We ring in the Carnation Revolution (more on that later), discuss the moral panic du jour in the U.K., and then cross stateside to discuss the group chat leaks of our close personal friend Mark Andreessen. Can’t believe all his courtier suck ups turned out to be snakes.
TF LIVE ALERT We’ll be performing at the Big Fat Festival hosted by Big Belly Comedy on Saturday, 21st June! 2025-04-29 13:18:47 +0000 UTC View Post
We return to U.K. shores to look at the state of national party politics in advance of local elections, and think of who would win in a capitulating contest between Starmer and Trump.
TF LIVE ALERT We’ll be performing at the Big Fat Festival hosted by Big Belly Comedy on Saturday, 21st June! You can get tickets for that here!
It's the free one!
Jess O’Thomson from QueerAF joins Riley, Nova, and Hussein to discuss the details of the recent anti-Trans Supreme Court ruling. Also, domes popping up around the world of gold and steel, and an AI “entrapment as a service” company.
TF LIVE ALERT We’ll be performing at the Big Fat Festival hosted by Big Belly Comedy on Saturday, 21...
2025-04-23 09:36:07 +0000 UTC View PostJosh from The Worst Of All Possible Worlds joins Nova, Riley, and HK to discuss the newest, hottest document in Effective Altruism / AI Safetyism, “AI 2027,” which posits a world in which Chinese and American AI’s team up to turn all of humanity into a paste to lubricate a Dyson sphere. Also, the Supreme Court Judgment (in brief - more on that next week’s free episode), and Ocean Builders is back… in pod form!
Check out 2025-04-19 16:21:07 +0000 UTC View Post
It's the free one!
Alex Scaggs of The Hedge (https://theehedge.substack.com) joins us to talk about the economic chaos unleashed on the world by… Fed Chair Paul Volcker between 1979 and 1982. This episode tries to make sense of the ongoing American trade war with much of the rest of the world - going into the history of the American grand treat bargain, how the character of manufacturing has change...
2025-04-15 07:50:39 +0000 UTC View Post404 Media’s Jason Koebler joins us to discuss the hot new book Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, where a senior Facebook executive confirms, very gratifyingly, that all the worst things we knew about Facebook were - in fact - true and on purpose. Including what a horrible place it is to work, and what sociopathic freaks Zuckerberg and Sandberg are.
Check out Jason's work at 404 Media here!
<... 2025-04-11 07:50:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Nate and Milo watch the first installment of Netflix's 4-part series ADOLESCENCE and discuss how it captures modern Britain, how things have changed since we were kids in the before times, why Stephen Graham chose to make this, and also a story about nonconsensual lawn mowing.
2025-04-08 21:44:52 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
This week, Riley interviews disability activist and Manchester Metropolitan University professor Dr Lucy Burke about upcoming Labour policy changes to enact even more cruelty against the disabled under the guise of ‘combatting benefits culture.’ The combined gang of Riley, Hussein, and November also discuss the non-America news, particularly regarding countries actually defending themselves against right-wing takeovers? It is, somehow, possible. 2025-04-08 19:26:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Automotive journalist Victoria Scott joins us to talk about Tesla’s ailing fortunes, and the new cottage industry appearing in the media of articles to the effect of “I bought the Nazi car and everyone keeps calling me a nazi.” Additionally, the new American century, Starmer’s (non) diplomacy, and showing the entire country a video.
NATE ALERT Lions Led By Donkeys is performing live in London on Friday, 11th April! 2025-04-04 17:02:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Former US diplomat Josef Burton joins November and Riley to discuss the denunciations, deportations, and imprisonment of immigrants in the United States. Also, the degeneration of the state into personal enforcement fiefdoms, and the likely eventual Democratic leadership response (“we would do the black bagging much better”).
NATE ALERT Lions Led By Donkeys is performing live in London on Friday, 11th April! 2025-04-01 14:01:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Cartoonist, author, and mayor enthusiast Mattie Lubchanksy rejoins Riley, Nova, and Hussein to talk about the continuing war on the creative industries being waged by AI - including Meta’s great book heist, the Studio Ghibli-fication of fascist imagery, and OpenAI’s attempt to write literary fiction.
Pre-order Mattie's book SIMPLICI...
2025-03-28 17:23:17 +0000 UTC View PostIt's the free one!
Riley, Nova, and HK discuss the Labour Party’s planned campaign of social murder against the disabled in the UK - including a deep dive on the ongoing poster-to-policy pipeline around the recent (and not so recent) attacks on the Motability charity - that is described as “not austerity, because it’s half of what Osborne did.” Also, finance a burrito (US edition), the podcast discusses a new morning routine, and Quibi’s Meg Whitman returns fr...
2025-03-25 09:23:01 +0000 UTC View PostWe've reconvened Nate, Milo, Joe, and Francis to discuss the beloved American Midwest, and the phenomenon of high school sports being a dominant motivator for all sorts of decisions that it probably shouldn't affect so much, like: all the other things that schools are supposed to do? We hope you enjoy
2025-03-24 13:16:35 +0000 UTC View PostFederal labour lawyer Carey Shockey joins Riley, Nova, and Hussein to talk about the rapid deterioration of the rule of law in the United States, its roots in Reagan and the bipartisan support for the Global War on Terror, and the relationship between law, violence, and the inherent contradictions of liberal capitalism.
MILO ALERT Check out Milo’s tour dates here:
https://miloedw...
Riley and November read Nevada, the book that kicked off the 2010's trans writing scene. We think about anachronism, performance, and crashout.
2025-03-21 10:34:11 +0000 UTC View PostDearest Hogs,
This is a quick announcement to say that we're going to be doing yet another live show as part of the Big Fat Festival at Big Belly Comedy Club on Saturday June 21st!
This is an exclusive early-bird ticket sale for our Patrons that will go on general sale shortly so get in while you can.
Tickets are here:
https://bigbellycomedy.club/e...
Riley, Nova, and Hussein talk about the trials and tribulations of trying to give every job in the world to a computer, as “Agentforce” fails to materialise, discuss Jan Marsalek (finally), and look at a terrible new startup. Also, a new Political Son rises… and this one is a soundcloud rapper.
2025-03-18 16:50:52 +0000 UTC View PostThis Machine Kills’ Ed Ongweso Jr returns to the pod to talk about his series of essays talking about what he calls The Silicon Valley Consensus - an ongoing chapter in our interest in the convergence of reactionary politics and the profusion of data centres all over the world. Also, Trump says “everything’s computer”, and Rachel Reeves claims to eat crumbs from under couch cushions to manufacture consent for the largest act of planned social murder in the U.K. since 2010.
We start by looking at Canada’s destiny as the last holdout of Deloitte Pride Float liberalism, and then Neom’s ongoing woes as executives supported by McKinsey start frantically figuring out how to make the whole thing work economically. Then, film critic A.S. Hamrah joins Riley and November to talk about AI in the film industry, and the studio executives’ bizarre desire to algorithmically raise the dead.
It’s time for another examination of historical parallels with lessons for our own time - today Patrick Wyman joins the gang to discuss the late Byzantine empire… a state with such a self referential, cosseted elite that they found themselves sprinkling imperial procession routes with rose water while their entire society crumbled from the outside in. Also, getting caught red handed in the metaverse, the Shawinigan Cocktail, and butter is churned into guns.
MILO ALERT 2025-03-07 14:39:30 +0000 UTC View Post
QAA’s Julian Feeld joins us to discuss how Q-Anon has metastasised into mainstream political thought in the global North, and will usher in a whole new era of traumas and catastrophes that will in turn produce yet wilder political tendencies that will continue metastasising. Also, Starmer’s forensic diplomacy lasts all of 45 minutes, the dissociative border patrol, and Miguel Arruda stands firm.
MILO ALERT Check out Milo’s UK Tour here:
2025-03-04 11:56:17 +0000 UTC
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NOTE: There's a slight issue with some echoes in this recording. We're trying to get it all fixed and will update if we can, but we don't want to delay the episode! Thank you for your patience, as ever..
Gareth Dennis returns to discuss infrastructure, growth, and the new airport runways that are about to festoon this island with promises of imaginary growth. But first, we present to you one of the Guys Of All Time.
For this month's second Britainology, we watched the 2006 Shane Meadows film THIS IS ENGLAND, which neither of us had ever seen. But in Nate's case, his mom had watched it thinking it would be a heartfelt and uplifting coming-of-age film and, uh. That being said, we liked it and would also appreciate your thoughts on it since it actually seems to be one of the better works of media we've examined on this show.
2025-02-28 09:37:44 +0000 UTC View Post
It's a Britainology episode, except it's every member of TF on this one, so in a sense it only makes sense to give the show guest billing. And Milo has created a suite of test questions to determine whether or not we know enough of the actually-relevant details about the UK. Let's just say that the final scores... are something of a surprise to us.
2025-02-27 14:23:45 +0000 UTC View Post
It's the free one!
Quinn Slobodian joins us to discuss his new book, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right - which traces the syncretic relationship of scientific racism, techno-solutionism, and the quest to destroy the cathedral to Neoliberalism’s crisis of mission in the 1990s.
2025-02-25 16:07:13 +0000 UTC View Post
It’s a goons rights bonanza, with Devon subbing in for November to talk about the ongoing wave of gig economy apps for ex-Navy SEALs to turn random people into clouds of pink mist on behalf of crypto influencers who want to look richer than they are… also we check in on Humane, and read a column by Rafael Behr. In the second half, Economist Nina Eichacker joins Riley half to talk tariffs (specifically) and how Wall Street’s “Masters of the Universe” traded their pre-eminent position...
2025-02-21 10:26:59 +0000 UTC View Post
We talk about the Trump plan to bring stability to the Middle East by building hotels and casinos on top of the mass gravesite of an ethnically cleansed Gaza, and how it’s differences from the Biden plan are largely in its aesthetics. Also, the art of the deal in Ukraine, another cushy job in venture capital for an unqualified natsec goon (democrat), and what do you call a group of three or more people on the Labour Right… a WhatsApp scandal!
We go back into the whimsical world of flying cars, and Dubai’s plan to make them largely mandatory by 2026. Also - Riley invents a historical Euro-board game called Shadow Doge, ordinary Americans are given formal permission by the President to get their skin reversed by cartels, and fraud is legal again the world over.
2025-02-14 09:25:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Nathan Tankus explains exactly what Musk and his little gremlins are doing at the treasury, and how this could have some pretty enormous implications for the national and global economies. Also - the killing of a sacred duck (in Venice), the spending of a sacred $30 (on eggs, by an A.I.), and the theft of a sacred suitcase (this is the last Miguel Arruda for a while, we promise…).
The outro music is Gamou-me a Mala no Aeroporto ( 2025-02-11 09:33:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Jathan Sadowski joins the gang to talk about DOGE and the destruction of mass produced, population scale knowledge in favour of the mythical folkways of Uncle Knowledge. Also - Silicon Valley putting out cash prizes for stochastic terrorism, Starmer gets the PartyGate treatment for his voice (?) coach (???), and our favourite Portuguese politician Miguel Arruda ACTUALLY makes the government more efficient.
2025-02-07 22:33:40 +0000 UTC View Post