Peter York's Culture Wars House Party

Thomas Frank, American author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, has a new book, The Creative Con, and a provocative question: what is creativity, and how did it become a political statement? Thomas argues that an idea that gained popularity in the late '40s has been used "as a kind of cover for a really ugly political project."We ask who the creatives are, who gets left out when they're celebrated, and what happens to their jobs. Did all that creativity and innovation make America any more innovative or productive? Is America more cultured, or has it become culturally stagnant? And will AI make the country as productive as it once was?We also look at why Elon Musk, in Thomas's words, "puts all that in the shade" when it comes to Gilded Age inequality, why creativity and innovation get used "willy nilly," how a tax cut in 1978 started a long run of tax cuts in the name of innovation, and why Thomas calls one decision "a blunder of historical magnitude."Then there's Barack Obama, who Thomas once believed in, and the "magic process" of innovation that none of us really understand. What became of the word under Trump? And why are IQ theorists and eugenicists making a comeback?Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Luke Harding, the Guardian journalist the Kremlin deported from Moscow in 2011, is out with Betrayal, a book about Putin, the war in Ukraine and "the betrayer-in-chief". Is Donald Trump, broadly speaking, "a Russian asset"? From Cold War intelligence files to the alleged tapes in a Moscow hotel, what does the evidence add up to, and what did the Mueller report miss?As Andy Burnham raises the question of Russian interference in Brexit, we ask why Britain never had its own Mueller report, what Russia really wanted from Brexit, and whether we took "our eye off the ball".And is there any hope? We're still "in the Premier League" in some things. But has Trump permanently broken America, or just deformed it?Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Rick Wilson, "the Cassandra of the Republican Party," spent thirty years as a Republican strategist and is now one of Trump's loudest critics. We cast an eye over our own politics and connect the dots between Trump and Farage: the money, the media tactics and the networks behind them.We ask why Trump inspires a "grudging admiration for the evil that he's done," who the "three large components" behind the throne are, why JD Vance is no Gerald Ford, and why European leaders are trying to keep Trump "parked in neutral."Then there's Trump's relationship with Putin, and why Rick thinks the damage it has done is underestimated. He also names the "two great cover-ups," and suggests manipulated mid-term elections could put America's second foot through the door of fascism.But all is not lost. Rick, after all, is "a ray of sunshine.”Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Joe Uscinski and Hugo Drochon started looking at conspiracies before they became de rigueur in 2016 and asked whether there are any links to democratic outcomes. Joe is a professor of political science at the University of Miami, and who says that conspiracy theories are "often for losers" (but let him explain ….) Hugo is an associate professor of political theory at the University of Nottingham, and he once bought a ticket to a David Icke show in the name of research. Before Brexit, his Cambridge team was already polling Britain's appetite for conspiracy, and the results made uncomfortable reading.We trace the Great Replacement theory from a French château to Charlottesville to Parliament Square, and ask why one idea fits so many countries. Who is supposedly being replaced, by whom, and why? Who believes it, and who has thought it through? We also ask whether anyone can be argued out of it, or whether these beliefs sit in "a little black box" that facts never reach. And we reveal what 23% of respondents on both sides of the pond firmly believe in.And I get some podcast advice to up my numbers – apparently David Icke can teach me a thing or two. Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Sarah Churchwell is an American cultural historian who has spent years unpicking the stories the United States tells about itself — from Gone with the Wind to The Great Gatsby — and noticing, with growing unease, how those myths echo in today’s politics. A professor of American literature and public understanding of the humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, she argues that the American Revolution is “unfinished business” and for the last 40 years America has been running “an undeclared political experiment” and Donald Trump is “a symptom of what’s going wrong with America.”We trace the history from slavery to widespread segregation – not just in the south – and laws which the Nazis thought “went a little bit too far for them”, and on to judicial coups. So, what of us? Did America learn its white supremacism at our knee? Are we now following their playbook wrapping our imperial fantasies in Union Jacks, poppies and Dunkirk.  And are we now learning “the lesson of Hungary”?Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Kate Ferguson co-founded Protection Approaches after working on genocide prevention in Rwanda — and noticing, with some alarm, that the warning signs looked oddly familiar back home. She's a foreign policy strategist working to stop mass violence before it starts, by raising the alarm on how identity grievance is weaponised to cause harm.She's just finished consulting 250 security and defence experts across Europe on the threats we face, and she comes bearing a dread trio — a homegrown far-right which has "breached thresholds of concern" including a "pogrom in Belfast"; Russian aggression; and a third that would have been unthinkable even a year ago — the United States itself, now "demonstrably practising from an authoritarian playbook."So what can be done? Should social cohesion be part of our critical infrastructure rather than a "nice to have"? Is the "hollowing out of the BBC" damaging to that cohesion? And is the point of politics to change the world — or is that an old trope?Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Rob Ford, professor of politics at Manchester University, has been a long-time watcher of the BNP, UKIP, Brexit and now Reform UK — explaining who these new right-wing insurgents really are, and why they're suddenly everywhere.We find out why "the numbers game matters", why he thinks we're in "the most unstable moment", and explore the great whirlpool of resentment that immigration only partly explains.Along the way: brand management, manufactured authenticity, and a cautionary tale about what happens when an ambitious academic reads his audience a little too well – "the brand has also become a prison."But there are reasons to be cheerful too — Farage's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" Reform model may be far less roadworthy than Trump's Rolls Royce.Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Professors Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeves of the London School of Economics, authors of Born to Rule – a forensic, often very funny X‑ray of the British establishment, drawn from that venerable directory of importance, Who’s Who. They’ve tracked thousands of the people who matter to discover who really holds power, how they got it, and why they’d rather you thought they were “just ordinary”. We talk about the “elite within the elite” (how many do you reckon there are?); the three factions inside the elite who “are contesting what Britain should look like” – and how that’s shifting; the importance of being “meritocratically legitimate”; and how the privately educated Nigel Farage manages to pull it off.Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social