Tom O'Mahony (@gotitatguineys) joins Milo and Nate to talk about the history of UK Punk and why some of them ended up advertising Country Life butter...
Milo has stand-up shows coming up in BERLIN and HAMBURG - check them out and grab tickets here:
http://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism's very own Gareth Davies joins the gang to talk about a smooth businessman who decided to create generational wealth by transferring the entire budget for social and community services of Thurrock Council into his own bank account. And, of course, the one man who helped him by being too stupid to realise what was going on.
*STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the f...
What happens when Venture Capitalists - a bunch of guys whose entire job is throwing money into companies they don't understand and expect to fail try and build a new city from scratch? What happens when those Venture Capitalists are building that city in order to win an online argument about zoning and land use? The answer (AI renderings, money spent, nothing built, no water issues planned for or considered) may not shock you! Bay Area tenant organiser Shanti Singh rejoins Riley, Hussein, an...
2023-09-21 10:25:09 +0000 UTC View PostMilo and Nate check back in with Michael Apted’s test subjects, now 35 - and one of them has gotten very interested in Bulgaria…
2023-09-20 16:40:24 +0000 UTC View PostRiley, Alice, and Hussein look at the growth of no-fun Britain, "Spotify for Food," and an interview with Tony Blair in the FT where he applies for the job of Starmer's vizier. What does he want Starmer to do as a number one priority? ID Cards, of course!
*STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuture...
Riley and Alice have opened another of Cristina Rivera Garza's novellas for a deep dive into the world of experimental fiction, borders, and - above all - the striated world of GENDER in a book that was hailed (by Alice) as "the best work of fiction about being trans written by a cis person."
I know we said we would do George Saunders' "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain" next - but Riley has been on holiday, so that one is coming next! Promise! Super swear!
2023-09-14 09:12:23 +0000 UTC View PostRiley, Alice, and Hussein review some of the developments in the wide world of British pet ownership and a return to Victorian levels of dog-maulings to accompany the return of Victorian diseases, then we look at a startup that's reinventing a train but worse, and then read all about how Liz Truss thinks that getting rid of Boris Johnson was the wrong thing to do. Riley uncovers an awful hidden talent.
*STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK ti...
2023-09-13 21:52:40 +0000 UTC View PostYou've heard the expression "safe as houses"? Well, let me introduce you to a new expression: "safe as schools, hospitals, Universities, many large stores, the Ministry of Defence, and also houses," because Britain decided to inflict mafia construction on itself across most of its own built environment between 1950 and 1996. Why? Because it's Britain, of course! Liam and Rocz from Well There's Your Problem join us for the second time this Summer to get down into the engineering details of it ...
2023-09-11 12:42:13 +0000 UTC View PostKing Salman visited Neom so we take back everything bad we said about it. Also, we check in on our old friend Cooler Screens (they're going amazing, we assume). Then, a company whose "data engine" for improving AI output (including for the military) is just tens of thousands of task-workers in the global south. Finally, we review the 100000th proposal to fix Britain by reinstating National Service for youths.
2023-09-07 11:01:30 +0000 UTC View Post
It's the recently rediscovered 1990 single from Johannes Vonk and the Clogheads entitled 'Hot Tory' — the song that brought the band back to financial solvency after a soup-related crisis.
This song was created by:
Nate: composition, bass guitar, synthesizers, programming, mixing, backup vocals, a few lyrics
Milo: drums, electric guitar, lead vocals, programming, mixing, lyrics
Cover concept by Keaton Leigh / final design by Nate and Milo
In case you're curious...
2023-09-04 23:54:04 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
We discuss some UK-centric news this week, with a brief return to an American startup we’ve previously covered that—in the hopes of destroying school bus drivers’ unions—created Uber for school buses and may have facilitated a mass abduction? Or the world’s largest school bus traffic jam? We also uncover some archival footage of a certain 1980s Dutch pop band that went through some hard times in the early ’90s.
2023-09-04 23:39:10 +0000 UTC View PostFor this week's bonus, it's an alternate configuration of Milo, Nate, and Alice discussing a startup to make every famous person into a PS3 polygon caricature to be licensed, news that Britain's rivers will become even more sewage-laden, and a Guardian article where a guy asks ChatGPT to invent new recipes that hopefully won't kill you.
This is the radio segment about the Roland TB-303 that Nate mentions in the episode: 2023-08-31 01:58:47 +0000 UTC View Post
For this month's first Left on Read, Riley and Alice discuss the 1980 J.M. Coetzee novel "Waiting for the Barbarians," which may or may not be relevant to a) the free one this week and b) our current, uh, situation.
2023-08-29 01:23:06 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
This week, the gang speaks with author and former U.S. Department of State consular officer Josef Burton about the tendency for liberal institutions to find themselves ordered to carry out illiberal practices—whether it’s Trump’s Muslim ban, the UK’s barge housing, or any other recent story in which we simply cannot believe that we’re obligated to do an immoral thing, for the state. We also talk about a recent news story regarding Russian ai...
2023-08-29 01:19:37 +0000 UTC View PostFor this week’s bonus, we spoke with Tamara K. Nopper and Eve Zelickson from the Data and Society Research Institute. They’re the authors of “Wellness Capitalism: Employee Health, the Benefits Maze, and Worker Control.” Would it come as a surprise to you to learn that employee data and tech-driven ‘wellness solutions’ are increasingly offered as employee benefits in the US, in the sense that you can’t actually get psychotherapy on your insurance, but a chatbot can offer you cogn...
2023-08-23 23:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
For this week’s free one, we’re discussing a startup that will serve you ads in order for you to crash your car, revisiting some old scam-based friends who will either never suffer consequences or are already stuffed inside a barrel, and examining the state of British politics which creates a cross-party consensus for stuffing asylum seekers into a prison hulk (and patting itself on the back for being so humane).
Check out the crowdfunder fo...
2023-08-22 20:53:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Nate and Milo continue an exploration of the UP series, this time with the second half of 1984's 28 UP. Is it hauntology to imagine a time when you could get a council house and support a family on a food processing job? Is Britain ineffably depressing no matter the social conditions? Is there such a thing as looking 'too Australian?' Find out more in this episode.
2023-08-18 15:36:48 +0000 UTC View PostFor this week's bonus, our friend Mattie Lubchansky joins us to discuss NYC mayor Eric Adams, a man who claims to have invented the concept of slowly boiling a frog--a man who cannot stop lying about everything, as well as being a paranoid cop. We hope that your haters become your waiters at the table of success. We hope so very much
2023-08-17 00:20:03 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
For this week’s free episode, the cast of Riley, Milo, Hussein, and Alice speak with (now three-time!) guest Alex N. Press, the labour correspondent for Jacobin Magazine, about two of her recent stories. In one, a ‘flexible work’ app is assigning people gigs that lead them directly across a picket line. In another, studio executives in Hollywood are dreaming up ways to digitize an actor’s likeness and use them in AI-generated content, for free...
2023-08-14 19:19:44 +0000 UTC View Post
For this month's first Britainology, we speak with journalist Alan White (@aljwhite) of Politics Home about the strange and sordid history of Britain's tabloid press--how it never seems to change (culturally or otherwise), how it keeps getting away with things, how different its affect is from that of (equally omerta-driven) British television... and most importantly, how weird it is.
2023-08-10 23:02:00 +0000 UTC View Post
It's nothing but riffs. And Riley explaining Canadian bag milk again, this time to comedians Tom Ballard and Luka Muller. There's also a long digression about the Australian soap opera Neighbours, and how Australia can never truly rid itself of it because of the dogged, ferocious dedication of British Neighbours fans, in Britain. We hope... that you enjoy.
2023-08-09 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
For this week’s free one, we’re joined by Patrick Wyman (@Patrick_Wyman) of the Tides of History and Pursuit of Dadliness podcasts to discuss the strange nature of Britain’s elites, how they vary from those of the United States (and of the Venetian Republic, for that matter), and why America is in many ways governed by big guys in polo shirts who own car dealerships and at...
2023-08-08 00:27:27 +0000 UTC View PostFor this week's bonus, the assembled gang of Riley, Hussein, Nate, and Alice speak with Molly White (@Molly0xFFF) about WorldCoin. And Orbs. We didn't set out to say the word 'orb' so often, but it's impossible to avoid when covering this topic. Which is: a group of crypto guys who are convinced that AI will become so advanced that it'll obviate every human's job, so the only way to manage it is to create a cryptocurrency ...
2023-08-03 13:55:21 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
We had a live show at Between the Bridges near Southbank Centre on a very rainy night, and we discussed a school bathroom realtime tracking app, a horrendous conference held by the Tony Blair Institute, and much more. The assembled cast of Riley, Milo, Nate, and Alice learned about topics such as Ketamine Keir Starmer, a punitive deployment of ferrets to chase out schoolchildren from toilets, the Leon Burgers to Government Policy pipeline, and a stran...
2023-07-31 23:36:22 +0000 UTC View PostIt's International Relations time here at Left on Read HQ! Riley compiled a study of how "security" has been conceptualised in different ways of thinking about International Relations from Thucydides through the Cold War, with detours through Foucault, to finally arrive at the Copenhagen School of International Relations' "view from the end of history." Securitize me, baby!
2023-07-30 12:31:43 +0000 UTC View PostWe went to the Spitting Image musical in the West End. It was worse than we'd ever imagined. It's the closest we've ever come to re-enacting the scary parts of Event Horizon. It's the least funny thing a human can create. And we did it all... for you.
2023-07-27 22:55:38 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
Riley and Alice speak with Jordan and Greg from the Brigham Young Money podcast (@BYMPodcast) about the tech industry in Utah, its hand-in-glove relationship with both the state and the Mormon church, and the ways in which they’re trying to make Silicon Slope a real thing. We also discuss a startup that would have seemed far more at home in season one of TF, which none of us coul...
2023-07-24 23:04:35 +0000 UTC View PostA second piece of experimental Latin American fiction has struck the podcast (within a podcast), as Alice and Riley grapple with Cristina Rivera Garza's 2012 novella, The Taiga Syndrome. It combines elements of noir, fairy tale, and of course magical realism. We hope you enjoy!
2023-07-24 15:05:12 +0000 UTC View Post
For this month's second Britainology, we've watched the next installment of the UP series, or rather the first one-hour segment of the 1984 film 28 UP, featuring about half of the cast so far. To include Tony, our beloved Tony. More to come soon!
2023-07-23 15:46:09 +0000 UTC View PostOn this week's bonus, we're joined by the entire cast of Well There's Your Problem to discuss some odd trends: residential office refits that are unliveable, the world's biggest cruise ship that helps make everything else unliveable, and a company making hyper-secure golf course fortress residences in Scotland for multimillionaires to live when everywhere else is unliveable. No slides on this one, but a lot of jokes!
2023-07-20 00:00:57 +0000 UTC View Post