Citizens Of Nowhere

Carey hasn't been keeping up with the news so Nick does his best to walk him through the latest on the upcoming General Election. Along the way we find Carey's MP shutting down an opponent by accusing him of mansplaining, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain in what seems like a drunken tirade where he appears not to understand his own trade deal. We talk about tactical voting, how uninspiring all the options are, and get sidetracked by trying to order a pizza mid-episode.

Sometimes a movement, or a whole group of people, suffers from the actions of a few extremists in their midst. From feminism, through climate protesters to trans activists, to just men in general, there's always someone who provides opponents with all the ammunition they could ever want, by being unlikeable, unreasonable or just plain psychopathic. Nick and Carey set out to identify the 'bad apples' who skew the debate on both sides. That's the plan, anyway, but along the way they each get things wrong so embarrassingly that we may as well warn you about it now. Please don't judge the accuracy of all podcasts by the standards of this one.

‘Centrist’ is a dirty word in some quarters, but the centre is also where we’re always told all the important votes lie. What is Centrism? Are we Centrists? Or - more excitingly - are we ‘radical centrists’?

Carey and Nick try to nail down ‘the Centre’, along the way pondering why some people get upset if you don’t buy ‘the whole package’, having no strong opinion about Greta Thunberg, and of course, the age-old Centrist question: what is a ‘reasonable number of Jews to kill’?

Konstantin Kisin is a stand-up comedian with an unusual back story. Born in the then Soviet Union, his family were forced to flee to the UK. Luckily, they had oligarch money. Until they lost it all. More recently, he acquired some notoriety after refusing to sign a 'behavioural agreement' before a student gig. His 2019 Edinburgh show, 'Orwell that Ends Well', was an impassioned defence of free speech, and was directed by previous Citizens of Nowhere interviewee, Andrew Doyle..

Konstantin also co-hosts the ‘Triggernometry’ podcast with Francis Foster.

A government with no majority, an Opposition refusing to succumb to the offer of an election, 21 Tory rebels voting against their government, which reacts by effectively ending their careers, a Prime Minster who is saying he will defy the law, a Labour Party that says if they're in power they'll campaign against whatever deal they strike, lies, bluffs, double-bluffs...

British politics is in a state of utter chaos. Nick and Carey finally manage to get together to try to make sense of it all.

We put this one out quickly, but it's going out of date as you read these words. Read faster!

The link to the YouTube video Nick was taking about:: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBPZxbO7OLM

We’re 40 episodes old! To celebrate, it's another of the 'Nick in Edinburgh' interviews. This time, Nick chats with Andrew Doyle.

Andrew is a comedian and writer, probably best known for his fictional creations, Jonathan Pie and Titania McGrath. He also writes a column for Spiked and runs the comedy club, Comedy Unleashed.

This is a long chat (or two long chats with a break for tea) that takes in Edinburgh, comedy, free speech, democracy, Brexit (Andrew is pro-Brexit, unlike most comedic voices), being told you’re right-wing, alt-right or ‘alt-right adjacent’ when you’re left-of-centre, and what's happening/might end up happening, to the 'Woke' movement.

Nick is at the Edinburgh Festival. Carey isn't, so this is a chat between just Nick and comedian Simon Evans, during which they try to avoid spoilers about Simon's Edinburgh show, which contains some frankly astonishing revelations. Simon is one of those people you can just wind up and let talk, so this is a typically wide-ranging chat.

Yet again, it's that time of year when everyone in the comedy industry, except for Carey, heads up to Edinburgh (or down to Edinburgh, depending where you live [or stays in Edinburgh, if you already live there]) for the Fringe Festival.

In this episode Nick and Carey talk about how long they've been going to the Fringe, their memories of early shows, how preview season works, how much the whole thing costs, and how the Free Fringe has changed it all.

This year it's been even more difficult than usual to find affordable accommodation for performers over the Fringe, thanks to new rules about renting. We discuss that, reminisce about the time Carey put Nick's head in a guillotine, muse about the role of psychology in the bucket collection after a Free Fringe show and try to decide, ultimately, whether it's all worth it.

Britain has a new Prime Minister, and is about to have its hottest ever day. Nick and Carey take refuge in a friend’s flat in London and talk about what the hell is going on. They also discuss people using inaccurate quotations when it suits their tribe (Michael Gove didn’t exactly say that thing about people being sick of experts; Trump actually did condemn the white supremacists in Charlottesville; there’s a context for the oft-quoted lines used to paint Boris Johnson as a racist).

Then they get onto comedy, magic and when you can be too dumbfounding for an audience.

As the Labour party continues to be mired in accusations of antisemitism, Carey talks Nick through some of the antisemitic tropes that crop up again and again.