April 30 - Russell Brand's Interview with Ed Miliband; An Analysis of Next Week's U.K. Elections; The Shake-Up at the Top of Saudi Arabia's Ruling Familiy

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the neck-and-neck elections between Labor and the Conservatives in the U.K. that are a week away and first play excerpts of an interview that the establishment politician Labor leader Ed Miliband did with the counter-culture, anti-establishment citizen journalist Russell Brand. Since Brand’s main message to his millions of followers among the disaffected youth of Britain is that there is no point in voting because the financial elite and their political lackeys have rigged the process, it is worth contrasting the Brand/Miliband political debate with the highly orchestrated, shallow and antiseptic exchanges between our press and our politicians that we will be subjected to from now until the elections in November of 2016.

Part 2

Then we speak with Toby Miller one of the world’s leading analysts of popular culture, media, and their connections to the politics of everyday life.  He is a Professor of Media and Culture Studies at the University of Cardiff in the U.K. and we will discuss the role of alternative media in the British elections that has resulted in an extraordinary upsurge for the Green Party due to their wildly popular video that spoofs boy bands and pale-male politicians, and whether the smaller parties like the Greens, the right wing UKIP Party and the Scottish National Party will determine which party next rules Britannia.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the shake-up at the top of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and speak with an expert on the House of Saud, Robert Lacy, a British historian and author whose latest book is “Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia”.