What's Left? With Jovan + Freddie

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We sat down with Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband last Wednesday at the FCDO for an honest and challenging conversation about Britain’s foreign policy refresh under PM Andy Burnham.

Miliband discusses

• Future sanctions against Israel if West Bank settlements expand after the election
• The UK’s position on international courts investigating charges of genocide over the war in Gaza
• His discomfort with Labour’s positioning on the war in Gaza during opposition
• Why the UK is supporting Saudi Arabia in its war against the Houthis in Yemen
• International support for Britain standing up for its values on the world stage
• Britain’s “maximum solidarity” with Ukraine and ensuring future US support after Witkoff calls Putin a “humanitarian”
• North Sea oil and gas and whether his priorities have shifted on energy security
• A reset to Britain’s cuts on development and foreign aid

00:00 Intro

01:02 Ed Stood Us Up at Labour Conference

02:57 Current UK Threat Level

05:47 Changing Foreign Policy

09:17 Settler Terrorism and Ethnic Cleansing Sanctions

11:40 Is it a Genocide in Gaza?

15:14 Will There Be Further Sanctions Against Israel?

19:01 Criticising the US on Their Support of Russia

23:08 Have Miliband's Priorities Changed as Foreign Sec?

26:02 Saudi Arabia and the Houthis

28:20 Can Britain Lead Internationally?

32:25 What Can We Learn From History?

34:41 Britain's Post-Imperial Identity

37:15 International Development and Foreign Aid

40:20 Is Britain Suffering From a Crisis of Confidence?

In our latest escapade to widen discourse on the Left, we sat down with Owen Jones to discuss his latest book, 'The Fall of The West'.

Certainly, Owen Jones is a polarising figure in British politics. Once upon a time, he was the leading talking head representing Labour under Corbyn. But he has since become a campaigner in his own right, now known across the globe for taking the mainstream media (and indeed his old party) to task over its coverage of the Middle East.

Owen's latest book looks at the broader demise of the West - an analysis shared with many on the populist right. His argument is that hubris has created decline, pushing the West to wage backfiring foreign wars that have destroyed its credibility, created global instability and added huge debts to an already crumbling financial model.

In this discussion we traverse the large expanse of modern foreign policy, how domestic politics has become polarised and address the numerous criticisms of Owen's anti-imperialist politics.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:47 How Do You Define ‘The West’?

10:12 Critiquing Corporatist Capitalism

14:45 Could The Left Predict The Rise of Fascism?

20:53 A New Left Political Economy

29:02 The Green’s ZiR Motion

38:42 The Two State Solution

47:47 ‘From The River To The Sea’

52:12 Is Western Intervention Ever Justified?

1:02:02 NATO, Putin and Ukraine

1:10:38 What About Anti-Western Ideology?

1:22:15 How Should We Defend Ourselves?

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Catherine Liu is literally the best. That’s all you need to know.

Slip into this portal of coherent dissent and slide on to the class politics bandwagon.

We take the scalpel to identity politics, liberal illiberalism and bioated bureaucracy.

What’s your universal principle? Ours is to increase the labour share of surplus value relative to capital. A perennial struggle.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:45 Was Identity Politics A Psyop?

05:35 Woke 1 Was Crazier

09:53 Is Egg Freezing Anti-Feminist?

14:17 The Professional Managerial Class

21:22 Why Class Analysis Went Out of Vogue

26:36 Is Catherine’s ‘Working Class’ Ahistorical?

38:12 University’s IdPol Script

44:20 Depressed Wages and Mass Migration

51:35 Left-Liberal Death of Vision

55:46 The Satanic Panic

1:00:18 Ever-Enlarging Bureaucracy

1:06:20 Institution Building

1:16:17 Zombie Liberalism and Disability Dependency

1:22:30 Does Work Give You Dignity

1:27:08 Mimetic Theory

We're delighted to be joined by the Rt Hon Kanishka Narayan MP. In our first episode from Labour Conference 2026, we discuss the backlash to AI doomsday warnings, the fragility of the AI economy and how this tech will be used - to the benefit or detriment of workers. As listeners will know, we've approached AI with a healthy dose of scepticism. Technology is itself neutral but the politics emerges in its application. We have plenty examples in history of how industrial revolutions disempowered workers before inevitable backlash and revolution. Do we need to wait for things to get bad? Or does the UK have a serious plan for a future that harnesses the white heat of technology? We delve into all of this and more, asking how the UK is preparing for the moral mission of worker-centric AI.

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Demographer Stephen J Shaw's research on global birthrates has become a cause célèbre of the radical right.

Since publishing his data on delaying parenthood as the cause for "unplanned childlessness", Stephen has been welcomed to the upper echelons of Right-wing discourse - with the likes of Jordan Peterson and appearances at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

Undoubtedly, these are places that don't share our politics. So why have we hosted Stephen?

Well, because Stephen's research and his methodologies have been peer reviewed. His data, as much as we might find it uncomfortable, is real. And if the Left doesn't have an analysis for the effects of global birthrate decline, then the Right certainly will.

In this discussion, we explore Stephen's findings and why there has been cross-cultural delaying of parenthood. In particular we question why population decline would be harmful, how attitudes toward parenthood have changed and why the Right have co-opted this issue as their own.

Is there a case for a left-natalism, drawing on the innovations and heritage of social democracy?

Chapters

00:00 Intro

05:43 Are Birthrates "Collapsing"?

13:03 Population Apocalypse?

16:05 Is Immigration a Fix?

22:00 The 'Replacement' Debate

26:03 Why The Left are Suspicious of Stephen

31:51 The Challenge of Ecological Collapse

37:42 Freddie and Jovan's Theory of Birthrate Decline

45:30 The Vitality Curve

51:24 Is 'Unplanned Childlessness' a Fair Term?

58:25 Can Delayed Parenthood be Reversed?

1:05:21 Is 'Hypergamy' Real?

1:11:20 The Loneliness Epidemic

1:15:02 Do Freddie and Jovan Want Kids

1:21:33 Have Romantic Relationships Changed?

1:25:50 Why Religious Fundamentalists Are Pro-Natalist

1:29:36 Is There A Case for Left-Natalism?

1:36:02 How Do AI and Demographics Affect Labour and Capital?

1:40:00 Should People Move To Africa?

1:45:18 How Can We Talk About Birthrates Maturely?

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Meet Schrödinger’s AI apocalypse - it is / isn’t happening. Cory Doctorow is the final boss of AI criticism. His sophisticated understanding of computer science paired with science fiction writing talents means he gets a good story about the future.

AI companies have been spending billions. Much of it has been in data centre buildout that is filtering out into the US economy though at a ~2% growth rote. But the rest has been in marketing budgets, selling us an ideological story about how AI will take on all the menial tasks we don’t want to do.

We don’t have our heads in the sand. There have been some monumental breakthroughs in computing power that is solving millennial maths problems, creating hyper-targeting weaponry and surveillance, advancing exotic isotope development for cures for cancer. It is enhancing what some, who use the software proficiently, are able to achieve.

Yet AI is not infallible. AI will not inevitably replace human labour. Like every political tradeoff, it is a choice.

Something has changed in recent days. En masse, the major AI players of Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk have agreed to a slowdown in AI buildout. Why? Because, they say, too many AI safety researchers are raising alarm bells of a mass extinction possibility from this tech.

So is it time to hit panic stations?

Cory Doctorow is not convinced. All the most threatening things tech is capable of: shutting down economies, ransomware cyber attacks, monopoly rent extraction, are risks we are already living with. If you’re worrying about the future, you should be worried about today.

00:00 Intro

07:09 Is the AI Apocalypse Happening?

12:30 Is The Crita-Hype View Cynical?

19:28 Stock Valuations from Storytelling

27:40 Can AI Replace Labour?

35:30 Who Wins From Automation Adoption?

43:52 Slowdown in Buildout and the AI Bubble

50:50 Digital Sovereignty Is Not About AI

59:05 A Post-American Internet

1:08:01 Can the Left Get Serious?

1:13:01 Are the Elites Divided?

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If you want a counter-counter-culture take based on FACTS and LOGIC, look no further than the Decoding the Gurus podcast. Who said there is nothing sexy about being sceptical about scepticism, defending institutional arguments or stress-testing scientific methodologies?

Matthew Brown and Chris Kavanagh have been dissecting the internet’s favourite gurus for over 5 years - debunking conspiracies and critically evaluating the totalising philosophies of these alternative media sensations.

It certainly seems that there are more gurus today than ever before. The internet and in particular video-based media is servicing a special kind of cult-like business, enabling mass dissemination and pseudo-community.

So why is it that there are more right-wing gurus than left-wing ones? What do the politics of online gurus tell us about wider society? Is there a grievance-mongering machine that is pointing people away from organised religion to a digital silo where they must pay for a worldview?

We answer all of this and so much more!

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

04:20 Are There More Gurus Than Ever?

10:01 The Relation Between Gurus, Science and Modernity

20:21 Is Grievance Culture Driving Gurufication?

26:02 How Does Economic Crisis Explain The Growing Market of Gurus.

30:30 Don’t Trust Faux Centrists

36:12 Does the Traditional Political Spectrum Exist Anymore?

42:10 The Alt-Right Political Content Industry

47:25 What Psychological Needs Are Met By Ideology?

51:15 Why Are There Fewer Left-Wing Gurus?

56:02 Is Gary Stevenson a Guru?

1:09:55 Have We Become Addicted to Frictionless Capitalism?

1:13:55 How Betting Has Got Out of Hand

1:20:11 Do We Need To Suffer More for Social Cohesion?

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Friend of the show, Matt Shea, returns for an update on the Andrew Tate case and a meaty analysis of Looksmaxxing CEO Clavicular.

Are young boys really looking up to these jokemen? Has the media misunderstood the manosphere as a moral panic? Or does it reveal something deeper about the gender wars and who is funding them?

Matt is your most hated grifter's worst enemy. An ex-VICE documentarian, Shea has investigated some of the most notorious stories. It led him to making a series of docs on Andrew Tate, where he spent intimate time with the Tate brothers and their 'War Room' in Romania.

Shea now co-hosts the BBC's new podcast 'Top Comment' which looks at disinformation and online subcultures. It's worth a listen if you've exhausted all your WL episodes while poolside chilling this summer x

Chapters

00:00 Intro

03:54 Louis Theroux’s Manosphere Documentary

07:48 Manosphere Ideology

10:15 Truth About Looksmaxxing

17:35 What’s Wrong with Clavicular?

24:06 The Online Freak Show Circus

27:10 Ceuta Crisis and Foreign Interference

34:25 The Right Wing Amplification Network

37:45 Tate’s Links to Russia

41:10 Andrew Tate’s Lunatic Lawyer

47:41 Latest Updates in The Criminal Investigation

54:01 It’s a Cult

1:01:56 Deep-seated Male Insecurities

1:05:08 What Is Positive Masculinity?

1:12:45 Changing the Culture

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Baroness Kidron completed Hollywood. She could be living the high life. Instead she's outchea trying to take down the latest Frankenstein of Capitalism: Big Tech.

Beeban is a crossbench peer in the House of Lords and has dedicated the latter stage of her career to keeping children safe online. It's somehow a contentious topic. Are children safe on the internet? Or has our generation been exposed to irreparable harms?

We discuss all this and more: what does AI sovereignty look like? How has Britain been captured by American corporate interests? What can we do to fight back?

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:15 Growing Up With Socials

07:20 Gen-Z, The Anxious Generation?

13:08 Does Big Tech Own Us?

17:03 Corporate America's Capture of Westminster

22:00 How the Tech Broligarchy Took Over

26:35 AI Sovereignty

32:05 What Could Spark the Anti-Big-Tech Revolution

39:15 The UK's AI Security Institute

43:23 Temporarily Embarassed Millionaires

48:14 Destruction of Real Life Communities

52:15 Britain's Dependency On US Tech

56:45 Gen-Z and Unemployment

1:03:01 Left-Wing Patriotism and National Service

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FIRST EVER RESTORE SUPPORTER IN THE HOT SEAT.

WHATS LEFT, WHATS RIGHT, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

INFLATION, MONETARY POLICY, CRYPTO, IMMIGRATION, CULTURE, DEMOCRACY, DEPORTATIONS, BILLIONAIRES, TAXES, LIBERTARIANISM, ECONOMIC GROWTH... WE COVER IT ALL.

CONSIDERED PUTTING IT BEHIND A PAYWALL... NAHHHH. But please please please consider donating to our show either via substack or by https://studio.buymeacoffee.com/dashboard . We need donations to keep our ting going.

Big ups to Peter McCormack for joining us for an open and wide ranging discussion on why he'd vote for Restore! Peter is one of Restore's biggest supporters, with a podcast sporting over 400k subscribers talking about crypto, economics and the right-wing side of the culture wars. While we might disagree on much, we are very grateful for giving us his time with his contribution to this episode!

Great to also see Hassan Damluji (WL #6) return to the stu for his second outing. If you liked Hassan's bars, he'll be returning soon with a show of his own. You can find out more about the work of his think tank, Global Nation by dropping him a follow @hassandamluji on all socials.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

03:45 Peter's Background

07:42 Hassan's Background

12:56 Monetary Policy and Inflation

20:54 Is Inflation Always Bad?

26:45 Democracy and Short-Termism

30:42 Restore and Deportations

38:32 Does Peter Have More Free Speech than Hassan

44:30 Why People Want To Deport All Muslims

49:36 Do Different Religions Mix?

57:42 Why Has Immigration Failed?

1:04:30 Hard Trade-Offs of Government

1:10:01 Billionaires, Relative Inequality and Minimum Wage

1:19:09 Can The Government Fix The Country?

1:29:02 Real Austerity, Debt and Balancing the Books

1:36:34 Wealth Taxes vs. Spend?

1:44:13 What We've Found In Common...

1:48:18 University Education