The Booking Club

For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In The Status Game, bestselling author Will Storr radically turns this thinking on its head by arguing that it is our irrepressible craving for status that ultimately defines who we are.From the era of the hunter-gatherer to today, when we exist as workers in the globalised economy and citizens of online worlds, the need for status has always been wired into us. A wealth of research shows that how much of it we possess dramatically affects not only our happiness and wellbeing but also our physical health – and without sufficient status, we become more ill, and live shorter lives. It's an unconscious obsession that drives the best and worst of us: our innovation, arts and civilisation as well as our murders, wars and genocides. But why is status such an all-consuming prize? What happens if it's taken away from us? And how can our unquenchable thirst for it explain cults, moral panics, conspiracy theories, the rise of social media and the ‘culture wars' of today?On a breathtaking journey through time and culture, The Status Game offers a sweeping rethink of human psychology that will change how you see others – and how you see yourself (Harper Collins).Jack met Will at Parrillan in Borough Yards, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In times of plenty, we stuff ourselves. When the food runs out, we're stuffed too. How have people in the British Isles shared the riches from our fields, dairies, kitchens and seas, as well as those from around the world? And when the cupboard is bare, who steps up to the plate to feed the nation's hungry children, soldiers at war or families in crisis?Stuffed tells the stories of the food and drink at the centre of social upheavals from prehistory to the present: the medieval inns boosted by the plague; the Enclosures that finished off the celebratory roast goose; the Victorian chemist searching for unadulterated mustard; the post-war supermarkets luring customers with strawberries. Drawing on cookbooks, literature and social records, Pen Vogler reveals how these turning points have led to today's extremes of plenty and want: roast beef and food banks; allotment, fresh vegetables and ultra-processed fillers.It is a tale of feast and famine, and of the traditions, the ideas and the laws which have fed - or starved - the nation, but also of the yeasty magic of bread and ale, the thrill of sugary treats, the pies and puddings that punctuate the year, and why the British would give anything - even North America - for a nice cup of tea.Pen met Jack Aldane at Brunswick House in Vauxhall, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode from Jack thanking you for listening to The Booking Club and asking you to write in with your recommendations of books, authors, restaurants for us to feature on the series in 2024.Email: bookingclubpod@gmail.comFOLLOW US:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pax is the third in a trilogy of books narrating the history of the Roman Empire. The series that began with Rubicon, and continued with Dynasty, now arrives at the period which marks the apogee of the pax Romana. It provides a portrait of the ancient world's ultimate superpower at war and at peace; from the gilded capital to the barbarous realms beyond the frontier; from emperors to slaves.The narrative features many of the most celebrated episodes in Roman history: the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii; the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian's Wall; the conquests of Trajan and the spread of Christianity.Pax gives a portrait of Rome, the great white shark of the ancient world, the Siberian tiger, at the very pinnacle of her greatness.(Little, Brown Book Group).Tom met Jack Aldane at Noble Rot in Bloomsbury, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth, Remi AdekoyaWhat really matters when it comes to race?Western conversations on race and racism revolve around familiar themes; colonialism, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the ideology of white supremacism form the holy trinity of the race debate. But what if we are neglecting a key piece of the puzzle? Something that explains why a racial order persists today despite a moral consensus it should not.In It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth, Remi Adekoya persuasively argues that – in our capitalist world – it is socioeconomic realities which play the leading role in sustaining racial hierarchies in everyday life and in the global big picture, something regularly overlooked in the current debate. Financial power is what enables ultimate influence over events, environments, and people, and, as Adekoya expertly demonstrates, it is money more than anything else that maintains the racial pecking order. Exploring immigration, technology, media, group stereotypes, status perceptions and more, this book cleverly shows how wealth determines what's what in key domains of modern life, and how this affects racial dynamics across the globe.An incisive, insightful and open investigation into the links between financial power and racial hierarchies, Adekoya sheds much needed light on the status and power imbalances shaping our world and reveals what needs to be done to combat them going forward. (Hachette)Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, by Kenan MalikIs white privilege real? How racist is the working class? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? Who benefits most when anti-racists speak in racial terms?The ‘culture wars' have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race' in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today's heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.Malik interweaves this history of ideas with a parallel narrative: the story of the modern West's long, failed struggle to escape ideas of race, leaving us with a world riven by identity politics. Through these accounts, he challenges received wisdom, revealing the forgotten history of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation.Not So Black and White is both a lucid history rewriting the story of race, and an elegant polemic making an anti-racist case against the politics of identity. (Hurst Publishers)Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he's died many times. Not just on stage - though he'll tell you about that - but in other ways, too. There's been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all...Eye-opening, revealing and painfully funny, this is a book about mortification, failure and all the times life doesn't work out as planned. But it also wisely questions whether the things we strive for - recognition, success, the approval of others - are really the things that matter. It's a book about death that reminds us how to live. (Orion Publishing)Mark met Jack Aldane at The German Gymnasium in King Cross, North London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population of some 750 million, sprawled from Ireland to Ukraine, from Sweden to Turkey? Who has always called it home, and who has newly arrived from elsewhere? Who are the people who drive our long-distance lorries, steward our criss-crossing planes, lovingly craft our legacy wines, fish our depleted waters, and risk life itself in search of safety and a new start?In a series of vivid, ambitious, darkly visceral but always empathetic portraits of other people's lives, journalist Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a frenetic and vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity, migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest for freedom.Laid dramatically bare, it may not always be a Europe we recognize - but this is Europe.Ben met Jack at Abu Zaad, in Shepherd's BushFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Depp v Heard: the unreal story is the definitive account of the gruelling court battles between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, by the reporter who was there. Using witness testimony and contemporaneous evidence, Nick Wallis has created a gripping reconstruction of the allegations of violence, drug-taking and wild extravagance which dominated two epic trials and made headlines around the world.Nick also weaves in his own reportage and insights, bringing the courtroom drama to life and analysing how courts in the UK and USA arrived at conflicting conclusions.If you want to know who to believe, Depp v Heard: the unreal story is your conclusive guide to what really happened.Nick meets Jack at Babucci in Walton-on-Thames, UKFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington argues that the industrial-era faith in progress is turning against all but a tiny elite of women. Women's liberation was less the result of human moral progress than an effect of the material consequences of the Industrial Revolution. We've now left the industrial era for the age of AI, biotech and all-pervasive computing. As a result, technology is liberating us from natural limits and embodied sex differences. Although this shift benefits a small class of successful professional women, it also makes it easier to commodify women's bodies, human intimacy and female reproductive abilities.This is a stark warning against a dystopian future whereby poor women become little more than convenient sources of body parts to be harvested and wombs to be rented by the rich. Progress has now stopped benefiting the majority of women, and only a feminism that is sceptical of it can truly defend female interests in the 21st century. (Forum)Mary meets Jack at Andrew Edmunds in SOHO, London UKFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Has any war in history gone according to plan? Monarchs, dictators and elected leaders alike have a dismal record on military decision-making, from over-ambitious goals to disregarding intelligence, terrain, or enemy capabilities. This not only wastes the lives of civilians, the enemy and one's own soldiers, but also fails to achieve geopolitical objectives, and usually lays the seeds for more wars down the line.Conflict scholar and former soldier Mike Martin takes the reader through the hard, elegant logic to fighting a conclusive interstate war that solves geopolitical problems, and reduces future conflict. In cool and precise prose, he outlines how to orchestrate military forces, from infantry to information, and from strategy to tactics.How to Fight a War explains the unavoidable, yet seemingly elusive, art of using violence to force your enemies to do what you want. It should be read by everyone seeking to understand today's wars, as well as those wishing to lead us through the coming decades of conflict. (Hurst)Mike meets Jack at Sankey's Old Fishmarket in Tunbridge WellsFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I am not Nicholas Rossi!” gasps Arthur Knight through an oxygen mask in March 2022. Recently discharged from a Covid ward in Glasgow, he's in a wheelchair. The police say he's Nicholas Rossi, suspected of faking his death and wanted for rape in Utah. The story makes headlines globally. When journalist Jane MacSorley meets Arthur Knight and his wife Miranda, she thinks the police have made a mistake. She embarks on a yearlong investigation, making a unique discovery which changes everything. (Audible)In The Booking Club's first deep-dive into the true crime genre, Jane MacSorley meets Jack Aldane at La Trompette in Chiswick to discuss the investigation: its thrills, challenges and rewards, plus an update on court hearings from March 2023. Still wondering about the tattoo? Sign up to Audible and discover the full story now.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everywhere you look on the internet, people are giving - and receiving - advice. Advice that promises to transform our lives. How to eat. How to think. How to get rich. How to manage our time.Across 8 episodes on BBC Radio 4 programme The New Gurus, journalist and author Helen Lewis travels through the strange, powerful and sometimes hidden digital spaces created by these new gurus. Where did they come from? How much power do these charismatic individuals wield? And why are so many of us turning away from the mainstream - mainstream medicine, mainstream politics and the mainstream media - and embracing the power of charismatic individuals instead? (BBC)Helen met Jack at The Hawksmoor in Borough, Central London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She is the woman who clinched the 2019 interview with Prince Andrew, described as 'a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion'. She is many things beside: the first in her family to go to university; a trained barrister; a single mum; a master of persuasion. In her former BBC colleagues' words, she was the 'booker extraordinaire', responsible for many of Newsnight's exclusives over the past decade, including Stormy Daniels, Sean Spicer, Brigitte Hoess, Steven Seagal, Mel Greig and Julian Assange.After 12 years producing content for Newsnight, McAlister reflects with candour on her experience, sharing not just the secrets of how the best news gets made, but also the changes to the BBC, the future of 'mainstream media' in the age of clickbait and the role of power and privilege in shaping our media landscape.This is a backstage pass to the most unforgettable journalism of our times. (Waterstones)Sam met Jack at The Wolseley in Mayfair on Piccadilly, Central London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On 20 November 2022, The Booking Club podcast and Unbound teamed up to promote Rogues' Gallery, a collection of the best satirical portraits from Martin Rowson's Twitter #Draw Challenges. At Stoke Newington's legendary Thai restaurant Yum Yum, voice of The Booking Club Jack Aldane hosted a live conversation with Martin about the book's origins, and why the joys of political caricature are accessible to anyone with a sharp pencil and an axe to grind with unchecked power.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a society we have never been less connected. The internet and globalisation fuel ignorance and anger, while the disconnect between people's reality and perceived identities has never been greater.Karl Marx outlined the idea of a material ‘base' and politico-cultural ‘superstructure'. According to this formula, a material reality – wealth, income, occupation – determined your politics, leisure habits, tastes, and how you made sense of the world. Today, the importance of material deprivation, in terms of threats to life, health and prosperity, are as acute as ever. But the identities apparently generated by these realities are increasingly detached from material circumstances. At the same time, different identities are needlessly conflated through a process of reeling off a list of -isms and -phobias, and are lumped together, as though these groups all somehow have something in common with one another. Th is process is not just inappropriate but obscures the specific nature of problems being faced.In The Identity Myth, David Swift covers the four different kinds of identity most susceptible to this trend – class, race, sex and age. He considers how the boundaries of identities are policed and how diverse versions of the same identity can be deployed to different ends. Ultimately, it is not that identities are simply more ‘complex' than they appear but that there are more important commonalities.In a powerful call to arms, Swift argues that we must unite against these identity myths and embrace our differences to beat inequality. (Hachette UK)David and Jack met for the second time at Toulouse Lautrec in Kennington South LondonFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Public understanding of, and outcry over, the dire state of the climate and environment is greater than ever before. Parties across the political spectrum claim to be climate leaders, and overt denial is on the way out. Yet when it comes to slowing the course of the climate and nature crises, despite a growing number of pledges, policies and summits, little ever seems to change. Nature is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. We remain on course for a catastrophic 3°C of warming. What's holding us back?In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to climate and environmental breakdown, and asks: are the 'solutions' being proposed really solutions? Tracing the intricate connections between financial power, economic injustice and ecological crisis, she exposes the myopic economism and market-centric thinking presently undermining a future where all life can flourish. The book examines what is wrong with mainstream climate and environmental governance, from carbon pricing and offset markets to 'green growth', the commodification of nature and the growing influence of the finance industry on environmental policy. In doing so, it exposes the self-defeating logic of a response to these challenges based on creating new opportunities for profit, and a refusal to grapple with the inequalities and injustices that have created them. Both honest and optimistic, The Value of a Whale asks us - in the face of crisis - what we really value (Manchester University Press).Adrienne and Jack meet at Big Jo on Hornsey Road in North London.Follow The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Satanic Panic to the anti-vaxx movement, the moon landing to Pizzagate, it's always been human nature to believe we're being lied to by the powers that be (and sometimes, to be fair, we absolutely are).But while it can be fun to indulge in a bit of Deep State banter on the group chat, recent times have shown us that some of these theories have taken on a life of their own - and in our dogged quest for the truth, it appears we might actually be doing it some damage.In Conspiracy, Tom Phillips and Jonn Elledge take us on a fascinating, insightful and often hilarious journey through conspiracy theories old and new, to try and answer a vital question for our times: how can we learn to log off the QAnon message boards, and start trusting hard evidence again? (Waterstones)Jonn, Tom and Jack met at The Grapes in Limehouse, London. Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook:@bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this brief guide to leading a more rational life, acclaimed physicist Jim Al-Khalili invites readers to engage with the world as scientists have been trained to do. The scientific method has served humankind well in its quest to see things as they really are, and underpinning the scientific method are core principles that can help us all navigate modern life more confidently. Discussing the nature of truth and uncertainty, the role of doubt, the pros and cons of simplification, the value of guarding against bias, the importance of evidence-based thinking, and more, Al-Khalili shows how the powerful ideas at the heart of the scientific method are deeply relevant to the complicated times we live in and the difficult choices we make.Read this book and discover the joy of science. It will empower you to think more objectively, see through the fog of your own preexisting beliefs, and lead a more fulfilling life. (Princeton University Press).Jim meets Jack at The Rocka in SouthseaFollow The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andy West teaches philosophy in prisons. Every day he has conversations with people inside about their lives, discusses their ideas and feelings, and listens as they explore new ways to think about their situation.When Andy goes behind bars, he also confronts his inherited trauma: his father, uncle and brother all spent time in prison. While Andy has built a different life for himself, he still fears that their fate will also be his. As he discusses pressing questions of truth, identity and hope with his students, he searches for his own form of freedom too.Moving, sympathetic, wise and frequently funny, The Life Inside is an elegantly written and unforgettable book. Through a blend of memoir, storytelling and gentle philosophical questioning, it offers a new insight into our stretched justice system, our failing prisons and the complex lives being lived inside. (Pan Macmillan).S6OgyYMuUtFkNilmsKfp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century is a long history of this present political moment. It recounts three histories - one about geopolitics, one about the world economy, and one about western democracies - and explains how in the years of political disorder prior to the pandemic the disruption in each became one big story. It shows how much of this turbulence originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies, and it explains why as the green transition takes place the long-standing predicaments energy invariably shapes will remain in place. (London Review of Books)Helen meets Jack at The Palmerston in East DulwichFollow The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

'I was amazed and intrigued by the way Leroy had stood his ground and progressed within the Metropolitan Police against so many obstacles: hostility, outright racism and being repeatedly overlooked for promotion.' Steve McQueen, from the Foreword.Discover the incredible true story behind Steve McQueen's critically acclaimed film Small Axe: Red, White and Blue in Closing Ranks.Leroy Logan's inspiring autobiography tells of an illustrious career and gives a fascinating behind the scenes look at the workings of the Metropolitan Police. One of the founder members of the Black Police Association Charitable Trust, Leroy relates with powerful honesty his first-hand experience of racism, and how his strong Christian faith helped him persevere in a frequently hostile work environment.Offering encouragement to other Black officers, Leroy's passion for good policing shines through, as does his touching concern to guide and empower young people. Closing Ranks will motivate anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of race relations in Britain over the last thirty years. It's a compelling autobiography from a successful Black man who has truly made a difference. (Waterstones)Jack Aldane meets Leroy at his favourite restaurant Yum Yum , in Stoke Newington North London.Follow The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

DAD is a deeply moving and inspiring collection of stories that represent the diversity of modern fatherhood and seeks to start a conversation that challenges the traditions associated with masculinity. Including 20 powerful and defiant stories about postnatal depression, becoming a new dad during the pandemic, miscarriage, widowhood, stillbirth, co-parenting, childbirth trauma, work-life balance, new dads at work, shared parental leave, being a stay-at-home dad, gay fatherhood and surrogacy, being a stepdad, black fatherhood, raising a child of dual heritage, being a single dad, faith and fatherhood, raising a child with autism, gender stereotypes and more. This is a ground-breaking book. A movement. Never before have a group of men come together to bare their souls and speak so openly and honestly about their fatherhood experiences. (Waterstones)Elliott met Jack at Isolabella on Red Lion Street in Holborn, Central LondonFollow The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On 23rd April 2021, the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of 39 former Subpostmasters and ruled their prosecutions were an affront to the public conscience. It is a scandal that has been described as one of the most widespread and significant miscarriages of justice in UK legal history. This is the story of how these innocent people fought back to clear their names against a background of institutional arrogance and obfuscation, a fight dragged out by the Post Office's refusal to accept responsibility for its failings.Nick Wallis, an award-winning freelance journalist and broadcaster, has been pursuing this story since 2010 when he met a taxi driver who told him his pregnant wife had been sent to prison for a crime she did not commit. Since then, he has recorded interviews with dozens of victims, insiders and experts, uncovering hundreds of documents to build up an unparalleled understanding of the story. (Bath Publishing)Nick met Jack Aldane at Andrew's Cafe on The Grays Inn Road in Kings Cross, LondonFollow The Booking Club:Twitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Booking Club's first live, in-restaurant event brings former BBC Radio voice, philosopher and author David Edmonds to the mic with Jack Aldane to talk about his favourite restaurant Paradise, in Hampstead, and his new book The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle. Listen and download to the full audio here.About the book:On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle—an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick—and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. (Princeton University Press).Follow The Booking ClubTwitter: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodFacebook: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listen to and download The Booking Club's first live London studio event from August 2021, in which former guest author Henry Mance met Jack Aldane for part two of their conversation about his book 'How to Love Anmials in a Human-Shaped World'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hyper-capitalism and extreme identity politics are driving us to distraction. Both destroy the basis of a common life shared across ages and classes. The COVID-19 crisis could accelerate these tendencies further, or it could herald something more hopeful: a post-liberal moment.Adrian Pabst argues that now is the time for an alternative – postliberalism – that is centred around trust, dignity, and human relationships. Instead of reverting to the destabilising inhumanity of 'just-in-time' free-market globalisation, we could build a politics upon the sense of localism and community spirit, the valuing of family, place and belonging, which was a real theme of lockdown. We are not obliged to put up with the restoration of a broken status quo that erodes trust, undermines institutions and trashes our precious natural environment. We could build a pluralist democracy, decentralise the state, and promote embedded, mutualist markets.This bold book shows that only a politics which fuses economic justice with social solidarity and ecological balance can overcome our deep divisions and save us from authoritarian backlash.​ (Polity) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this enthralling book, Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume's guide to life. He follows Hume on his life's journey, literally walking in the great philosopher's footsteps as Baggini takes readers to the places that inspired Hume the most, from his family estate near the Scottish border to Paris, where, as an older man, he was warmly embraced by French society. Baggini shows how Hume put his philosophy into practice in a life that blended reason and passion, study and leisure, and relaxation and enjoyment. (Princeton University Press) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With factory farms, climate change and deforestation, this might be the worst time in history to be an animal. In an age of extinction and pandemics, our relationship with the other species on our planet has become unsustainable. What if we took animals' experiences seriously - how would we eat, think and live differently?Henry Mance sets out on a personal quest to see if there is a fairer way to live alongside other species. He goes to work in an abattoir and on a farm to investigate the reality of eating meat and dairy. He explores our dilemmas around hunting wild animals, over-fishing the seas, visiting zoos, saving wild spaces and owning pets. He meets the chefs, farmers, activists, philosophers, scientists and tech visionaries who are redefining how we think about animals. (Penguin UK) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Comedian Geoff Norcott should have been Labour through and through. He grew up on a council estate, both of his parents were disabled, and his Dad was a Union man. So, how was it that he grew up to vote Tory?In this courageously honest and provocative memoir, Geoff unpicks his working-class upbringing and his political journey from left to right. Raised by a fierce matriarch and a maverick father on a South London council estate where they filmed scenes for The Bill, Geoff spends his youth attempting to put out kitchen fires with aerosols and leaping in and out of industrial skips. But as he reaches adolescence, his political views begin to be influenced by major events including the early 90s recession, the credit crunch, and a chance encounter with Conservative PM John Major.As an adult, Geoff begins to have the gnawing feeling that the values and traditions he grew up with no longer match Labour's. And, as Brexit appears, he feels even more like a double agent operating behind enemy lines.Written with warmth, wit and often laugh-out-loud humour, Where Did I Go Right? is Geoff's attempt to understand why he ended up voting ‘for the bad guys', and why blue-collared conservatism could be here to stay. (Hachette) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is lifted from The Booking Club's first live-streamed conversation. It features The Booking Club's host and producer Jack Aldane talking to Professor Chris Bail about Chris's new book: 'Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing'.In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves. - Princeton University Press Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writer and campaigner Louise Perry will publish a book in 2022 that'll make you question everything you thought you knew about the sexual revolution and its gift to women. In it, Perry mounts a counterfactual challenge to the story we often tell ourselves in the West about this epoch of the 20th century. We often assume that the social and cultural changes of the 1960s transformed women from a sexually repressed class into a class freed from biology, commitment and stigma. Moreover, we assume based on the prevailing progress narrative of our time that the more explicitly sexualised our culture has become, the more sexually liberated women have become also. But there is ample evidence today suggesting the costs of the sexual revolution have been dear for women. Perry shows how, so often, the barriers that were removed to make way for women's sexual liberation were in fact guardrails that protected them from extortion, humiliation and acts of violence perpetrated by men. She and Jack Aldane, the host and producer of The Booking Club, met at The Bingham Riverhouse in Richmond to discuss. Perry writes a weekly column for the New Statesman and is also the Press Officer for the campaign group We Can't Consent To This, which documents cases in which UK women have been killed and defendants have claimed in court that they died as a result of ‘rough sex'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Remi Adekoya teaches Politics at the University of York. Half-Nigerian, half-Polish, his focus is identity in its emotional, psychological and political contexts, particularly how identity, history, psychology and politics overlap in white-majority Western and black African societies. Remi lived in Nigeria and Poland before moving to Britain. He has since written for The Guardian, Spectator, The Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Politico, Evening Standard and UnHerd among others.A valuable new addition to discussions on race, Biracial Britain is a search for identity, a story about life that makes sense to us. An identity is a story. These are our stories (Hachette). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Part memoir, part essay, John Connell's latest memoir The Running Book explores what it is to be alive and what movement can do for a person. It is deeply intimate and wide-ranging, local and global: Connell is as likely to write about colonialism and the effect of British imperialism in Ireland and its former colonies as he is about life on his family farm in Ballinalee, County Longford. Told in 42 chapters, each another kilometre in the 42.2k race, the whole book is 42,000 words long and it captures what it is to undertake a marathon moment by moment, in body and mind. Above all, The Running Book is a book about the nature of happiness and how for one man it came through the feet. (Pan Macmillan)John spoke to Jack Aldane from his farm in Birchview, County Longford. He is looking forward to sushi at Yamamori in Dublin when lockdown ends in Ireland (https://yamamori.ie/). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Democracy is in crisis, and unaccountable and untraceable flows of money are helping to destroy it.This is the story of how money, vested interests and digital skulduggery are eroding trust in democracy. Antiquated electoral laws are broken with impunity, secretive lobbying is bending our politics out of shape and Silicon Valley tech giants collude in selling out democracy. Politicians lie gleefully, making wild claims that can be shared instantly with millions on social media.In Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics, Peter Geoghegan gives a brilliant guide through the shadowy world of dark money and digital disinformation stretching from Westminster to Washington, and far beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2021 has change in store for the series. Listen to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The vast majority of our country is entirely unknown to us because we are banned from setting foot on it. By law of trespass, we are excluded from 92 per cent of the land and 97 per cent of its waterways, blocked by walls whose legitimacy is rarely questioned. But behind them lies a story of enclosure, exploitation and dispossession of public rights whose effects last to this day.The Book of Trespass takes us on a journey over the walls of England, into the thousands of square miles of rivers, woodland, lakes and meadows that are blocked from public access. By trespassing the land of the media magnates, Lords, politicians and private corporations that own England, Nick Hayes argues that the root of social inequality is the uneven distribution of land.Weaving together the stories of poachers, vagabonds, gypsies, witches, hippies, ravers, ramblers, migrants and protestors, and charting acts of civil disobedience that challenge orthodox power at its heart, The Book of Trespass will transform the way you see the land. (Bloomsbury). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The coronavirus pandemic taught us something we ought already to have known: that care workers, supermarket shelf-stackers, delivery drivers and cleaners are doing essential work that keeps us all alive, fed and cared for. Until recently much of this work was regarded as menial by the the same society that now lauds them as 'key workers'. Why are they so undervalued?In Head, Hand, Heart, British journalist and author David Goodhart tells the story of the cognitive takeover that has gathered pace over the past forty years. As recently as the 1970s most people left school without qualifications, but now 40 per cent of all jobs are graduate-only. A good society must re-imagine the meaning of skilled work, so that people who work with their hands and hearts are valued alongside workers who manipulate data. Our societies need to spread status more widely, and provide meaning and value for people who cannot, or do not want to, achieve in the classroom and the professions. This is the story of the central struggle for status and dignity in the twenty-first century. (Penguin.co.uk) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marion Turner is Associate Professor of English at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Her latest book, shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize, and Winner of the 2020 Rose Mary Crawshay Award, is 'Chaucer: A European Life' (Princeton University Press).This groundbreaking biography recreates the cosmopolitan world in which a wine merchant's son became one of the most celebrated of all English poets. Turner is Chaucer's first female biographer.She chose to meet Jack Aldane at Gee's Restaurant in Oxford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Douglas Murray is a British conservative author and political commentator. His recent bestsellers include The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017) and The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, published in September 2019.Douglas meets Jack Aldane at The Wolseley on Piccadilly, St. James's in London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy and adventure. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel. As we hurtle toward a shiny, happy ‘self-driving' future, are we destined to become passengers in our own lives too?Driving, it turns out, offers a near-perfect embodiment of the broader changes being wrought by government and technology throughout our lives. In Why We Drive, the philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford shows the driver's seat to be one of the few remaining places where we still regularly take risk, exercise skill and enjoy freedom. But it is here too that we discover what we are losing to automation and the technocrats, and who will profit from the vision of progress they press upon us.Blending philosophy with hands-on storytelling and drawing on his own experience in the garage and behind the wheel, Crawford leads us on an irreverent but deeply considered inquiry into the power of faceless bureaucracies, the importance of questioning mindless rules and the battle for democratic self-determination against the surveillance capitalists. In turn he speaks up for rivalry and play, solidarity and dissent – and the existential value of occasionally being scared shitless.Wry, humane and occasionally hilarious, Why We Drive takes us to the heart of one of the defining questions of our times: who is really in control?(Penguin.co.uk) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vincent Bevins is an American journalist and writer. From 2011 to 2016, he worked as a foreign correspondent based in Brazil for the Los Angeles Times, having worked in London for the Financial Times. Bevins moved to Jakarta in 2017 to cover Southeast Asia for the Washington Post. His first book, published in 2020, is entitled The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World.In this shocking revision of Cold War history, Bevins uses recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to piece together events from this era that few in the developed world can claim to know. They reveal the consistent brutal exterminations of unarmed leftists by right-wing US-backed militias, the scale of which did more to seal Washington's victory in the period than any clash with the Soviet Union.Jack Aldane speaks to the author on the UK publication date of the book, 11 June 2020. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hierarchy is taboo in the modern world, yet attempts to do away with it altogether have consistently led to humanitarian catastrophe throughout history. Renowned Confucian scholar and political theorist Daniel A Bell joins professor Wang Pei in the co-authored work Just Hierarchy to argue that we should neither think it possible nor desirable to achieve equality without social hierarchy. Bell and Wang draw on Confucian and Daoist thought to lay out the case for morally justified hierarchies as distinct from those history resolutely condemns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Patrick Deneen is an American political theorist and Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. His areas of focus include ancient and American political thought, democratic theory, political theology, literature and politics, and political economy. Deneen is the author of Why Liberalism Failed, published in 2018. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Salvatore Babones is an American sociologist, associate professor at the University of Sydney, and an expert in Sino-US relations. His research is related to macro-level structure of the world economy, with a particular focus on China's global economic integration. He is the author of several books, the latest of which is The New Authoritarianism: Trump Populism and the Tyranny of Experts. He also writes articles for several titles, including Foreign Affairs, Al Jazeera English and Truthout. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Patrikarakos is a British journalist, author and TV producer, best known as the author of War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. He speaks to Jack Aldane on this first of several special episodes of the podcast, recorded during the global pandemic lockdown, about the ramifications of the coronavirus in Western Europe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eric Kaufmann is a Canadian professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a specialist on Orangeism in Northern Ireland, nationalism, political demography and demography of the religious/irreligious. Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities is Kaufmann's expanise yet fine-tuned analysis of the current and possible responses of white majority populations in the West to the age of ethnic transformation, and the inevitable changes this will bring to its cultural composition and identity.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marie Le Conte is a French journalist and political diarist living in London. She has worked for the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Evening Standard. Her first book 'Haven't You Heard? Gossip, Power and How Politics Really Works' is a unique chance to look beneath the veneer of decorum among the British establishment, and discover what really goes on each day inside the halls of power.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New author David Swift's analysis of the rise of the Woke and the 'identity Left' has come at a good time. In this discussion, he and Jack Aldane meet at Swift's favourite restaurant, Toulouse Lautrec in Kennington, to discuss the 2019 UK general election and the long way back to power for The Labour Party. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In her first book Stolen: How To Save The World From Financialisation, author and economics commentator Grace Blakeley argues that we are living through the death of an old economic order based on the failed economic policies of the 20th century. As Western countries struggle to manage the rise of right-wing extremism from within and the threat of extinction from without, it is now easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The alternative to the bleak future this portends is a radical move towards democratic socialism, which Blakeley argues offers us the chance to free ourselves from the financial imperatives that have determined our lives for more than half a century, and that can avert our current course towards self-destruction.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bestselling author and historian Tom Holland meets host Jack Aldane at his favourite restaurant Andrew Edmunds in SOHO to discuss his latest book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge and Deputy Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is a regular voice on Talking Politics and writes a regular column for New Statesman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.