Episode 97 [PATREON EXCLUSIVE] -- Slow Horses (Patreon)

So for this one, Adrian is taking you down a very weird back road... into the world of Mick Herron's Slough House and the AppleTV+ adaptation of this series. Herron is riffing on the spy genre, and especially on the work of the late great John Le Carré. But the spin he puts on the spy formula feels both very apropos to our moment ... and a pretty trenchant analysis of the politics in an age of populism, of conspiracism, of gender politics in the midst of increasing degraded and enshittified institutions. In spite of how creepy it can be, the fantasy of all-powerful, hyper-competent spy agencies pulling everyone's strings, did hold a certain amount of comfort. The world of Slow Horses is a world in which even that cold comfort is a thing of the past, or worse, of fantasy.