THE SOCIAL MELTDOWN

We’re Not Saying It’s Aliens But… Did Next Week Cause This Week?

Mahmood Mamdani, one of the most respected voices in post-colonial scholarship, is suddenly being discussed alongside Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party. We look at how these two completely different figures ended up in the same conversation and explore what it says about the moment we are living through.

We also talk about what a realistic future for the Greens might look like and whether the United Kingdom could ever see a Green Prime Minister under the current political system.

From there we move to outer space. An interstellar comet, 3I ATLAS, has arrived from beyond our solar system at the same time Mercury is in retrograde. The combination has set off a wave of speculation about alien probes, government cover-ups and unusually bad timing. We break down what the comet actually is, what scientists are saying about it and why people keep connecting astronomical events with existential questions.

Retrocausality also enters the conversation this week. New research suggests that future choices might influence earlier outcomes at the quantum level. We explore what the science actually means and why the idea has captured so much public attention. It raises some surprisingly entertaining questions about how time might work and how much control any of us really have over anything.

Finally, we touch on the vote in the United States to release the Epstein files and what the political consequences might be. We look at the scale of the vote, what documents may be released and whether any of this could shift public opinion or affect the current administration.

It is a big week for politics, physics and deep-space visitors, and somehow all of it ends up feeling connected.

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Fresh back from round two of Graeme’s wedding (the “attention-based one,” his words) and a very soggy van week in France, we kick off with Paris myths, Versailles fanboying (Louis XIV, Napoleon’s big wall-sized portrait), and why the city still slaps in the rain. That segues into the week’s wildest story: the Louvre-style museum heist done in broad daylight—think cherry-picker, glass cutters, seven minutes, scooters. Cinema.

Then the internet falls over. We unpack the AWS US-East hiccup that nuked everything from banks to doorbells, and Graeme’s current obsession: Yanis Varoufakis’ “techno-feudalism”—how Big Platforms became our new lords, why profit no longer matters, and what that means for the rest of us.

From there it’s AI deepfakes and Sora, TikTok’s talent for tricking boomers, and whether any video is believable anymore. Plus a very us detour into therapy vs. CBT, the reality of doing sessions remote, and one massage story you’ll wish you could un-hear. (Pot Noodle discourse is back too. Sorry/not sorry.)

It’s doomy, daft, and occasionally useful—Social Meltdown exactly as advertised.

Notes: strong language, mentions of mental health.

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Gen Z in Nepal have officially had enough of nepo babies and censorship, so they did what any overstimulated, terminally online generation would do: they overthrew the government. Turns out, when your leaders act like TikTok influencers, the comments section eventually comes for them IRL.

Meanwhile, nepo babies are breeding faster than AI influencers — Hollywood, politics and definitely old school broadcasting!

We also revisit the timeless Boris Johnson “dead cat” trick — the ancient political art of dropping a scandal so chaotic that everyone forgets the first one. Fun fact: it’s still working globally! From Westminster to Washington, the cats keep flying.

And in this week’s Letters from the Big Fat Mail Sack, listeners report from collapse camps in Germany, where people are paying good money to learn how to survive the end of civilisation. Fire-making, mushroom foraging, emotional breakdowns — all inclusive.

It’s the apocalypse, but make it content!

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The week’s most unsettling headline dropped out of Utah: far-right agitator Charlie Kirk has been shot dead at a university event, a shocking act of political violence in an already overheated United States.

On Social Meltdown, Graeme and Dylan sift through what’s confirmed, what’s conspiracy, and why this matters far beyond one man’s fate.

Kirk built his brand by pushing anti-LGBTQ talking points, anti women's rights, spreading election lies, and culture-war outrage—and now his killing risks turning him into a martyr for the very movement he helped radicalise.

Answering messages from listeners, we talk about the shooter’s reported motives, the rumours of a mysterious plane that “went dark,” and what this says about a society where toxic rhetoric and collapsing trust make violent flashpoints feel inevitable.

A brutally honest look at how democracies crack when hate becomes a business model.

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🔥 Topics this episode:

• UK emergency "alert" - a blatant nuclear zap drill vs. China’s nuclear parade - the same week
• Zack Polanski: Green Party’s new eco-populist leader
• Trump renames the Pentagon “Department of War”
• Listener reactions: fear, laughter, and mass-text panic
• What would you do with the real 3-minute warning?

This week on Social Meltdown, Graeme Smith and Dylan Evans dive head-first into the week’s chaos — from the UK’s bizarre “zap drill” phone alert to China rolling out nuclear weapons alongside Russia, Iran, and North Korea. While one side tests push notifications, the other shows off nukes — so what does that say about the world we’re living in?

We also take on the Green Party’s new leader, Zack Polanski — an openly gay former actor and hypnotist who calls himself an “eco-populist.” Can he really take on Farage and make socialism and the environment interesting again? Did he really offer to hypnotise your boobs bigger during a stint as a psychotherapist? Does it matter given the situation we're in?

Meanwhile in the US, Trump is rebranding the Department of Defense into the Department of War — with talk of using it for immigration raids and using his military on "rebel" cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Plus: we pull the best listener letters of the week — from awkward zap alert train rides to parents dealing with terrified kids, and whether the government should be allowed to mass-text us about food shortages and energy crises. And we close with the big one: if the real 3-minute warning ever came, what would you do?

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