Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry

Britain is in a bad place at the moment. The country that gave the world the Industrial Revolution is now visibly deteriorating. "Managed decline" is the popular phrase, although there is a debate over how "managed" it really is.

Tom Ough says that none of this is necessary. Britain could – and should – pursue a programme of innovation that benefits its people materially, but that also feels psychologically comforting in its cultural familiarity. The term for this vision is "Anglofuturism", our subject today.

Tom is a senior editor at UnHerd, co-host of the Anglofuturism podcast, and author of 'The Anti-Catastrophe League: The pioneers and visionaries on a quest to save the world.'

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this bonus episode I went on Against the Grain podcast with Matthew Schmitz and Julia Yost. We talked about the migration boom in Britain, birth rates, religious revivals and more.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/against-the-grain/id1823575411

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Lionel Shriver's new novel, a family with a large and lovely house in Brooklyn invite a Honduran asylum seeker to come and live with them. The young woman is pleasant and helpful. But the adult son of the family – unemployed, idle, and disagreeable – is deeply opposed to her presence in his home. This being a Lionel Shriver novel, the drama soon goes in an unexpected direction.

'A Better Life' is a novel about immigration, gender, and political polarisation – all topics we discuss today. Lionel is the author of nineteen novels, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction for the massive bestseller 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', and a columnist at the Spectator Magazine.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this bonus episode, I spoke with The Telegraph's Poppy Coburn about the ongoing threat to Dubai, and the city's (very revealing) role in the British cultural imagination. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"It's not that it's fake, it's that it's evil." That was what today's guest replied when I asked him to describe the nature of paganism. It's a term that we usually associate with Ancient Rome. But John Daniel Davidson uses a more expansive definition of this particular outlook on the supernatural, and he warns against it in the strongest possible terms.

John is a senior editor at The Federalist and the author of 'Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come.' Today we speak about the dangers of re-enchantment, and why John believes that the dark side of the supernatural must be regarded with the utmost seriousness.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.