November 4, 2021
In this podcast, we consider the uses and dangers of social media for arriving at an ongoing understanding of our world. We particularly examine the zone of rage which is Twitter and a few current issues that are making a splash there. These are; outrage at the UK government changing the rules for investigating and sanctioning MPs' misconduct so that a Tory MP gets away with earning £100k per year for lobbying (allegedly), that there is widespread anger at the government voting to allow pollution of UK rivers and the sea, that there are many personal reports of depression at the general withering of hope as a direct consequence of Tory rule, and that the COP26 is so far merely dispensing 'greenwash'. In passing, we mourn the death or adequationist truth.[Free. 31 minutes.]
October 23, 2021
In this episode of our series on the possibility of economic collapse in the UK and beyond, we examine the degradation of the ecosphere and its relationship to the economy and culture. [Free. 1 hour 7 minutes.]
June 10, 2021
In this podcast we examine El Salvador's recent decision to make Bitcoin legal tender. [Free. 28 minutes.]
April 20, 2021
This podcast deals with economic, military and propaganda aspects of the developing cold war with China. [Free. 1 hour 25 minutes.]
January 1, 2021
On New Year's Day 2021, we pause to look both backwards and forwards. We identify and discuss four themes: the defeat of Trump and what that means for the global right Internationale, the fragmentation of the left and signs in movements around the world of its incipient re-emergence, the intensifying struggle to control information and particularly the internet, the impact of certain technological developments such as AI and CRISPR. We indicate how these developments are interlocked and how that points towards what is to be done. [Free. 47 minutes.]
December 17, 2020
In this second episode of our series on reason, I take a broad brush to outline
some of the main antecedents to the so-called European Enlightenment, also know as 'The Age of Reason'. I focus on the rise of experimental science in the contexts of church power and violence against those who contradict its doctrines, the rise of the bourgeoisie, and advances in mathematics. The figures of Descartes, Galileo and Newton loom large but Aristotle, Aquinas, Copernicus, Kepler and others also have parts. [Free. 44 minutes.]
October 6, 2020
In this podcast, I ask the question, "Are the US and UK fascist?" I attempt to address this question by checking if any of the features I identified in the first podcast of this series are observable in the current situations in the UK and the US. [I leave aside the matter of the economy for a future podcast.] I conclude that many of the elements of fascism are present and that some are venerable, others incipient and some are being actively cultivated. I suggest briefly what needs to be done about this dangerous situation. [Free. 1 hour 2 mins.]
August 24, 2020
In this podcast, we investigate why and how socialism has become a dirty word through the operations of propaganda and ideology. This naturally entails giving a characterisation of socialism, which we do, starting with the observation that it isn't one thing and that the word has a range of meanings. We conclude that the ideological war has to be fought alongside concrete organisation and that values cannot be bracketed out of the conversation even as we offer robust materialist analysis. [Free. 50 minutes.]
May 25, 2020
In this podcast, we dissect the furore around Dominic Cummings' breaking of lock-down rules and the PM's refusal to sack him when other officials have been sacked for similar transgressions. We assert that the ramifications of this matter go beyond the indiscretions of one man, easily written off as peccadilloes, or even spun as legal, moral and full of integrity. We find that the matter exposes with great clarity the class nature of UK society, the entrenched nature of the culture of deference which upholds it, the absence of the truth faculty amongst the commentariat and the political class, the representation of gross inequality as the natural order, and much more besides. The public rage with which these events have been met attests to the legitimate resentment which has been subterranean for some time but which may now erupt. [Free. 44 minutes.]
![CONCENTRATIONS OF WEALTH & POWER AND BIG DATA]()
February 7, 2020
This podcast is structured around a review of Peter Phillips' book, Giants: The Global Power Elite. I elucidate and assess the main points of the book, [1] that seventeen globally active asset management corporations each administer over $1 trillion, together totalling $41.1 trillion, [2] that these corporations are managed by 199 directors who Phillips gives brief biographies of; [3] that there are deep connections between these personnel and the three main propaganda and public relations global conglomerates, various 'think tanks' and policy bodies, and governments. I further relate this connectivity to the role of big data as it is extracted and exploited by the tech giants Google and Facebook. I rely on Shoshana Ruboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism to make the latter connection. In the light of Phillips' and Ruboff's rigorous scholarship, I consider the vilification of the UK left by the billionaire-owned media and the prospect of a radical, progressive turn in world politics and what is needed to ensure it. [Free. 29 minutes.]
