TRASHFUTURE

The discussion ranges from Britain’s Victorian-flavored right wing and Reform candidates repeating racist slurs to the BBC’s planned documentary about J.K. Rowling. It examines Rowling’s political transformation, her forgotten stance on Scottish independence, her control over the Harry Potter narrative, and whether the BBC can confront her anti-trans activism. Character AI’s collapse also gets a look-in.

Musa Okwonga, British writer, poet, broadcaster, and football commentator, joins for a sharp tour through Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi ownership, sovereign wealth, and Britain’s decades of underinvestment. They explore football as geopolitical power, gentrification, local culture for sale, and how weak institutions leave cities vulnerable. Also: incriminating texts, influencer politics, and AI’s apocalyptic sales pitch.

A mysterious queue at Blank Street Coffee becomes an unlikely political investigation in Holborn. The discussion roams through Britain’s coffee-chain class system, the Greens’ fading momentum, Starmer’s departure, and a by-election that national media care about far more than many local residents. Expect shoe-leather journalism, electoral speculation, and increasingly elaborate caffeine-based metaphors.

Trump tries to make “superintelligence” official while tech CEOs sign a toothless AI pledge. The discussion turns to data centers, political spectacle, and AI’s feedback loop with power. Then a UK hospitality union organizer exposes private-equity pub takeovers, zero-hour contracts, algorithmic scheduling, anti-union surveillance, and the fight for safer, more secure work.

A chaotic tour through post-liberal Europe, from right-wing thinkers playing dress-up and incoherent visions of multipolar sovereignty to Budapest’s lonely intellectual scene. The conversation also detours through Epstein conspiracies, ideological label-swapping, Hungary’s economic and fertility woes, and increasingly desperate pronatalist schemes.

Hesse Deni, writer and co-host of Trouble in River City, joins a lively dissection of AI safety’s online subculture. The conversation explores Bay Area doomer houses, rationalist jargon, effective altruism’s moral accounting, and AI risk as tech-industry QAnon. It also ventures into Harry Potter fanfiction, bunkers, sexual power dynamics, and the movement’s transformation of internet fantasies into real-world influence.

Sapheen Meran, a British legal commentator, writer, and musician with Second Homes, unpacks the legal world’s chaotic AI rush. They discuss hallucinated laws, AI-generated legal services, GPU stockpiles, proprietary models, rising costs, and the branding battle among elite firms. Expect plenty of Suits comparisons, chatbot skepticism, and visions of an overconfident AI lawyer.

Nathan Akehurst, a journalist and author writing about migration and Europe’s asylum system, joins for a tour through Piddington’s bizarre referendum, AI scams, and the far right’s talent for turning civic spectacle into racialized politics. They also discuss dangerous Channel crossings, rescue ships, media apathy, Frontex, and Europe’s partnership with Libyan militias.

Tom Walker, comedian, writer, and political podcaster, joins a lively dissection of Will Gluck’s ONE NIGHT ONLY. They examine its pizza-shop romance, purity rings, missing sex, test-screening meddling, and bizarre lighthouse finale. The conversation explores private intimacy, conservative sexual politics, Pride anxieties, and how a supposed meditation on fascism turns into an incoherent chastity tale.

Charles Star, a legal commentator from No Homework and the A-Lab, joins the discussion on Trump’s enormous, gold-plated White House ballroom. They explore private financing, demolition without proper oversight, and lawsuits over its bizarre design. Charles also unpacks Supreme Court capture, shadow-docket rulings, voting rights, and how administrative stays reshape executive power, before turning to court reform and resisting political doomerism.