May 6, 2026

A Milton Keynes of the Mud feat. Gareth Dennis

We welcome Gareth back to the show to discuss something he recently discovered: a planned private city of a million people? in Cambridgeshire? Supposedly called Forest City One, and built entirely out of wood? Obviously this is never going to get built, but there are some... tendencies represented here. We also talk about recent profiles of Reform voters and the garbage UK media environment that has brought us to this point.

Check out Rail Natter here!

RILEY ALERT Check out No Gods, No Mayors here!

HUSSEIN ALERT Check out 10k Posts here!

MILO ALERT Check out Milo's tour dates here:
https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows

NATE ALERT Lions Led By Donkeys will be performing live in London on 29th May and you can get tickets here! Also, Nate's band Second Homes has just released their debut album, and you can stream it for free here!

Comments (57)

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Gnome Chompsky · May 27, 2026

I genuinely thought my music playlist started at the end and it was a new song from Arctic monkeys or bright eyes or something. Very cool sound, I am checking out the album!

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Horse Badorties · May 16, 2026

My feet are slightly deformed and I modify insoles to match my problems. An insole podcast would be my jaaaaaaam.

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Bethany Fine · May 14, 2026

Nate, this song is the tits.

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The Beak TM · May 14, 2026

Funny when u listen to old audio dramas and they r sponsored by coal.

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Daz Clyde · May 14, 2026

I'm a rail planner in California and i nearly dissociated when I heard California Forever come up bc I've had professional dealings with that hot mess and I #canteven

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Andrew Dunn · May 12, 2026

The viciously anti immigrant person who supports safe immigration reminds me of any time I ask followup questions to a transphobe who ends up describing exactly what they were just complaining about as the solution

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K · May 9, 2026

Yup when i wanna make a simple decision between basically identical pieces of future ewaste on amazon a 20-60min podcast is definitely best use of my time instead of jus buying items in order of highest reviews/most purchases and hoping that at least by the third or fourth return i will have got something good. Bad enough that any ai asked for product comparison is literally just regurgitating/hallucinating years old reddit posts. Jesus christ it would be commercially revolutionary if a retailer actually did QA/QC and sold products that worked, or yknow a nationalised retailer that only carried a few products with guaranteed quality of each type that it sourced or even manufactured itself, using economies of scale to bring down prices...😭

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sam p · May 7, 2026

Pretty much every DJ who got their start during the Summer of Rave is now 60

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Luna · May 7, 2026

"I want every progressive economic change possible, if only those minorities weren't holding them back somehow." I wonder if there's any instructive historical precedent for this perspective and its outcomes, a sort of vulgar socialism, but only for people of the nation. Can't think of any examples off the top of my head tho 🤔

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AmeliaaaaAAA · May 7, 2026

The Waiting For Godot reference caught me by surprise, thank you all for the slop updates

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Cat Mara · May 7, 2026

🎶And you can have it all My Milton Keynes of mud I will let you down I will build a dud🎵

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Ryan E · May 7, 2026

Carpenter whose dad is a DJ is fascinating

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Ryan E · May 7, 2026

Nova you joke but as Irish wine guy I could singlehandedly support a vineyard making Gewürztraminer here

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A sudden absence of bees · May 7, 2026

Do the USB cable podcast

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gareth fearn · May 7, 2026

I think the model for Forest City is actually the Ebeneezer Howard Garden City, but with crypto guys

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Savannakhet · May 7, 2026

Yes! I kept thinking about the old Jonathan Meades documentary about Letchworth and Welwyn.

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John · May 7, 2026

I mean going on the train in Britain is really nice in theory but in practice they are unusably expensive

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Nah · May 7, 2026

Good song at the end, there's a real The National - Apartment Story quality to the distorted bass parts

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Shiv · May 7, 2026

Gareth plugging all the gang 🥰😍

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Shiv · May 7, 2026

geology of cottage cheese is just another one of these protein-boosting schemes

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Shiv · May 7, 2026

I assume the bog makes a whole community gay to drink from so yay to that I guess 🌈

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Sam Greenlee · May 6, 2026

Nothing demonstrates just how dead crypto is like Forest City 1 not including a coin in its pitch. The city governance structure sounds exactly like Decentraland but in meat space.

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Sadie · May 6, 2026

Laughing my ass off at one million people in Neo Cambridge, we don't even have that many people in the entire county currently. Cambridgeshire flooding every year doesn't appear to have stopped them building almost anywhere else. They're currently building 9 houses in my village on land which is below sea level and that floods every year because its right next to the Great Ouse. Edit: I've read the white paper for the city and oml its so much more insane if you know the area. From what I can gather they appear to want to quad track the single track that goes through the middle of Cherry Hinton and run like 10tph minimum through it. I'm sure the residents will be delighted at all of the level crossings on the main roads into and through their area being closed 90% of the time lmao.

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mexicanhalloween . · May 6, 2026

They'll never eclipse the Bude Tunnel

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Sam Handwich · May 6, 2026

Took some pills I bought at the gas station, call that a "waiting for growth" situation.

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Cate Kneale · May 6, 2026

I want the Amazon AI podcast based on "arrived on time" and "it was a present but seems okay".

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Cate Kneale · May 6, 2026

Can't believe this podcast is now opposed to building in the lagoon. And just think, until the AMOC stops, we could be growing wine and malaria.

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Cat Mara · May 6, 2026

I know November is Our Lady of the Obscure Bit, but a bit about German grape varietals that involves the original English-language version of the Irish national anthem that no-one here even learns anymore… I am in awe

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Shiv · May 7, 2026

she’s got a beautiful brain

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Al · May 6, 2026

When Canada tour?

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A Shade In Shades · May 6, 2026

My internet addled mind is stuck on the idea of Amazon product review UK pirate radio. "Shout out to the Belkin crew holding it down on the 4.92 stars"

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James Rule · May 6, 2026

Looking forward to the unintentional ASMR Amazon podcast about the terrible AI knockoff drop shipped D&D dice...

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SHODAN · May 6, 2026

The talk about the "average voter" reminds me a piece of information I heard on Qi about when designing cockpits (I believe during WWII) they designed it for what they found to be the average person and that in practice nobody was found that could fit into it. Does make you wonder about the validity of doing things this way.

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Wawawawa · May 6, 2026

What's Qi? Anyway afaik that wasn't the cockpit itself, but the seats. Since "just make it bigger" doesn't quite work for that. Fun story. You're quite right though that the median voter is a fiction, and the view people have of it is pieced together from a thousand NYT columns that are interviewing/describing completely different people.

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aceplym · May 6, 2026

(We Don't Need This) House In Bog Thang

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Jack Georgeou · May 6, 2026

📣Antifascists Out for May 16th📣 It's the Nakba memorial day march AND Tommy 10-Names will be out with his band of merry muppets. Grab your mates, check TFL-Updates, and get to London on Saturday the 16th of May!

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Pilfering Kibble · May 6, 2026

Cool song Nate!

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trev · May 6, 2026

Appalling to hear about those gen ai review podcasts. I'm going to picket Amazon hq and demand that they at least use exploited and underpaid foreign labour to produce their on demand review podcasts. Who's with me?

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big meg · May 6, 2026

Same thing is happening with American wine,with NAPA valley investing in fucked vibes Twin Peaks Pacific north west wines now.

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Wawawawa · May 6, 2026

Which in and of itself was a TP plot point lol.

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Vanessa P · May 6, 2026

it is rather concerning how quickly the press has been able to dig up examples of polanski telling weird lies about stuff for no reason. It's annoying how much more eager they are to dig up shit on him than on Farage but like you should probably price that in at the start and just be honest about everything?? I guess that's the risk that was taken when a former hypnotherapist was made the face of social democracy in the UK lol

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alice · May 6, 2026

all of the local political leaflets here are just attacking each other for not opposing forest city enough

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Gareth Dennis · May 6, 2026

lol

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Pilfering Kibble · May 6, 2026

Can't wait till I get an opportunity to declare that something is "conceptually built on cottage cheese"

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Cate Kneale · May 6, 2026

I have got bored of the Swiss cheese metaphor for security and I welcome a new cheese analogy.

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Ben Schwabe · May 6, 2026

Nothing good has happened in Milton Keyes since they stole Wimbledon's football club.

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Vanessa P · May 6, 2026

hon hon hon, c'est "garèthe dénis"

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Sword Through Your Window · May 6, 2026

a podcast of dan hentschel rambling about a random amazon product for two hours would rule actually

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Noblese Oblahaj · May 6, 2026

When I play Tropico, I build the best housing possible. Civil rights for everybody. Free healthcare and education. Some people are still unhappy, for deranged reasons, and these people are thrown into the ocean by the equality stasi. This is probably what should be done with the median voter

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DT · May 7, 2026

'We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the Median Voters Politics and He Joined the Equality Stasi'

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Noblese Oblahaj · May 6, 2026

O'Riley is talking about the Irish microclimate again

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Gareth Dennis · May 6, 2026

LET'S GO.

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Al · May 6, 2026

Absolute banger!

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Nina · May 6, 2026

yay gareth!

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FunkEngine · May 6, 2026

Gareth++!

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Ali · May 6, 2026

I've been exiled from Cambridge, so I'm founding a more equitable society in the bog!

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George Toner · May 6, 2026

This whole time we thought they were putting poo in the water for profit but actually no, it was to keep people from establishing a more equitable society