The Exchange | Long-form interviews from the New Statesman

Michael Lewis has a unique understanding of the way modern America works, what motivates its citizens, and what makes money move.

He started out on Wall Street as a bond salesman in the 1980s; this would go on to serve as inspiration for his first book, Liar's Poker. Since then, he has published over 2 dozen books, often financial thrillers, looking into subjects such as subprime mortgage loans and the global financial crisis (The Big Short), Competitive baseball league (Moneyball), and the rise and fall of fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried (Going Infinite)

His latest work (Blockers) turns away from the financial markets and Wall Street, instead looking towards America's official hub of power: Washington - the four months in which Elon Musk ran amok, and the public servants who tried to stop him from disassembling the state.

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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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