Politics Theory Other

PTO has now been going for more than seven years and some of the earlier episodes unfortunately have truly abysmal audio quality - because of the podcasting technology of the time. But, thanks to the wonders of audio editing software in 2025, it's been possible to quite significantly improve the sound quality of those episodes, and so in the coming months there will be a few interviews from the ar...

Sofia Menemenlis joins PTO to chat about her recent article in The Breakdown on the concept and history of solar geoengineering - or “solar radiation management" as it has become known. We talked about how the implementation of SRM is imagined, what the potentially catastrophic side effects of such a project might be, and who the key players are in terms of research and potential deployment of the...

Sebastian Budgen returns to provide an update on the political situation in France. If you'd like to hear the rest of this episode of PTO Extra! please consider becoming a £5 supporter at patreon.com/poltheoryother

In December of last year, the then South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol - of the right-wing People Power Party - attempted to impose martial law on the country in what was described as a 'self-coup'. Kevin Gray joins PTO to talk about his recent article in the New Left Review on the Korean far-right. We chatted about the background to the attempted coup and the history of the Korean far-right and...

Phil Burton-Cartledge returns to PTO to talk about the ongoing crisis of the British Conservative Party and whether there is a way back for the party that has dominated British politics for two centuries. We talked about whether the failings of Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch are particular to her, or merely a reflection of deeper lying structural problems, and we discussed why it is that Nigel...

Sebastian Budgen returns to PTO to talk about the political crisis in France where Emmanuel Macron has appointed his third prime minister in a year. We talked about the political background of the new prime minister, and long-time Macron ally, Sebastien Lecornu and whether the French Socialist Party is likely to prop up the new government. We also talked about the 'Block Everything' protest moveme...

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Juliet Jacques interviews James Schneider (co-founder of Momentum and director of strategic communications during Jeremy Corbyn's time as Labour leader) about the creation of the new left party in Britain, why there's a greater opportunity for a left electoral breakthrough now than there has been in living memory, and about the need to rebuild the left's social institutions.

Adam Hanieh, Rafeef Ziadah, and Robert Knox on their new co-authored book, 'Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine'. We spoke about the inadequacy of framing the question of Palestine and the Gaza genocide solely as a humanitarian issue and how the Israeli project of settler-colonialism has been part and parcel of the expansion of European and American capitalism. We also ta...

In today's episode Cecilia Rikap - an expert in the political economy of science and technology - speaks with Paris Marx (host of the excellent Tech Won't Save Us podcast). Cecilia and Paris discussed the subservient approach that Keir Starmer's Labour government has taken to tech policy and how willing Starmer has been to give tech companies whatever they want. They went on to discuss global depe...

Expert on China-Iran relations William Figueroa joins PTO to talk about the relationship between China and Iran in the wake of the twelve day war between Iran and Israel. We chatted about why China's backing for Iran has been - and is likely to continue to be - relatively limited as China balances support for Iran with its other interest in West Asia. We also talked about the extent to which Xi Ji...

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Owen Hatherley responds to listener questions by Politics Theory Other

In 1998 Leigh Claire La Berge was hired by a major communications conglomerate, where she worked alongside employees of the soon to be disgraced Arther Anderson (the auditor of companies involved in high profile corporate fraud such as WorldCom and Enron). Leigh Clare and her colleagues were tasked with working on the problem of Y2K - also known as the millennium bug - when it was predicted that t...

Jeremy Gilbert on the Oasis reunion and the britpop phenomenon more generally. We talked about the music that britpop marginalised, why 90s nostalgia is so prevalent, and why it was that of the various guitar groups of the time it was Oasis who became so successful in the mid 1990s.

Journalist Séamus Malekafzali joins PTO to talk about the aftermath of the Israel-Iran war. We chatted about where the cessation of hostilities leaves the two states militarily, and whether Iran's strategy of reliance on ballistic missiles and a loose regional alliance was wholly misbegotten or just poorly implemented. And we talked about why the Trump administration shifted from their red line of...

Owen Hatherley returns to discuss his New Left Review article on the Welsh guitar band, the Manic Street Preachers. We talked about the particular appeal the group seemed to hold for working class kids from non-metropolitan backgrounds in the 1990s, and about the forbearance and occasional embarrassment that is the lot of fans who've followed their work in the subsequent decades. We also talked ab...

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Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi joins PTO to talk about his recent article in the New Left Review on Israel's unprovoked attack on Iran. Eskandar explained why he sees Israel's goals as not being confined to destroying Iran's nuclear programme, but also - and more importantly - the de-development of Iranian society and the balkanisation of the country. We also talked about how Iran is weathering Israe...

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Richard Seymour discusses the abrupt increase in Western criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza, China's energy transition, and how to understand the Trump administration. If you'd like to hear this episode in full please consider becoming a £5/pm PTO supporter on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/poltheoryother

Radhika Desai returns to PTO to talk about the latest round of violence between India and Pakistan, following the terrorist attack that killed 26 tourists in Indian administered Kashmir on April 22nd. We discussed the situation in Jammu and Kashmir since 2019, when the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi revoked the territory's special status under the Indian constitution and brought it...

Natasha Lennard returns to answer listener questions on the escalation of the Gaza genocide, the prospects for a federal ban on abortion in the United States, and whether we are seeing the emergence of a distinctly liberal brand of transphobia in the US. If you'd like to hear this episode in full please consider becoming a £5/pm PTO supporter on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/poltheoryother

Jake Werner on US-China relations in the context of the trade war. We discussed why Donald Trump has dialled down his rhetoric over tariffs, and why the term "decoupling" hardly captures the severity of what a breakdown of the economic relations between the US and China will look like. We also talked about the prospects of increased military tension, and whether we can expect the development of pr...

Amjad Iraqi returns to PTO to discuss the Israeli offensive in Gaza - following on from Israel's violation of the ceasefire in late March. We spoke about why the ceasefire was always likely to be violated, the eroding support for continuation of the war within Israel (as the war increasingly comes to be seen as a way of shielding Benjamin Netanyahu from corruption charges) and about the increasing...