LEFT/OVER Podcast

As the Tories finally make a move to fulfill their implicit campaign promise to completely gut the BBC, we speak to sociologist Tom Mills of Media Reform UK about how the institution has served as an extremely useful tool for British political parties in power, the absurd licence fee funding model, and the possibility of change. It's still difficult to feel any sympathy towards it as an institution after the farce of the 2019 election.

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The Matrix returned, albeit in cynical and forced circumstances, after almost 20 years of sustained cultural significance. Culture writer Oluwatayo Adewole helps us understand the complex legacy of the series and the Wachowskis more generally. We inevitably talk white dreadlocked henchmen, dance orgies, and most importantly, the central metaphor of a class of robots subjugating us and stealing our lifeforce through deception.

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Another DC Sentinel Sam joins us, this time Sacks, to discuss how posting broke a once great journalist with terrible politics, Glenn Greenwald. We give the man all due respect for his work on the Snowden Leaks and Vaza Jato, but try to make sense of his nonsensical blend of right wing politics, unhinged dedication to culture wars he is on the wrong side of, and most of all his original take on belligerent contrarianism which spawned a whole generation of annoying Twitter guys. Sorry we aren't as cool as the Red Scare girls.

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Producer Connor passed the probation episode and returns to discuss the thankful termination of 2021. December brought us the welcome and surprising guilty verdict of Ghislaine Maxwell as well as the victory of Gabriel Boric in Chile. The Tory heartland of North Shropshire went Lib Dem followed by small time Labour inexplicably claiming a moral victory. Most importantly, we are stunned by the harrowing loss of a man's apes from his cryptocurrency wallet.

Subscribe at patreon.com/leftoverpod for £5 a month (or more if you are feeling generous) for the full episode as well as lots more exclusive content coming your way soon!

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The British media that stuck with Boris Johnson through borderline genocide has drawn the line at lockdown cheese and wine, and with the shell of a Labour Party pulling ahead without a single policy, a change of Prime Minister doesn't look far away. Marcus Barnett joins us to discuss his potential successors, all extremely right wing, but one uniquely odd in Liz Truss. We reflect on the past two years of weird pandemic politics, cover-ups and obvious corruption in an increasingly failed state, and wonder how change still seems so far away now everything is broken.

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Marcus Daniel from Media Diversified gives us an extremely concerning glimpse at the consequences of the Nationality and Borders Bill for millions of British people with migrant backgrounds. In order to understand racism in the modern British state, we inevitably address the disgraceful Windrush Scandal and revisit this year's laughable Sewell Report. To trace how the citizenship-stripping precedent was set we go back to the Theresa May years and arrive at the grim media debacle surrounding Shamima Begum, when many people correctly predicted where this was heading.

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One of the most respected and accomplished posters in the Southern Hemisphere, Sipho Hlongwane joins us from Joburg to discuss the tragedy, accomplishments and humour of Madiba's young nation. De Klerk is dead, Zuma is somehow avoiding serving his prison sentence, and the ANC is still very much in power, but the shoots of a young and hopeful left are rising and coming after power, pulling down those dumb statues en route.

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50 years on from the Liberation War that gave birth to Bangladesh, De Montfort University's Dr. Fatima Rajina lends us her expertise on a nation and diaspora still scarred from one of the worst genocides in history. We start at the partition, when East Bengal became East Pakistan, chart the rise and hope brought by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League's newly won independent state, and the struggles and many coups and counter-coups that have so far marked a young country.

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Ghislaine Maxwell is in front of her accusers in court, Robert Maxwell is in a tomb on the Mount of Olives (or is he??), but what are the chances of her and her endless list of elite British and American sickos facing justice for the lives they have ruined? Alice Caldwell-Kelly from all the other podcasts joins us to discuss how Ghislaine is going to get whacked, and the political and cultural significance of her life to this nation, Nonce Island.

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Our momentous first premium episode and triumphant podcasting debut of producer Connor dissects November 2021, giving it mostly low marks. COP26 reached a predictable anticlimax, that little ratboy Kyle Rittenhouse got away with the not insignificant crime of killing people, and brazen government corruption came to light but was diminutively labeled 'sleaze'. In better news, Barbados escaped and British columnists are extremely mad.

Subscribe at patreon.com/leftoverpod for £5 a month (or more if you are feeling generous) for the full episode as well as lots more exclusive content coming your way soon!

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