The Exchange | Long-form interviews from the New Statesman

We live in a world where as many people have instantaneous access to porn as to clean water.

At peak times, close to a tenth of internet traffic is devoted to streaming adult content. But while porn has quietly taken over the world, it seems that this industry is no longer just about sex. It's about clicks, attention, data. And while the ubiquitous and instantaneous access to pornographic content has impacted our sexual relationships and habits, it’s also deeply changed how we see the world and our own place in it.

The porn industry was the blueprint for the attention economy and the forefather of personal branding. It’s also one of the starkest examples of our phones knowing us better than we know ourselves.

Patricia Nilsson, Financial Times reporter and author of Guilty Pleasure: The Pornification of the Internet, the Economy, and Everything Else joins Oli Dugmore on this episode of The Exchange.

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Since the publication of No Logo in 1999 - a critique of big brands and consumer culture - Naomi Klein has been one of the most influential voices in leftist politics in the world. In the past 3 decades, she’s explored the intersection of capitalism, war, climate, and conspiracies.

Now in her latest work, and first written collaboration, she turns to fascism. As she sees it, we’ve entered “End Times Fascism” - a perfect storm of the rise of right-wing authoritarianism, tech evangelism, and ever-growing inequality. “The most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world,” she warns with co-author Astra Taylor, “an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.”

It’s a difficult conversation to have, contemplating the destruction of our world. But if there’s one person who can articulate this clearly and precisely, it’s Naomi Klein.

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The summer just passed was the hottest on record. Next year, the scientists predict, will be even hotter.

And what will happen between these two infernos? Respite? Wrong. More extreme weather.

Storms, droughts, and floods will sweep the world in coming months.

George Monbiot, environmental activist and author, joins Oli Dugmore to discuss our new climate reality, how prepared (or rather unprepared) we might be, and why governments and those in power around the world are still ignoring not just the warning signs - but the unfolding disaster.

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In Japan, couples can rent a grandchild in order to make them feel less bereft on special occasions. In South Korea, dog stroller sales have overtaken pram sales. And in France, deaths outnumbered births for the first time since the Second World War in 2025. So what's actually going on?

Award winning journalist Camilla Cavendish joins Oli Dugmore to discuss her new book, Generation Maybe: Why We're Having Fewer Children, and What It Means for Us All.

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Owen Jones burst onto the scene in 2011 with his bestselling book Chavs: the demonisation of the working class. Since then his activism and journalism has followed the ebbs and flows of the left in UK politics, his own push and pull relationship with the Labour Party - which he ultimately left in 2024.

Now he wants to cast his analysis beyond Britain. He joins Oli Dugmore in this episode to discuss his new book The Fall of the West: how they really lost it.

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Fuchsia Dunlop has dedicated much of her life to eating Chinese food.

If you’re interested in Chinese cuisine and culture, you may have come across her through television programmes, heard her on the radio, or cooked one of her recipes.

And if you haven’t, stick around and you’ll be tempted to dive a little deeper into this extraordinary world.

Fuchsia joined Oli Dugmore on the day her latest book, Five Tastes, was published, to talk about the flavours that define Chinese food, what they reveal about an ancient culture, and the political and economic factors changing Chinese cuisine - both in China and in the West.

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Alexei Sayle has never much cared for a conventional view of the world.

Born in 1950s Liverpool to committed communist parents, he was named after Maxim Gorky - real name Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. Dyed-in-the-wool Marxism, in other words, was baked in from birth, and he’s Jewish on his mother's side. 

His first two memoirs, Stalin Ate My Homework and Thatcher Stole My Trousers, told the story of that red upbringing. Now Sayle is back with volume three: How I've Tried to Change the World, exploring a lifetime of protests, marches, and what decades on the picket line have taught him about being a Marxist today.

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In 2011, Luke Harding was ordered to leave Russia - the first Western journalist to be exiled since the fall of the Soviet Union. As the Guardian's senior correspondent, he continued to watch Russia from afar, covering WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. But in recent years he crept back closer to Moscow, reporting from the front lines of the war in Ukraine.

His new book, Betrayal, follows the many contours of this conflict and what they tell us about the new age of global power: What kind of control does Russia have over Donald Trump? How did North Korean soldiers end up in Ukraine? Why did a Reform leader undertake work for the Russian state for 40k?

Luke Harding joins Oli Dugmore in this episode of The Exchange, a podcast from the New Statesman.

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Most people would say that Britain is, by and large, a liberal country. Individuals have the freedom to express their individual beliefs, others are expected to accept this difference in opinion with a certain level of tolerance. Our government is decided by free and fair elections, we have a high level of personal freedom and protected rights.

But Adrian Wooldridge, author and Bloomberg columnist, thinks we're getting it completely wrong in how we think about liberalism.

Wooldridge joined Oli Dugmore to ask whether Britain is a liberal country shortly before discontent from both the left and right ousted Keir Starmer from office.

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For ten years Gianni Infantino has run FIFA more or less unchallenged - cosying up to Putin, the Saudis, and above all Trump, and turning the World Cup into the most commercially aggressive tournament the sport has ever seen. 

Then a few weeks ago, it emerged he'd been secretly negotiating to sell a fifth of FIFA's business to outside investors for $20 billion. The plan collapsed within days, under a revolt from football associations around the world.

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For decades, hell, even centuries, there’s only been one show in town for the British right - the Conservative Party.

But now, as the British electoral system complains and convulses and shudders and shrieks, a right-wing party has been at the top of the polls; it’s just not the Tories.

Broadcaster, author and political commentator Iain Dale joins Oli Dugmore to discuss Reform, Restore, and the potential revitalisation of the Conservative Party.

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Keir Starmer is no longer prime minister, Andy Burnham is. 

What just happened? Why did it happen? And what now? 

Oli Dugmore is joined by the New Statesman's editor-in-chief Tom McTague for a Starmer retrospective.

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Gary Stevenson, economic campaigner and YouTuber, is using this change in government to lobby for a wealth tax. Without one, he predicts, "society will collapse".

He joins Oli Dugmore on this episode of The Exchange.

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Over 1000 of Epstein's victims of sexual abuse and trafficking have now been identified; some have chosen to come forward publicly, and among them there was one voice which was the loudest. Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

In 2021, she decided she wanted to tell her own story, in its entirety. Joining forces with the ghostwriter Amy Wallace, she began working on Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

But in 2025, before publication, Giuffre was found dead in her home in Australia. She’d let it be known that should anything happen to her, she wanted her story to be told.

Amy Wallace joins Oli Dugmore to continue telling that story.

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Statement from Sky Roberts as printed in Nobody's Girl:

“Just to straighten this out, I never abused my daughter and didn’t know that Forrest —- did that either. If I had known about that, I would have been very angry and taken care of the situation. I gave my daughter every single thing she ever wanted and never ever touched her sexually, I never even knew what was going on with Epstein until I read about it online and getting calls from news agencies. There is so much they are getting wrong, even her middle name, it is Virginia Lee Roberts and not Virginia Louise. I am a moral person and believe that men who take advantage of young children should be prosecuted and then castrated. It really pisses me off that someone would write that I would ever abuse my children. As a father, I only tried to give my children a good life.”

Statement from Giuffre vs Prince Andrew court case, 2022:

"Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre's character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks. It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over the years. Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others. He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims."

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Some had dubbed Starmer as "the Trump whisperer", so how has this change in leader come across in the US? Do they even care?

Mehdi Hasan, founder of Zeteo, joins us on The Exchange to discuss the view from across the pond and how Britain became a punching bag for the American right.

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Then social media came along. This is one of the reasons social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes whole heartedly in the social media ban for under 16s, which has been rolled out in Australia, and will be brought into effect in the UK early next year.

But is the ban really working in Australia? Is banning a solution? And is there a way to let young people benefit from the opportunities of the internet safely?

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Yesterday morning Keir Starmer resigned as prime minister. Today is the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum. Britain will soon welcome its seventh prime minister in a decade.

Are the two events connected? Or is country's instability rooted further back in history?

Editor-in-chief Tom McTague joins Oli Dugmore.

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Children's laureate, screenwriter, author of Millions, architect of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, and father of seven, Frank Cottrell-Boyce joins Oli Dugmore to discuss what childhood means in Britain today.

Over two years visiting schools, prisons and asylum hotels, he found a country that has quietly stopped looking after its youngest citizens. He talks about the NEETs crisis, furniture poverty, what summer holidays now mean to children who dread them, and why the most radical thing you can do for a child is sit on a sofa and read to them.

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Mariana Mazzucato is one of the most influential economists of modern times. An avowed progressive, her ideas impact the lives of millions of people, from the United States to sub-Saharan Africa. She was directly consulted in the creation of Biden’s CHIPS Act, which is worth $280 billion. The World Bank’s Mission 300, is straight out of her book Mission Economy.

Oli Dugmore sits down with her to discuss the hope for progressive change in our political and economic systems.

The Common Good Economy: A New Compass by Mariana Mazzucato is out now (Allen Lane).

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Are AI companies the new empires?

Journalist Karen Hao says the parallels are striking. This disruptive sector requires vast amounts of land, minerals and water – not to mention data and content from individuals. 

Hao interviews subjects ranging from those close to Open AI CEO Sam Altman to workers in the Global South who’ve been traumatised by their jobs in AI content moderation.

She joins Oli Dugmore on The Exchange. 

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Guy Standing is a British labour economist best known for coining the term "precariat" to describe the growing global class of people living with unstable employment, mounting debt, and chronic insecurity.

Standing’s latest book, Human Capital, explores how the education system has been corrupted and privatised.

He joins Oli Dugmore to discuss this, as well as how his concept of the “precariat” differs from Marx’s “proletariat”, and how a bold, progressive politics must flourish to combat the rise of authoritarianism.

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Charleston Festival is running until May 25. Find out more here.

Ten years on from the referendum that redirected the course of British politics, the New Statesman's editor Tom McTague is joined by Caroline Lucas, Anand Menon and Marina Wheeler to consider how we should think about our relationship with Europe.

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Eric Schlosser is one of America’s foremost investigative journalists, writing about everything from the prison system to nuclear weapons, exploring the hidden systems underpinning modern life.

25 years ago, he set out to investigate the economic model behind one of America’s most recognisable industries: a system built on low-paid workers, dangerous conditions and the exploitation of migrant labour.

He joins Oli Dugmore to discuss America’s complicated relationship with McDonald's, the rise of fast food as both a cultural symbol and an economic system, and how Britain seeks to replicate this.

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Rather than a relic of the past, Mary Beard sees the classical world as a powerful tool for understanding the present.

It's an idea she has explored in over twenty books on ancient history and numerous documentaries on the BBC and elsewhere, all of which have made her Britain’s best known classicist.

She joins culture editor Tanjil Rashid in the studio.

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Mary Beard's new book Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old is available now.

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In 2011, Ben Lerner stormed onto the scene with his debut novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, a winning blend of low comedy and high art. He has since firmly established himself as one of America’s most acclaimed novelists and is a leading voice in so-called autofiction. Now he returns with his fourth novel, and it may be his most profound yet. 

In Transcription, Lerner turns his mind to the nature of art, and of ageing. It’s a novel about generations, of growing children, and dying forebears, and the way the secrets and gifts of life and art move from one era to the next. 

It’s also a novel about technology, and our increasing reliance on it, the way it shapes our speech, our thoughts, our memories and even our conceptions of ourselves.

In this episode, Tanjil Rashid sits down with Ben Lerner to talk about how we record our conversations, why novels may matter even more in the age of AI, and - in his words - the bankruptcy of political speech.

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Anthony Seldon, historian, educator and one of Britain's leading political biographers, has been for a long walk.

His new book, The Path of Light, recounts his extraordinary 1300 kilometre passage to Auschwitz.

Tracing stories of courage, resistance and moral clarity across a continent once consumed by darkness - it's a journey that speaks not only to the past, but powerfully to the world we're living in today. 

Anthony joins Tom McTague to discuss his journey, as well as his biographer's perspective on Britain's recent Prime Ministers.

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Fatima Bhutto was born into exile - and into one of the most powerful political dynasties in South Asia.

Her life has been shaped by both privilege and profound personal tragedy.

Born in Afghanistan, she spent her early years displaced, after her grandfather, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed under General Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime.

Her childhood was marked by instability and violence. Her father, Murtaza Bhutto, became involved in militant activism linked to acts including a political assassination and a plane hijacking.

When the family returned to Pakistan, tensions deepened. Though it was his own sister Benazir Bhutto in power, Murtaza was killed in a police encounter - a death that Fatima has long held her aunt responsible for.

In 2007, Benazir Bhutto herself was assassinated.

Today, the Bhutto name still carries political weight in Pakistan. Her uncle is currently the president. But Fatima Bhutto has chosen a different path, as a writer - exploring her family’s turbulent history as well as the emerging popular culture of the global south, and moving between memoir, fiction, and reportage. Now, she returns with her most personal story yet...

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For decades, George Saunders was known for his short stories. In 2013, in a Time Magazine 100 most influential people listing, he was described as “the best short-story writer in English".

In 2017, he released his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, a reimagining of President Abraham Lincoln’s grief in the aftermath of his son Willie’s death. It’s a genre-defying piece of literature, narrated by no less than 166 ghosts. 

The bardo is a concept borrowed from Saunders ’ adopted faith, Buddhism—an "intermediate state" between death and reincarnation.

In his latest novel, Vigil, Saunders returns to the in-between - this time through a dying oil barron, grappling with his morality at the 11th hour in a burning world.

Tanjil Rashid sat down with George Saunders to discuss faith: in his writing, as a means of optimism, and as a political weapon in today’s world.

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Last week Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and darling of the European left, turned 65.

He celebrated his birthday on stage in London, gathering figures from across the left together. Zack Polanski was there, so was Jeremy Corbyn.

Varoufakis' mission? To explore what resistance means today across the left.

In this episode of The Exchange Oli Dugmore sits down with Varoufakis to speak about resistance, his childhood in a fascist dictatorship, how this shaped him, whether he uses that word to describe the climate today, and the strategic importance of Cyprus for the war in the Middle East - for Britian, the US, Israel, Iran, Greece and Turkey.

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Since leaving politics, Rory Stewart has become one of the most influential voices on the matter in Britain.

In this episode, the former diplomat and cabinet minister reflects on his upbringing and his unconventional path into politics. He also discusses the Middle East, arguing that Western countries continue to misunderstand the region’s history and dynamics.

The conversation then turns to Britain, including the growing intolerance towards Muslims and how that shapes political debate. Finally, Stewart shares his view on why Westminster often feels disconnected from the public and what needs to change.

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When Amia Srinivasan published The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century in 2021, it sparked widespread debate about the politics of desire, consent, and sexual justice.

In this episode of The Exchange, the Oxford academic joins Tanjil Rashid to discuss how philosophy can illuminate some of the most contentious questions in contemporary culture: from incels and pornography to whether our desires are shaped by society.

Find more from Amia Srinivasan here

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Were the strikes on Iran illegal? What's next for the controversial courts bill? Are Labour leaders aware of the existential crisis within their party?

On this week's episode of The Exchange, we speak with Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice, David Lammy.

To watch more episodes of The Exchange find us on YouTube.

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Pussy Riot's 2012 "Punk Prayer" was a global flashpoint - a defining test of free expression in Putin’s Russia.

When co-founding member Masha Alyokhina was arrested, she told her son she would be back the next day. She was gone for two years.

In 2022, she fled the motherland, but continues to fight Putin from afar.

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This winter, Ai Weiwei returned to Beijing after a decade in exile. He found himself airbrushed from public memory. An international icon everywhere else. At home, a ghost.

The artist joined Michael Prodger soon after that trip to discuss the cost of personal freedom, in both China and in the West.

The Exchange is a new series from the New Statesman. Look out for new interviews every Wednesday.

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In his 30s, Rutger Bregman, the Dutch historian, had what he described as “an early midlife crisis”.

After a decade spent as a pundit, commenting on the global state of politics and economics, as well as publishing optimistic titles such as Utopia for Realists and Humankind: A Hopeful History - Bregman felt stuck. Something had to change.

And if he wanted to see that change in the world, he needed to make that change in himself.

In January he joined Oli Dugmore for an extended interview, delving into the prospects of a moral life, how morality has changed history, and how it could serve our current moment.

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The Exchange: long form, in-depth interviews from the New Statesman.

Featuring guests including Salman Rushdie, Ai Weiwei, Masha Alyokhina (Pussy Riot) and more.

Hosted by Oli Dugmore and New Statesman journalists.

Hit follow in Spotify or Apple Podcasts now.

Find full video episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSfumUEfFlcI6Ikce00MGPSvU5fu-MCWu

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