The Popular Show

pt.1 of our Christmas 'Harms of Lockdown' miniseries. To listen to the entire series, become a subscriber at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod. As lockdowns for the unvaccinated spread across Europe, we sat with Thomas Fazi ('Reclaiming the State') and Toby Green ('The COVID Consensus') for a dissenting look at COVID containment measures over the past 20 months, and to discuss what a prospectus for a COVID critical Left could look like.

As the Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty verdict was announced, David and James sat down to discuss the FOUR FALLACIES of the panicked left-liberal response to the case: 1. that it is the court's function to adjudicate between political ideologies, 2. that courtroom decisions determine the moral character of perpetrators or victims, 3. that 'imagine a black man did this' is a progressive argument, and 4. that a not guilty verdict is a license to future fascist violence. Help us keep having the toughest conversations on the left. SUBSCRIBE at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod for regular bonus episodes. 

Welcome back to RAX KING, author of Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer and co-host of the Low Culture Boil podcast. David and Rax get into the pleasures of Jewish holidays, cheap perfume, the ethical code of Jersey Shore, the relative merits of being in the mall and being online, and the meaning of LET’S GO BRANDON. Our supporters at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod got this episode first, as well as a whole archive of subscriber-only episodes. Why not start helping us grow the platform for less than the cost of a beer per month? 

David Bell is a leading global health expert, who has worked at the top of the World Health Organisation and for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He believes that the use of lockdowns and universal vaccination in the response to COVID-19 has been a grievous error, and a betrayal of the founding principles of the global healthcare sector. In pt.1 of a wide-ranging interview, David describes first-hand the takeover of global health by corporate interests, and how the successive pandemics and near-pandemics of the 21st century have led the WHO in an increasingly authoritarian direction. In our subscribers-only pt.2, THE COVID ERROR, David continues the story, to explain why he thinks a twenty-year drift in the WHO away from its founding constitution has resulted in the disastrous error of lockdowns and vaccine mandates today.

This is pt.1 of a 2-part episode. To listen to pt.2, 'The Wisest Woman in Europe' - on Freud vs. Jung, T.S. Eliot, the meaning of birthdays, and the scary fate of the director of ‘Human Centipede' - subscribe at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod. In pt.1, we team up with psychoanalytic film scholar, Mary Wild, to review the biggest horror releases of the summer: Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele's 'Candyman' and James Wan's 'Malignant'. For extra Halloween spookiness, Mary gets her tarot cards out to predict David and James's futures! 

Help us continue making great shows and get bonus episodes and early-access interviews at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod. Afeni joined us from Freedom Fighters DC to talk about keeping politics local in the national core, why the Squad keeps folding, policing in the US and UK, Dave Chappelle and Nicki Minaj breaking rank with their class, the rise of the generation that reached political maturity in the Trump years… PLUS why she’s a “fuck-around-and-find-out free speech absolutist”.

Cheaper than a pint - help us keep making this stuff by subscribing today at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod. Subcultural spaces associated with the far right - from GamerGate to 4Chan - have attracted endless analysis. But what about their radical liberal cousin? The guys kicked back with Katherine Dee to revisit Tumblr: Obama-era clickbait journalism's favourite source of anthropological adventures, as well as the laboratory for many mores around sex, identity, and politics today.

This episode was previously EXCLUSIVE TO SUBSCRIBERS at Patreon.com/ThePopularPod. Please help us continue platforming the toughest conversations in politics and culture, on both sides of the Atlantic, for £3 per month. Support for maximal lockdown measures has been an article of faith for liberals and the left since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But where did this unprecedented approach to pandemic containment come from? And was it suitable to all the global contexts it was deployed in? Africanist Toby Green is a dissenting voice you NEED to hear. His book Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality is an outstanding analysis of the regressive effects of lockdown policies, and the neocolonial dimension of their imposition on the Global South.

Cheaper than a pint! Patreon.com/ThePopularPod membership gives you advance access to our biggest interviews, regular subscriber-only episodes, and helps us grow the project.  How is the Afghanistan withdrawal being received on the dissident right? MAGA depends on keeping clear water between its 'anti-imperialism of the right' and the bipartisan forever wars of the neocon establishment: a narrative thrown by warmonger Biden's abrupt cutting ties with wars of humanitarian intervention and state building. The fellas look at Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon's scramble to respond to Biden's surprising continuities with Trump, reshaping their stances on the deep state, the military, and culture wars as they do so. We also scoop up Joe Rogan's iv*rm*ct*n controversy, and predict new fractures on the left and within the professional class if anti-COVID measures ramp up once more in the coming months. 

The fellas discuss Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resulting political class meltdown, the arrival of incel terrorism in the UK with the Plymouth shooting, and answer YOUR emails about the prospect of left-wing political violence in the face of climate change. It's a three-fingers of bourbon kind of show, and keep the bottle on hand!  IF YOU DIG THE SHOW AND WANT IT TO CONTINUE, PLEASE SUB US A FEW QUID ON Patreon.com/ThePopularPod