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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

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This one is gonna set the cat amongst the pigeons.

In the spirit of openness and fair hearings, we've decided to bring Jack Roworth on the show.

Jack is a controversial online figure - a young man (the youngest to ever grace the stu at 19 years old) - who has been documenting his life on social media.

From messy sesh content to dangerous japes abroad, Jack broadcasted his antics as he was spiralling down alcohol and cocaine addiction.

He became a mainstay of the cursed TikTok algorithmic circus, feeding viewers viral drips often under the influence. He is not the first, nor will he be the last, of this zany and alarming content.

Jack left school at 14, flunked his GCSEs and has since been raising himself amidst the hedonic pulls of adult society. For a period he was a NEET, (not in education, employment or training).

But about a year ago, Jack decided to get sober. Concentrating his entrepreneurial spirit into journalism, he's now on a clip farming journey around Westminster and beyond.

Jack's recent doorstepping of Reform's Richard Tice and Robert Jenrick, his local MP in Newark, has been the subject of criticism on the Right. The Telegraph's Camilla Tominey called Jack and other 'faux journalists' out for harassing politicians. Jack's defence is that he is asking questions in the public interest.

With the context of the brutal murder of Ann Widdecombe, you can understand the heightened concerns around MPs safety. Widdecombe is the third MP to be murdered in a decade.

Does this new style of independent journalism amount to genuine scrutiny? Or is it simply a new vehicle for virality, used to intimidate those in public office to push a certain agenda?

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:09 Ann Widdecombe and Political Violence

07:07 Journalism or Harassment?

16:13 Ethics of Platforming Jack

19:53 Public Interest Journalist

26:30 Growing Up and Going Viral

31:45 Jack's Education and Community

38:04 Jack's Cocaine + Alcohol Addiction

45:51 How Did Jack Become Political?

50:15 Planning Jack's Career

55:50 Friends Who Went Down the Wrong Path

1:02:01 Do Reform Understand the White Working Class

1:05:10 Jack's Next Steps

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Babe wake up, new PM just dropped!

Since we launched this podcast, politics has been lurching from crisis to crisis. Yet again, Britain has a new leader. Our 5th in 4 years, our 7th in a decade. It can’t go on like this, surely?!

This week we have a special episode with Paul Nowak, the General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress, the national umbrella organisation for trade unions in England and Wales, representing nearly 6 million workers.

Founded in the 19th century, The TUC has a storied history. Agitating for greater rights and protections for workers, Trade Unions have guaranteed the weekend, sick pay and holidays.

As the relation between capital and labour is rewritten by new tech, we forget our Union heritage at our own peril. Collective bargaining has been at the core of progressive change. Without it, we are at the mercy of vested interests.

For many historians, Margaret Thatcher won a decisive victory over agitating Unions. Union memberships drop from over 50% to 22% today.

But now, memberships are rising again as workers realise the threat ahead. Oligarchy has returned. Tech is taking jobs. And democracy itself appears to be on the line.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:00 Union Members For Farage

06:05 Burnham’s Change Agenda

11:01 Getting Britain Building Again

17:36 Can Burnham Take On Vested Interests?

23:42 Employment Rights vs. Farage’s Crypto Interests

29:05 Populist Right Hypocrisy

36:30 Ending Neoliberalism

42:03 Fixing the Unproductive State

48:52 Can the Union Movement be Reactionary?

53:37 Left-Wing Talent Pipeline

59:54 Trades vs. Universities

1:05:34 Reindustrialising Britain

1:13:16 Lifelong Educational Reform

1:20:20 Can The State Afford Radicalism?

1:25:10 Youth Unemployment and Mental Health

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Are we more American than European? Has the UK's future been fatalistically forged? New Statesmen Editor and Brexit Historian Tom McTague offers an account of the real trade offs faced by the British establishment.

Too often, politics resorts to a conclusion of managed decline. A despondent shrug. Are we suffering from learned helplessness? A belief that it’s now too hard to create the change our society is yearning for?

History does not work like that. A radical contingency of events might present as inevitability. But in McTague’s chronicle of Britain’s topsy-turvy relationship with the Europe and its Union, one thing stands out: it is never over.

So perhaps the Pro-European Left needs to channel their inner Declan Rice (“It’s not done!”). Maybe it isn’t - maybe the dream of Britain as an integral player in the EU need not be abandoned.

But if that is to be the unwritten Post-Brexit story, the #FBPE brigade need to get real. Why did Britain choose to leave?

One answer is to lament the brainwashing of the right-wing press, the outsized influence of Cambridge Analytica and the weather on the day (it was raining for both teams, Ty!).

But another answer, one that cuts deeper, would argue that this is a profound civilisational question. One that must arrest the hard realities of geopolitical competition, like a British moth to an American flame.

In the end, it is about money and it is about power. How much hard power should Britain give up to be able to choose its own destiny? Is it even possible to decouple from the American empire? What control is really open for us to wrest back, after all?

Some of these questions we attempt to answer. But the diagnosis is clear: if we want to keep the welfare state, things are going to have to change.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:11 Is Farage Closer to Power or Failure?

08:37 Unpredictability of the Next Election

14:28 Where’s the Left’s Dominic Cummings?

18:18 Why the Starmer’s Project Failed

23:32 Reindustrialisation and the AI Revolution

28:42 Tech Regulation and British Sovereignty

35:05 The Populist Right’s Civilisational Project

40:01 Restoring the Left’s Radical Tradition

44:35 A Federal Europe or an Imperial America?

51:32 Can Middle Powers Create an Alliance?

58:82 Britain’s Post-Brexit Ambitions

1:03:19 A Left-Mythology on English Identity

1:10:58 Enoch Powell’s Impact on The Modern Right

1:14:00 A Future For European Integration?

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Another heatwave just dropped so we’re here with our first in-depth convo on the climate crisis, joined by one of the world’s biggest eco-influencers, Michael Mezz.

After studying economics at Stanford, Michael decided to hold onto his soul and become an activist to prevent ecological collapse. Remember folks, the magic circle law firm / big 3 consultancy isn't the only way.

In this episode we explore the major shift in green politics: away from classic environmentalism and towards a social media friendly left-populist economics. In particular, we discuss the decline in the ‘green growth’ agenda and the rise of the ‘degrowth’ or ‘post-growth’ political economy, pushed by thinkers like Jason Hickel (who has featured on Michael's podcast).

What would reality look like if we exited the perennial treadmill of infinite growth? If such a future is possible how can it happen?

Our objections to degrowth models centre on the global top-down application of such economic theories. Is a wholesale rewiring of the global economy a fantasy untethered from the hard realities of geopolitical competition?

We also examine challenges around the Jevons Paradox (that energy efficiency creates greater throughput rather than reducing emissions), whether China is making a moral or expedient green transition and why green economists can’t escape the attraction of modern monetary theory.

The question the left has to answer in the face of radical global uncertainty and multipolar competition over energy, security and tech, is who benefits from our system?

A world of automation beckons under a canopy of ecological collapse and mass suffering. The old world has certainly died and a new world struggling to be born. Let's hope it's not on Mars.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

04:14 Polanski and Eco-Populism

11:20 Zarah Sultana Hypocrisy

12:11 Internationalism vs. Nationalism

17:42 Has ‘Green Growth’ Failed?

26:02 Why Eco-Socialists Want ‘De-Growth’

30:55 Does De-Growth Make Sense?

40:44 China’s Electrodollar vs. US Petrodollar

49:50 The Challenge of Declining Living Standards

57:20 Global Anti-Imperialism

1:00:54 Debating Modern Monetary Theory

1:05:22 Wealth Taxes and Democratic Capitalism

1:17:45 Is Populism De Facto Bad?

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Green Industrialist and Labour Party mega-donor Dale Vince is beefing with Energy secretary Ed Miliband, as speculation around Andy Burnham's Chancellor nomination reaches fever pitch.

Vince, in typically bombastic style, intervened in the Times to argue that Labour should 'scrap Net Zero'. Yep, you read that right.

Is Britain's most divisive 'Eco Tycoon' reneging on his lifetime commitment to environmentalism?

Of course not.

Vince is arguing that a number of policies within 'Net Zero' amount to a waste of public money, zeroing in on carbon capture and heat pump subsidies. He says that Reform UK's attack line against Net Zero is cutting through as families face stubbornly high energy costs, which look set to rise after Trump's reckless war against Iran.

Conveniently for Vince, this intervention coincided with Burnham's first major speech outlining his policy direction if he becomes Prime Minister.

Centring on increasing devolution, Burnham has committed to reindustrialising Britain - which could run into conflict with Labour's highly ambitious green transition to a net zero energy grid by 2030.

Subsequently, Miliband has been the subject of unprecedented Union endorsements and denouncements as Burnham weighs up his choice for Chancellor. Not only is Miliband too ideological for the right-wing press, it appears he's no longer the man for Dale Vince either.

Their beef hinges on Miliband's failure to fully commit to Vince's flagship policy of 'breaking the link', decoupling expensive gas pricing from all other energy pricing... Let us know what you think in the comments.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

03:25 Dale's Beef With Ed Miliband

05:23 'Breaking the Link' between Gas Prices and Electricity

09:05 Carbon Capture Racket

12:30 Dale vs. Nuclear Energy

16:19 In Defence of Nuclear Buildout

20:15 Why Isn't Britain's Grid Working?

24:19 Is Dale Protecting His Business Interests?

28:56 Air Conditioning Rollout vs. Climate Activists

31:21 Does Burnham Have a Mandate for Change?

33:20 Will Vince Remain a Donor if Burnham Reindustrialises?

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Emily Lawford's viral New Statesman cover story 'Meet the Angry Young Women' created huge waves of online discourse, undulating from the radical TikTok Left to the extreme Right on Elon Musks's brainwashing algorithm.

Polling from Merlin Strategies found that Gen-Z women were feeling extremely pessimistic,about their future, young men and our politics. Why?

We thought there was no one better to ask than our own resident (self-annointed) angry young woman and friend of the show, Tilly Middlehurst (a.k.a. BlondePraxis).

Is the anger justified or misplaced? Is the pessimism motivating or paralysing? Do these two young women agree on the causes... and the solutions?

Apologies for issues with the sound/video quality, one of our cameras overheated :( Appreciate your patience with us as we improve over time x

Chapters

00:00 Emily's Viral 'Angry Young Women' Article

04:59 Tilly’s Response

10:02 Is the ‘Femosphere’ as Dangerous as the ‘Manosphere’?

16:36 Is Gen-Z Feminist Pessimism Justified?

20:27 Do Young Women Misperceive Injustice?

27:04 Which Gender is More Negative About the Other?

36:42 Biological Essentialism and Reactionary Feminism

44:30 Politicising the Fertility Crisis

51:40 Anti-Feminist Global Conspiracy?

55:26 Gym Influencers vs. Manosphere

1:03:43 Has Social Media Catalysed Polarisation?

1:13:47 Identity, Community and Free Speech

1:21:57 Tommy Robinson’s Unite The Kingdom Rally

1:26:30 Migrant Violence Against Women and Girls

1:36:10 Reaction to Emily’s New Statesman Article