Leveson 20000

I realise it's just being used as an example, but I literally transitioned while doing my PhD in the electron microscopy group at Cambridge and I just wanted to give them a shout out for being very supportive allies

Why the "Ironside" intro tho

Someone please recommend me a news outlet similar to Novara but without the creeping lib

Bonus episode on the free feed?? Oowee

The discussion on bullying about 39 minutes in is 100 percent correct and I think this is what a lot of discussion about the concept misses. Especially rings true with regards to autism/disability in schools. People not understanding this is how you get gormless neurotypicals declaring that anti-bullying policies have been a total success and bullying in schools is basically dead. This may be true for neurotypicals, but all they've done is shift all of that onto people who are super marginalised i.e. autistic and/or transgender people.

They made British "Threads", its called "The Day After"

I'm a pretty offline Aussie so had no idea why the fuck every time I read the Guardian, there were articles about this petty academic drama. Thanks for an enlightening episode and giving me a(nother) to give up on the Guardian for good.

I frequently think about my younger brother who got an unconditional to go to Cambridge and turned it down because he visited and the vibes were off

I really appreciated this episode. AND it's as depressing as anything you lot have put out. As a lifelong academic (Ivy League degrees and teaching at elite universities etc. etc.), what you were all saying is perfectly true and sadly funny. Newton and Galton and many others were perfect assholes, and what happened to Arday is appalling but really all too common in our industry. I've known several peers and friends who killed themselves in one way or another, or who have been hounded not only by the press but also by nonsense "NGOs" like the David Project. But I think that there's another layer you could add to your analysis (ha! academic talking) which is *how* the modern university was reconfigured from the medieval Catholic institution it originated as to the capitalist (and communist) production machine that it has been since the late 19th-century. Someone who would be an amazing guest is Reinhold Martin--author of "Knowledge Worlds" after many other ingenious books and articles--who has, IMHO, done more to explain the redesign of the university over the past century than anyone else. I'm sure that Riley and co could get a fascinating tune out of him for the audience. Anyways, just a suggestion. Thanks for what you do in reinforcing my sincere pessimisms with righteous anger and humour.

Anti anti racism is definitely different then regular racism

Wait the Isaac Newton who parlayed his Cambridge professorship into a job in charge of the royal mint, embezzled a ton of money and lost the lot in a stock market scam?

Pretty sure a Moffat-led British remake of the West Wing is some sort of Euclid-class SCP cognitohazard

The Isaac Newton who had a very public bitchy relationship with Robert Hooke? That Isaac Newton?

I appreciate the emergency warning, but could I get one in Welsh?

A school that waits for others to expose its facility (inspired by bigoted intent or otherwise), is a Predatory institution. Cambridge used this man and threw him out, for the same lack of respect. To respect your employees is to treat them with the standards that prevent all this in the first place.

As a decades long dallas resident i can assure you some of these suburbs have it coming

As a husband of a Black faculty with depression in the U.S. stories like this shake me to my core. rip Jason.

Negotiating student politics as a professor now is like the student union have identified that you are misogynistic towards female students and unsuccessfully tried to get you disciplined. A few years after Newton died a bunch of students in Trinity College Dublin got drunk and killed a Dean that they thought was mean.

The only bit of good news about the media I can think of is the circulation figures currently are dire for printed news media. Now while many will think is that these things are read mainly online and while this is true, as far as I understand, they still use printed circulation to prop up their operations still. Going full fash as they've been in the past few years just reaks of increasing desperation.

For a moment I thought you guys were ribbing at UT Austin, a real school that actually gave us a big part of the Covid mRNA vaccine and is actually pushing the cancer vaccine stuff light years ahead. Then I realized you guys said University of Austin, Texas

politically engaged youth reacting to the annoucement of a new Newsroom TV show: what's a newsroom? what's a TV?

My best Newton trivia: his famous quote about "standing on the shoulders of giants" was just him sarcastically being a massive bitch to his very short rival. Nothing in the slightest to do with being humble or appreciating the work of those that came before, just pure bitchiness.

I feel icky about the fact that even across the small sicko-set of pods I listen to there is not agreement whither fabulism; I was pleased to hear Nova touch on the type of liar that is quasi genuine but v insecure as that’s a person I’ve encountered (as well as the less sympathetic compulsive type). hugely cathartic to hear a full Who Gives a Shit from HK bc sadly I know who does (r slash Phd not the place to get perspective on these events). No one should lose their life over this! except maybe Cofnas :)

One of the reasons I love this podcast is just the sheer number of facets of the story you touch on. The whole tragic saga of Jason Arday is some kind of mandelbrot set, the closer you look the more is revealed. Regarding the point about Arday being hired by Cambridge cynically to make the university look good is I think an important one to focus on. So many institutions implement faux-DEI, Potemkin village policies that make them look progressive but in fact do little to actually change the very real inequalities they claim to address. If you think about it, Jason Ardays salary would have employed maybe 3-4 teachers in a poor or underdeveloped neighbourhood, but one of those things is significantly more marketable than the other.

Moffat is a good scriptwriter but his showrunning is a bit lacking, can't imagine a less interesting setting for a series than modern british politics tho, now if its set in the 50s, 60s or 70s that would be way better

The cognitive dissonance of Riley "Bubbles Too Sharp" Quinn balking at JD rejecting sparkling water.

There was a lot of protest against Cofnas getting hired here in Ghent. It was very unclear how he came out of the selection as the best candidate. There is a very funny interview with the Belgian news where he almost starts crying when they ask him some of the most softball questions.

When you tell the coin flipping machine, "Make no mistakes!" does that not spark the slightest pause for reflection? I realize this is a rhetorical question.

The way I can tell November is very much becoming a fellow LARPer is she's started crowbaring it into other conversations (one of us, one of us etc )

Isaac Newton was more concerned with Alchemy than his academic career. The mathematic’s were purely coincidental

That 404 article about the AI expert witness is such TF-bait that when I read it two days ago my brain automatically subbed in Riley’s voice for my normal internal monologue.

Cofnas didnt even lose his job at Cambridge as I understand it? His fixed term contract finished, and he left. So he is just resentful that black people have jobs there, basically.

Thanks to this episode, I now know who Nathan Cofnas is. As always, his face makes a strong case for his assertion that whites - indeed - "do it better". Real "default Oblivion-Breton-character" hours. //I know this is real childish, but between him and me, I still come out looking way better. Literally, as well.

Larping all the way down and it feels as if it destroys anyone who refuses to enjoy the larp. I've been thinking for a while now that being far right is essentially a larp that lets you run around being angry at foreigners while messing about with flags and doing a bit of violence and that this is the attraction but the media is just as much of a game to those involved. It has a powerful sense of righteousness that they then project onto the pronoun people. I bet Isaac Newton would have loved pronouns, by the way, and they can't prove me wrong.

I don’t know if it reflects how universities work in the UK, but everyone should read the book Disciplined Minds

The idea that the university cares more about being woke than knowledge is so dumb. For all of the faults of our local illuminati (and there are many, none of which are related to wokeness) this is one of the few places I've lived where people have actually cared about what I know rather than my lack of credentials (OU dropout babey).

On British Threads everyone would be a traffic warden and there would be no drinkable water.

No! God no! My only hope is to convince the CRTC to increase Can-Con levels to 100%. Bunker in and abandon the world, we can only save ourselves from terrible Americanized British TV.

As someone who has written expert reports for the court. Autenrieth WTF!? If this was Canada his boss should be asking when he will hand in his ring as he seemingly has no interest in exercising his professional judgment.

British West Wing when they really need is Veep

shocked, shocked to hear that the people at British Jacobin Magazine participated in an anti-woke panic. who could have guessed, from Aaron "George Galloway Seemed Like A Cool Guy Until 5 Minutes Ago He Said Something Fucked About Gay People And Now I'm Scared And Confused Because I'm Too Stupid To Recognise His Previous Obvious And Deeply-Held Bigotry And Malevolence" Bastani no less

the repeated pronounciation of Roblox with a "o" instead of an "oa" sound for the first syllable is very entertaining to me. possibly the most spiritually boomer thing ever said on this show other than maybe things milo said as a joke, but i do support it because it's a sufficiently evil company

I only found out about Jason’s death last night and quite frankly I’m still reeling, let alone then reading about the wider context which leaves me oscillating between grief and fury. I met Jason at a conference and when contacting to ask about giving a talk at my Uni, it became a facilitated conversation instead because Jason preferred involving others in discussion of topics, rather than being the focus of a room. Comprehending this whole situation feels impossible right now. I’m incredibly sad about the premature death of someone who managed to make conversations between acquaintances feel like talking to a good friend 💔 Now I’m going to try to listen to the episode and not do a big cry.