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The protests in the US against police violence - and their globalisation - prompts us to discuss radical proposals for what to do about the police. We look at the US, the UK and Brazil, each in their own national contexts, and debate how policing is structure and what makes realistic responses to state repression a political priority.

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This month we discuss Wolfgang Streeck's reading of Friedrich Engels which appeared recently in the New Left Review, which deals with the Marxian understanding of war and technology, how they relate to social development, and what this all means for our understanding of the state.


On British decline.

Much ink has been spilled over the Britain’s fate since the end of its empire. Could it be that decline has been overstated? And what will happen to Britain as it leaves the European Union? We discuss how the history of the Industrial Revolution and Cold War militarism still shapes British politics today, as David Edgerton joins us to talk about the his latest book, 'The Rise and Fall of the British Nation'.


Singapore is held up as a free-market utopia: rich, orderly and clean. But the reality is quite different. Why does Singapore exert such a magnetism for neoliberals, when its reality strays from orthodox prescriptions? What and who made this model 'global city', and how does its communist and anti-colonial past lead to its hyper-capitalist present?

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Mailbag + bonus content ft. Corey Robin 
In this new semi-regular slot, we feature bonus recordings (here, 20mins of additional discussion with Corey Robin from episode 129) and respond to your comments and criticisms received over the past month.

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The three of us discuss some of the themes that emerged from our interview with Krithika Varagur (ep.133) - the entanglement of the US state with Islamism, the Americanisation of the Middle East, and especially the Gulf States, and Wahhabism as religious justification for the Saudi state project.

On Saudi religious proselytism.

Saudi Arabia has actively sought to export Salafism. How has it done this - and what have been its effects, in countries like Indonesia, Nigeria and Kosovo? Why was fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s such a formative experience for jihadists? And why has appeal of secularism faded?


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