yet, my brain wanted me to think that this was a living animal that was walking along, especially, as I said, when you see it walking next to people sitting down at the airshow, it interacted with the journalists who were present. So it does give you that sense that this is something that could have a living mind. And again, like I said, that does scare you. We've all seen the sci-fi films. So it talks back to that. And it does have that little bit of frightening aspect to it. Which is it, Holden, though? Because if they're responding to commands like a dog, then they're not really being autonomous, are they? Like the fear, the Black Mirror storyline comes from the idea that they, you know, take over the world Terminator style. But that's a different thing. That's not the main commands. That's having their own view. Yeah. And they're not at that point yet. And this goes for the ones that are being used in Ukraine too. They are their remote control vehicles. So they're being controlled by a person. But there is this sort of separate track of AI military technology. And the clearly is an intent to get decision making capabilities built into this sort of equipment. I've read a lot of assessments of those, which in the abstract is quite what should be quite scary. But I don't think it has the kind of visceral unpleasantness that some of these robot machines do. There is just something uncanny about seeing something that's half machine, half creature. And I think particularly that sort of those sort of dog shaped ones where you can easily project a sort of friendliness onto them because of the shape they have. Apparently this could be a bit of a problem for military use. There was a report by a researcher at the University of Washington called Julie Carpenter who suggested that soldiers were becoming too attached to their military robo dogs. And that, you know, because they're meant to be at least to some extent disposable, or at least you're meant to be using them in very high risk environments where you wouldn't want to be using soldiers. But their operators were, you know, they were naming them, they were giving them a gender, they were referring to them as good boys and good girls. And she was suggesting that some of these soldiers were beginning to work in a way that was trying to protect their robots. And in doing so, they were putting other human comrades in danger. So there's some really complicated psychology involved in this sort of technology. I mean, I really, what do the companies who make these robots say the purpose of them is? So it's quite interesting because different companies have quite different kind of approaches to how they tackle the ethical issues. So Boston Dynamics and a number of other companies back in 2022 kind of published this letter pledging not to weaponize their robots. You know, they sort of said they were concerned about the ethical issues. They said they were going to review their customers, kind of, and whether they were planning to weaponize them. So just to be clear, so weaponize means strapping a gun to it clearly. But if you sent it out to like detonate a mine so that a soldier could walk over it, that isn't weaponized. Is that the distinction? I think, well, it's a result is still Kaboom, right? It's very murky, the kind of, and it seems, you know, at the same time, Boston Dynamics said this, but then, you know, they've been supplying their kind of robo dogs to like the NYPD. And, you know, in the wake of all of the police brutality, you kind of think they're saying one thing, but then kind of doing another. But it's interesting that also in contrast, this Philadelphia-based company Ghost Robotics has just no qualms at all about weaponization. They're quite happy to supply the robots to the military. And they've actually been quite critical of Boston Dynamics and said that Boston Dynamics kind of approach to the ethical issues is kind of selective morality. And actually, you know, people should just be able to use them for what they want. Yeah. I mean, that's where, for me, it gets chilling, Elizabeth. I know you were kind of talking about how there's something literally inhuman about seeing the entity that ends your life being a robot, as opposed to man on man violence out in the field. But we have volunteer armies, arguably the countries with the better resources and technology win anyway. But when you think about a civilian use, the police sending in a robot dog to a block of flats, that feels like sci-fi. That does feel like sci-fi. And the argument would be, why would that be wrong if it's going to help save a human life? But if we are starting to rely on robotics and even without the idea of artificial intelligence, we have something that could very easily be manipulated by somebody else. You know, hackers are mainstream now. We have cyber attacks all the time that we get used to. What is to say that these robots could not be used by a cyber hacker? There is a huge cyber threat to it. And security can never be 100%. And if you are somebody who is looking down the edge of, you know, a camera mounted on a robot dog or a robot wolf, how can you be 100% certain that what you are seeing is actually true, that what you are interpreting what you are seeing correctly. There is always, always going to be that error from mistake because you are removing the human person from the action. I think the other side of this is we know very well that humans make mistakes too and at police in the kind of split second of a high pressure situation can make fatal mistakes. But I think the issue there is that there is at least the possibility of holding somebody to a count in a way that it is much harder to hold a machine to a count. And so even if you could say reduce the scope for errors by 80%, you still have those 20% of cases where a machine has taken a decision that could have resulted in a fatality. And that is something that we are really uncomfortable with as humans. Even if the end result is rationally better, the idea that you are signing up to a system that you know is going to take some innocent lives is a really difficult ethical position to put yourself in. And following on from that, you also would then have problems with compensation and just getting justice because how can you argue who is to blame? It would be very, very difficult. Is it the handler or could there be a malfunction? You can see the core cases taken years to come through and get justice for the people who have been wrongly killed. Yeah, I mean this is the sort of trolley problem with driverless cars, isn't it, that we've seen discussed for years. But in this case, it's not just about who's got the best technology to commercialize. Irene, do you think it's arguable that the new world order will be the countries that have robot dogs, robot wolves on their side? I think it easily could be. It's quite scary to think about the ways that things are going. But it just seems like it could get to a point where it's so far removed from people that it becomes quite a sort of frightening world and it will be the people with the most money who are willing to put the most money into it and use that technology who probably end up getting ahead. Incidentally Liz, you said this announcement was made at an air show in China. Was there anything else coming out of there or were the dogs sealing the limelight? The dogs were stealing the limelight but they also had some incredible missiles with new stealth and supersonic technology that can evade enemies and enable more precision strikes. They are high speed, long range with incredible stealth capabilities. I've just been watching the day of the jack-o-lan, basically, if you're a hitman, I'd be scared because you're going to be out of a job, definitely. There's always the thing though with China holding off the copycat issue, isn't there? The IP thing. They've got a stealth aircraft that they announced at this show, the J35A, which is quite clearly a version of the F35. It is all of this just a bit of a flex by China with all the rising tensions in the world. Look, it's not just the Brits and Americans who can develop this kind of thing. We can too, and actually, who knows, maybe we've just ripped them off. I think that's certainly a possibility, and even the naming of it suggests that there's an element of one-upmanship there, and most of the Western ones are called robo-dogs, and they've very explicitly said ours is better, and so we've called it a robo-wolf. With this sort of technology, when so much of it is shrouded in secrecy, it is quite difficult to tell what is real capability and what is a smokescreen, and the smokescreen can work in one direction or another. It could well be that US military is working on far more advanced, far more lethal versions of this that aren't public, and it's also possible that China's capability is slightly less threatening when you see it up close and you see it outside controlled conditions of an air show, but it's also possible that those things aren't true. We have to deal with the information that's public, and we know that that isn't going to give us a completely accurate picture of where we are. Okay, on the way, you may have noticed a lot less tweeting going on, and not just because everyone's moved to blue sky. That's next. Okay Irini, it's your turn, what do you think this week should be remembered for? Where have Britain's wild birds gone? The sound of a turtle dove singing from an oak tree. Irini, the news. So I was quite shocked this week to see data released by the government revealing that all bird species in the UK are facing a significant population decline. So the turtle dove that we heard just there, in the last five years alone, the number of turtle doves in the UK have dropped by 54%. And overall bird species have dropped by 2% in the UK and 7% in England in the five years since 2018. So that might not sound like a lot, but when you break down the figures, it's actually quite shocking. The number of farmland birds have declined by 61% since the 1970s and 9% between 2018 and 2023. And if we go back a bit, the data shows that most of the decline happened in the late 1970s and the early 1990s, then it kind of became a bit stable. And then in the last kind of five years, there's been an accelerated downward trend with a much steeper drop in England. And I think, you know, these figures are pretty damning, especially as the Conservative government in 2022 kind of agreed to this pledge to restore 30% of the UK's land and city. And actually, you know, these figures show that if anything, we're moving in the wrong direction. But we've known that bird populations have been dropping for some time, haven't we? So what's different about this study? Why is this one we really should pay attention to? I think it's just quite alarming how steep the decline is. And, you know, if we keep going like this, there's some bird species that actually could become extinct if these trends continue. You know, birds are quite a good indicator for the state of wildlife as a whole in the UK, because they occupy a diverse range of habitats, and they kind of respond to environmental factors that impact other species. And, you know, they play an important role in their ecosystem as a whole. So the decline in birds, you know, you can't look at it in isolation. It will also have a knock on effect. You know, they won't be able to eat the insects, which will then damage the plants and crops. They won't be able to spread their seeds through their droppings. Some birds are important pollinators. And then, you know, just on a kind of separate issue, you know, birds have a huge cultural importance and are really valued by the British public. You only have to look at the kind of rare bird that was spotted earlier this week in Halifax. And, you know, you had hundreds of people turn up with a binoculars to try and get a glimpse of it. So yeah, it's quite sad news for a few different reasons. And a link back to the dinosaurs, aren't they, birds? As I know from reading to my five-year-old. But hold on. I really mentioned a farmland bird there. I think on behalf of those of us who aren't that into birds. What's a farmland bird? Because it doesn't mean like chickens, does it? It's birds who live on farms. No, that's right. Yeah, these are wild birds. And there's a wide range of them, but things like starlings, tree sparrows, turtle doves. They're some of the ones that have been hardest hit since 1970. We've lost 82% of starlings, 93% of tree sparrows, and 99% of turtle doves. And for turtle doves, half of that decline was in the last five years. So those are populations that are in real trouble. There's a combination of different reasons for that. One of the big factors is the use of pesticides, which reduces the insect population. So there's just less for them to eat. But earlier in this decline, particularly in the '70s and early '80s, the biggest factor was the loss of habitat. So as farming became more mechanized and machines got bigger places in East Anglia, where I came from, the traditional patchwork of small fields divided by hedge rows disappeared almost entirely and was replaced by the sort of enormous open fields that you see there now, just because it's easier to negotiate those with a combine harvester. But that means there just isn't the sort of habitat that those birds like to live in or leave for the insects that they depend on for their diet. There is, as Irene mentioned, a bit more of a focus now on trying to reinstate some of those hedge rows, but those are still in their early days. So I don't think we've started to see much of an effect from that yet. It's interesting that the way farming has evolved has had a direct impact on this then. Farmers, farmers, been in the headlines haven't they for the last few weeks? A lot of people are very sympathetic about the increase in inheritance tax they'll be facing. But do you think farmers need to be held more accountable for the impact they're having on the environment? Well, that has been an increasing part of how farming is managed in the UK and across the EU as well. I think in the post-war years, particularly with the growth of the EU and the common agricultural policy, that the sole focus was on productivity and food security. And so anything that meant you could get an extra few percent of produce out of your fields was dramatically encouraged by agriculture policy. But increasingly and actually specifically in the UK there has been more of a focus on environmental stewardship and trying to reinstate wetlands, reinstate hedgerows, think about the overall value. That's controversial in itself. There are farmers who think that their job should be producing food and should not be about maintaining a version of the landscape which in itself is fairly unnatural. There's nothing natural about a patchwork of fields and hedgerows. But there are species that have benefited that from that from many centuries. And so there is I think an increasing view that that's something that should be at least part of the way we manage the landscape. Liz, who do you blame? I blame man. And I'm going to put the emphasis on man because it is usually men's technology and men grown cities that have come definitely. It's not just the farmers. There is a lot of urban environments. If you look at small villages, they're no longer small villages. They are small towns and towns are becoming cities and joining up. So birds are losing their natural habitat from then. I am going to put a thing in and say, it's not the cats. Everybody blames cats. It's not cats. I have had three cats and they have killed a grand total of three birds. But no one's blaming your cats, Elizabeth. But the point is cats in general do I've got to start here from the RSPB kill 50 million birds a year in Britain. So you've got those not cats and it's surely partly cats. My cats have a lot more than three birds in a year as well. I think my cat might actually be responsible for about half a million of that title. Every cat's different. But the point is cats do play a role, don't they? Well, of course. But that is natural. That is animals doing what animals should be doing. Yes. But that's introducing so many cats into our homes. Isn't natural. And that's another thing that man has done. Again, it's mankind who has done it. But cats have not caused as much problem as the introduction of cities pollution. Pollution is a huge thing for having an impact on bird, wildlife. Climate change as well is having an impact on wildlife and on birds. So I'm shouting out for cats and I'm sorry. I think you should get you're too told. Irene, what do you think the government can do about this? If it is something that becomes a vote winner, save the birds, what should actually be done? Well, I think that it is really down to farmers. I think they can take a lot of positive steps to kind of help conserve the birds on their land. So the conservative government in 2021 introduced the environmental land management scheme, which is basically where they kind of paid farmers for things like planting hedgerows, sowing wildflowers for birds to feed on and kind of leaving corners of their land wild for nature. And there's been some anecdotal evidence that that's been really positive. So while some farmers are really reluctant to help, others are kind of keen to help. I think that labor has said that that was part of its election manifesto. They've pledged to kind of to keep that in place and to keep working with the farmers. But then there's also kind of separate from government. The RSPB has been working on various different schemes with farmers. So one of them operation turtle dove is where they get the secret service involved somehow. It's where they're basically working together with hundreds of UK farmers and landowners across the UK. It's a project that's been running for kind of over a decade. And they've been creating kind of feeding and nesting sites, providing ponds for drinking and washing. And there's anecdotal evidence that that's been really positive. The next turtle dove survey isn't planned until 2026, but kind of initiatives like that sound like they've been quite positive. Yeah, but there's contrary desires, aren't there? Elizabeth, you were nodding vigorously there when Irene was saying that the labor government is committing to continue doing what the Tories did in this protective way or attempt to. But at the same time, it's also the labor government, isn't it that they're saying that they're going to build tens of thousands of homes? You've just said that that's part of the problem. So is protecting birds part of that? It is because we have to look at where the homes are built and the labor is looking more, I think they've got a great field site. So sites that are semi-developed anyway. So we're not going to be impinging on any natural areas or greenfield sites. So it's very much about stewardship and looking after the land rather than just building houses willy-nilly. And there have been, you know, I have tagged off member, I have to say there have been some great initiatives over the last few years to reintroduce wildlife as well. And I think that is the main thing that we need to do is look at how we work with farmers and the education that's going on so that we understand we are looking after the land for future generations. It is just a stewardship. If I can put a shout out for Kent, we have chuffs reintroduced back into the Kent wildlife. I know it's a silly name, but back in the name. No, you can always shout out the chuffs of Kent. But yeah, we are, you know, they are starting to be reintroduced after largely disappearing from much of the UK. And they're a huge bird for Canterbury. They're part of the National Shield, they're the emblem. So again, as I really say, there's a huge cultural aspect to it. And they're going to be great. They're going to help reintroduce a lot of the biodiversity that's been lost. So it's looking at working with the land, working with farmers, working with developers, so that we can keep all this going for the future. Okay, but just to end the party political broadcast there for a moment, Holden, I mean, the point is, isn't it, that, you know, the last government as we're saying failed in this, it's nice that it's not party political and the Labour government seem as interested in continuing it, but they may also fail. Do you think there's actually national will resolve and solutions to boost the bird population? That is a big question. And I'm, I don't know, I suppose, is the honest answer. I feel that some of these figures, if you're looking at a bird species that's declined by 99%, and that if that isn't a wake-up call, then there's not much that will be. And I think that some of the projects that have had success show that you don't actually need dramatic changes here. One of the interesting things I found out looking into this was that even the type of housing you build, the sort of design features to it, can have a really big difference for some species. So, you know, the older, it's like Victorian style houses with overhanging eaves and little sort of nooks and crannies designed into them, are great for things like housebarrows, house Martins to build their nests in, whereas a sort of more modern, clean, sealed type of house just doesn't provide that kind of habitat. I've even seen the suggestion that the post-war population of some of these house birds might have been artificially high because bomb damage of the Second World War left the absolute ideal conditions for them with lots of kind of cracks in houses and piles of rubble and sort of bits of wasteland. I suspect that no government is going to want to go back to that sort of landscape, you know, that's not going to be one of the policies we aim for. But being able to design in to architecture some kind of place for wildlife to coexist alongside us, I think that could be the sort of relatively easy low-cost policy idea that does help to address some of this decline. And that, of course, Irene, is only if people are paying attention. You've chosen this as your story of the week as an underreported story precisely because people aren't. Exactly. And I think as well, you know, it's not just this story. There's been like a few other stories that I've really noticed as well that, you know, they might not be hitting the hedge, that sorry, I was going to say the headlines, but might not be hitting the hedgehogs. But I've also seen a story recently about, you know, hedgehogs are closer than ever to extinction, you know, an eighth of all hedgehogs die every year. It's roadkill. They're being poisoned by pesticides, you know, and also nearly a third of the world's trees are threatened with extinction. So it's kind of like we really need to look at the bigger picture and make a change, kind of, if all of these stories aren't a wake-up call, then I don't know what is really. Okay, we'll be talking about a chuff of a different kind, so check your ticket and plump up your pillows. We're going all aboard after this. Hold on, you're finishing the show. What do you think this week should be remembered for? We'll sleep at trains, take us back to the future. Welcome to our home for the next four nights on board the Royal Scotsman. Yay! I am already loving this trip. This staff has already been so great. We just got personally shown to our room and along the way every single staff member introduced themselves individually. I feel so special that has never happened before and I love a room, we have some welcome gifts and welcome snacks. Well, we'll want to be in a cabin with them. YouTubers, Cara, and Nate in their video Four Nights on Scotland's most luxurious train posted on Saturday. Holding trains, what's the story? Yeah, this is the announcement on Tuesday of the Britannic Explorer, a new and very luxurious, very expensive sleeper train, which from next summer will run along three routes in Cornwall, the Lake District, and Wales. And it looks, I'm going to be partial here in my view, incredible. If anyone listening from Belmont wants to give me a free holiday, I would love to go on that train. It looks great. I mean, it's a real throwback to the past, isn't it? It's the glamour of train travel. It's really beautiful. Do you think there's a market for it? I think there probably is. The train we heard about in the clip, the Highland Explorer, is a similarly luxurious, similarly expensive sleeper train, I think is run by the same company. I'm sure they've done their research and I think there is. The accents we heard in that clip were American. I think there's a particularly strong American market for this sort of British historic experience. As you say, the train is beautiful. It really is modeled on a sort of cross between an Agatha Christie experience. It looks like carriages on wheels, basically, doesn't it? Yes, that is the perfect description. And the price to match as well. Yeah, tell us how much it is. Three nights for two people in a private cabin is £11,000. Which is why I was scavenging for a freebie. Yes. I mean, I'm not going to say it's not worth it because it is obviously an ultra luxury experience. It probably is worth it if you can afford that. But most people can't afford that. Do you think there's growth in sleeper trains generally coming our way? Yeah, I think if this was a one-off, then I don't think I could justify it as a story with consequences for all our lives. But this is part of a trend that has led to a revival in interest in sleeper trains across Europe. Some of that has been at the ultra luxury end of the market. But there is also interest in the more practical use of overnight trains as a place to get between capital cities and really to reinvent the network of night trains that used to exist across the continent. Elizabeth, can you explain the appeal? Oh, I can't wait to go on a sleeper train. I watch them on YouTube. I'm going to put a shout out for Steve Marsh, who's much better than those Americans. It's just brilliant. We're talking about doing sleeper trains next year as part of our holiday. My husband hates flying. I mean, he really gets quite fobic about it. So flights are a nightmare. I mean, beyond just the nightmare of having to check in or the luggage problems, having to be then stood for two hours in an airport. The idea that we can just get on a train and start our holiday there. And then that would just be fantastic. I can't wait. I'm after you with a freebie, Ollie. It's a really interesting point that start your holiday there thing, isn't it, Irene? Because I felt a bit like that this summer we went on the car ferry, which I think is undermined. I don't hear people talk about it much. But the overnight car ferry from marriage to the hook of Holland was, you know, we had a cabin that we slept in. We took our dog on board. There was a bar. I mean, it wasn't luxurious, but it was really nice. And it cost the same as like a premiere in. And I was thinking, why don't more people do this? It does feel like the moment you step on board, you're free to walk around and have fun and be on holiday. And I mean, in a way, you just cannot get that experience on a plane without paying for first-class seats. Well, exactly. I mean, I'm terrified of flying. I absolutely hate it. You know, I will do it just because it's a much more affordable way to go away. But I would always love to take a train, like wherever I possibly could. But I think at the moment, particularly with trains like this, it's kind of a luxury that's kind of reserved for the rich. You know, it's become so much less socially acceptable to fly. So, you know, this is a way for very rich people to be like, we're not flying. We're just spending 11,000 pounds on three nights on board this extremely kind of swanky train. But even the most basic rooms on something like the Caledonian sleeper going up to Scotland, you know, are so much more expensive than, you know, just hopping on a quick flight. And I saw this report by Greenpeace that was found that the same route going by train is on average twice as expensive as flying. Some of the routes that they looked at, you know, if for a same day trip cost up to 30 times more, I think the most expensive was from London to Barcelona. So, you know, no wonder people can't always afford this, especially in the middle of the cost of living crisis. Yes, although we have actually done some very some primitive research into this. And we found out an example of where the sleeper service is cheaper than the plane. If you want to go from Paddington to Penzance, then you can do the return on the sleeper train from Tuesday to Thursday for 143 pounds. But the flight from Gatwick to Newquay is 195 pounds. There is an example in Britain where it is cheaper to take the sleeper train, but it's hard to find those examples. And the point is it does take seven hours on the train versus one hour on the flight, right? I think also in kind of Central and Eastern Europe, the trains are cheaper there, so you'd probably be able to find some cheaper examples. But then the issue is that the frequency, the speed, the connections, like those things become harder and have been like rated worse. So I think, you know, what we really need is a better rail infrastructure and for operational costs to come down, because it would be great if everyone could afford to travel much more by train. I think on the question of speed and how a seven hour train can compete with a one hour flight, I think part of the argument with overnight trains is that even though they're taking time, they're taking time that you would otherwise be spent sleeping and they're less disruptive. So I mean, I used a sleeper train in Finland over the summer, and there was the option of flying up from Helsinki to Lapland. And I think it actually would have been slightly more expensive to do that too. So trains won on cost there too. But instead of having a flight in the middle of the day where we would have had to get from Helsinki to the airport, then we'd have spent an hour or two waiting at the airport, then flown, then got from where we were to instead, we could walk from our hotel at, I think it's about 8pm, get on the train, have a meal on the train, go to sleep and then wake up at our destination. So even though it took 11 hours to get there, even when you set aside the fact that it was a really enjoyable experience and very pleasant to stroll along to the dining car and have your meal looking out at the countryside, it still actually effectively gave us an extra day of holiday too. Okay, so we all seem to be on the night train train. So why aren't there more of them lives? Why actually are there so few routes? We're all picking and choosing the odd ones that we've got experience of, but it's not a common thing to do. It's not a common and I think that's for many years, real travel just went out of fashion. People didn't like it and it just became something that you didn't do. You just jumped on a plane because it was quick and faster, but we are becoming much more aware of living in the moment, I think, which is another reason why these are so popular, you know, you get to see so much more, you get to enjoy it more, you're cutting down on your green footprint, which is a huge thing for people. It's really important and also, you know, airplane toilets compared to a nice luxury sleeper toilet. I know which one I'd rather go for. I mean, there's also the environmental credentials, aren't there, Holden? You do think that would swing it over the next 50 years? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, trains in general have much lower carbon emissions than flying, but sleeper trains in particular do because they are slower. Yeah, they're slower and that makes a big difference to their carbon output. The average sleeper train will generate something like one or two percent of the carbon emissions of the flight between the same destination. That's one tenth of the equivalent of the high speed train as well. So there's a big saving even there. But that slowness is actually part of the problem of getting more sleeper trains up and running because if you're running multiple flights, then planes can go at their own speed, they can choose their route, they can kind of go where they want. If you're running multiple trains, they all have to fit on the tracks behind one another. And often sleeper trains run deliberately slowly so that you get to your destination at a reasonable hour, like sort of 7 a.m. rather than 3 a.m. But if you're if you're trundling along at 30 miles an hour, then that blocks that line for anything else that may be using it such as freight trains running overnight, mail trains. And it's a particular problem for any sleeper train attempting to run between the UK and mainland Europe because you've got to use that high speed line and the Euro tunnel, which is also in demand by high speed Euro stars, particularly first thing in the morning and last thing at evening, which is their peak traffic. So there is this big infrastructure problems that you have to deal with as well. Arin, do you think the government should be involved in incentivizing people away from air travel and onto options like this? And if so, how? Well, I think one of the biggest things is that the reason that airline tickets are so much cheaper is because of the big subsidies that the airlines get so that they don't have to pay Keras in tax, they don't have to pay VIT on international flights, whereas railway operators have to pay fuel and energy taxes. So that's kind of the main barrier. In this report by Greenpeace, they were saying, look, we need to introduce fair taxation based on CO2 emissions. It's got to be something that reflects that. And I think the only way really this is going to change is if the operational costs are brought down. And that is what is ultimately going to incentivize people to actually buy a train ticket instead of a plane. Hold it. There is another barrier to getting these up and running more widely. There was a company called Midnight Train, which was a French startup, which had been planning luxury sleeper services from Paris to Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Venice, Madrid, various other destinations. But it abandoned those plans in June, partly because it said it couldn't get investment funding from the European source it wanted. But also, it said that one of the barriers is that most railway systems in Europe are state controlled, and that they are very unwilling to allow new entrants into the market. So it's fine for French and German trains to run to each other's countries and the governments will come to an agreement about that. But as soon as you get a private French company trying to get access to Austrian lines, Italian lines, Spanish lines, that just becomes mine in bureaucracy. We're saying as well that when trains go wrong, the glamorous atmosphere is very quickly spiked, isn't it? Does anyone have a worse train journey ever they'd like to share? My husband just did a 13-hour journey from Canterbury to Edinburgh. Yeah, mine was actually simply black fries to Boorham Wood on a Friday night, full of drunk people stuck in a tunnel, killed the vibes of the gig I'd just seen. I have one that would be hard to beat, which was being on a train that got lost accidentally went through the wrong country and ended up in the wrong city. That is the plotline of the little red train. My thanks to Holden, Irene and Elizabeth, you can follow this show for free. You can get every episode as soon as it's released. Just search for the week unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts and then tap follow. We are the premium luxury train of podcasts. You can also get six free issues of the week magazine with a trial subscription. That's free. Go to theweek.com/subscriptions. In the meantime, I've been Ollie Mann. Our music is by Tom Moreby, the producer, Ollie Piot, at Rethink Audio. And until we meet again to unwrap next week, chuff, chuff, choo-choo. Bye-bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]