The Popular Show

EXCLUSIVE TO SUBSCRIBERS AT Patreon.com/ThePopularPod: the continuation of our conversation with Leighton Woodhouse, covering the Dave Weigel/Felicia Sonmez meltdown at The Washington Post, and the Amazon trans 'die in' protest, and what they tell us about negotiations between elite companies and their employees.

James A. Smith is joined by documentary filmmaker and journalist Leighton Woodhouse, to discuss the January 6th Hearings, their mediatization and traumatisation, and how the new idiom of elites in evidence there played out in the week's misadventures at the Washington Post. Subscribe for the full discussion: https://www.patreon.com/thepopularpod Donate: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/thepopularshow Buy us coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thepopularshow

Health researcher and New Republic columnist Natalie Shure joins the boys to talk Depp v Heard and what it tells us (or doesn’t) about the afterlife of #MeToo and generational gender politics, and Havana Syndrome: the psychosomatic chronic illness taking down US Intelligence service workers and diplomats. Subscribers to Patreon.com/ThePopularPod also got the continuation discussion, taking on the nature, diagnostic status, and political significance of ‘Long Covid’… don’t miss it! Donate: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/thepopularshow Buy us a coffee:  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thepopularshow TPS88 also appears as a video for our partners at Sublation Media: https://www.youtube.com/c/douglain

After many listener requests, we finally tackle Long Covid - the chronic illness described by the Social Sciences and Medicine journal as 'the first created through patients finding one another on Twitter'. Is Long Covid actually 'Long Lockdown', to what extent is it psychosomatic or an instance of social contagion, what are the politics of this apparently 'bottom up' development in diagnosis? Natalie Shure is a health researcher and columnist for New Republic. As well as this patrons-only episode, she joins us for TPS88, to discuss Amber Heard and Johnny Depp and 'Havana Syndrome'. To access this episode, subscribe at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod, where you'll also have access to our complete archive of bonus episodes.  Donate: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/thepopularshow Buy us a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thepopularshow

A POPULAR DEBATE format episode EXCLUSIVE TO SUBSCRIBERS at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod. Paolo Gerbaudo (The Great Recoil: Politics after Populism and Pandemic) and Elena Louisa Lange (Value Without Fetish) get into a heated argument over whether populism and COVID-19 have opened the possibility of neoliberalism being transcended, or instead merely revived and expanded its exploitative power.

"This is insightful" - Briahna Joy Gray. Following the murder of nineteen children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas, James and David ask what has produced the rise of the school shooting in the 21st century, how the left should think about guns, and the question of conspiracy theories and disinformation around traumatic events. Video version at Sublation Media: https://www.youtube.com/c/douglain  Subscribe for bonus episodes: Patreon.com/ThePopularPod Donate: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/thepopularshow Buy us a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thepopularshow

The boys discuss the inflation crisis, 'Monkey Pox', the WHO Treaty debate, and the 'Hearing Voices' movement who live with the voices in their heads. To hear this episode, support our work and help us continue at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod. Donations also gratefully received at http://paypal.me/ThePopularShow

The week when George W. Bush said 'Iraq' instead of 'Ukraine', World Health Organisation members met to debate taking pandemic policy yet further from democratic scrutiny, and the Economist Magazine predicts global famine if the war in Ukraine drags on. Why power today is 'audacious' and what 'this one-thingism' is doing to our politics. This episode also appears in video form at Doug Lain's Sublation Media YouTube channel. Support our work and help us continue at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod or http://paypal.me/ThePopularShow

This is a special Patreon subscribers' episode. Support us on Patreon for less than the price of a pint: https://www.patreon.com/posts/tps43-hitches-57702978  His support for the Iraq War so obliterated the reputation of Christopher Hitchens on the Left that the millennial and Gen Z socialists emerging since his death in 2011 are barely aware he existed. In a special crossover with Ben Burgis's Give Them an Argument show, we discuss Ben's attempts to change that with a new book, Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, Where He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters. To help us interrogate Hitchens's many contradictions, we welcome back to TPS his brother, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens: an author the elder Hitch once described as so reactionary, he felt he should a wear a garlic rosary while reading him.

What Oliver had to leave out of the Starmer book! the Jimmy Savile question! The antinomies of Mark Fisher and how they played out in the millennial left! Lawfare of the left and right! The New Left Review today! It's all here in our exclusive Patrons-only continuation episode. Become a patron now and get weekly exclusive shows, plus access to our archive of  patrons-only interviews with Ben Burgis and Peter Hitchens, Michael Tracey, Laura Smith,  Sunetra Gupta, Karie Murphy, Peter Dale Scott, Toby Young, Joe Guinan, and loads more.