Épisodes

  • Excerpt - Alex responds to listener questions

    Excerpt - Alex responds to listener questions
    Dec 22 2025
    If you'd like to listen to the rest of this episode of PTO Extra! please consider becoming a £5 supporter at patreon.com/poltheoryother
    Voir plus Voir moins
    5 min
  • COP30 and Lula's politics of class conciliation w/ Sabrina Fernandes

    COP30 and Lula's politics of class conciliation w/ Sabrina Fernandes
    Dec 11 2025
    Last month the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference - better known as COP30 - was held in the Amazonian city of Belem in northern Brazil. The conference was widely seen as a disappointment - with a binding agreement for a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels being blocked by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other oil producing states. In the today's episode economist and activist Sabrina Fernandes joins PTO to talk about her thoughts on COP30. We spoke about how the structure of the COP process could conceivably be reformed in order to stop recalcitrant states vetoing action on climate. And we also talked about whether multi-lateral climate negotiations are being rendered irrelevant by developments in the global economy and the rapid expansion of renewable energy. We went on to talk about Sabrina's recent article in 'The Breakdown', titled Lula's Dilemma. We talked about the contradictory approach of Lula and the Brazilian worker's party towards climate and the environment and what Sabrina sees as a failing politics of "class conciliation" that has disastrous environmental consequences.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    53 min
  • Spotify unwrapped w/ Liz Pelly

    Spotify unwrapped w/ Liz Pelly
    Dec 3 2025
    In 2006, the music streaming service Spotify, founded by Swedish entrepreneurs Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon was launched in the context of widespread music piracy, file sharing, and declining profits for the music majors. Presenting themselves as music fans who were intent on saving the music industry, Spotify has since gone on to become the dominant music streaming platform, far eclipsing any of its rivals, and making Ek and Lorentzon billionaires. While once lauded by the media, Spotify's reputation has significantly declined as understanding of how little most musicians receive from streaming has become more widespread and as Spotify has courted controversy by populating some of its playlists with so-called "perfect fit content" - stock music produced for Spotify in order to reduce the amount of royalties the company pays to rights holders. Journalist Liz Pelly has done more than most to bring to light practices such as these and to challenge the myth-making of Spotify's founders. In today's episode we spoke about the early years of Spotify, as it emerged in the context of mass file sharing and as the major music labels were coming to see Sweden as a lost market - making it ripe as a site for experimentation with streaming. We went on to talk about how Spotify is shaping the user habits of listeners and about the damaging consequences of the datafication of music. Finally, we chatted about some of the inspiring efforts to challenge the dominance of Spotify that have emerged in recent years, as both musicians and listeners seek to find ways to create music communities and to preserve and curate music history - practices that Spotify's dominance has severely eroded.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    1 h et 36 min
  • Excerpt - Richard Seymour responds to listener questions

    Excerpt - Richard Seymour responds to listener questions
    Nov 22 2025
    If you'd like to listen to the rest of this episode of PTO extra please consider becoming a £5 supporter at patreon.com/poltheoryother
    Voir plus Voir moins
    1 min
  • Rewind: Alexander Gallas on the Thatcherite offensive

    Rewind: Alexander Gallas on the Thatcherite offensive
    Nov 15 2025
    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 archives appearing in your feed. In the following interview - recorded six years ago - Alexander Gallas talks about the extent of popular support for the Thatcherite project and about the debates of the 1980s between Stuart Hall and Bob Jessop regarding how to characterise Thatcherite hegemony. Alexander is the author of 'The Thatcherite Offensive: A Neo-Poulantzasian Analysis'.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    52 min
  • The Sunlight Managers w/ Sofia Menemenlis

    The Sunlight Managers w/ Sofia Menemenlis
    Nov 5 2025
    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 technology.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    46 min
  • Excerpt - Sebastian Budgen on collapsing trust in the French state

    Excerpt - Sebastian Budgen on collapsing trust in the French state
    Oct 29 2025
    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
    Voir plus Voir moins
    3 min
  • The roots of the Korean far-right w/ Kevin Gray

    The roots of the Korean far-right w/ Kevin Gray
    Oct 20 2025
    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 broader conservative currents. Kevin explained the far-right's roots in the Japanese occupation of Korea and the role of the United States in supporting those conservative elements that collaborated in Japanese rule. We also talked about how the far-right has developed a capacity for large-scale, militant street protest and why it is that young Korean men are increasingly supportive of the far-right.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    1 h et 3 min
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_DT_webcro_1694_expandible_banner_T1