Afleveringen
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The job market is broken. Here are all the things that broke it.
From the post-Covid wage squeeze and AI replacing entry-level workers to the white collar recession nobody officially declared, LinkedIn's 11,000 applications per minute, and the applicant tracking systems quietly binning your CV before a human ever reads it, this is the complete history of why nobody can find a job.
We cover graduate unemployment, youth unemployment hitting its highest level since 2015, ghost jobs, the Great Resignation, and which sectors are actually hiring right now. Plus: free retraining schemes that come with job interviews, and what the future of work might look like once the dust settles.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Due to the extreme heat the UK is currently experiencing (topping out at around 102 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, 90 degrees at night, and 95% humidity), the lack of air-conditioning, my house being built to retain heat, and my pre-existing health condition (Crohn's Disease), I have decided to create a special compilation episode this week.
I will be back to my normal schedule next week with an episode focusing on why it feels like nobody can get a job (cheerful, I know).
Until then, enjoy this special compilation episode, ideal for people who want to put a slightly longer episode on in the background while they drift off to sleep.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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FIFA has been corrupt since before colour television. And the World Cup is proof.
From the ISL bribery scandal and Sepp Blatter's seven arrested executives to Qatar's migrant worker nightmare and Gianni Infantino's increasingly bizarre relationship with Donald Trump, this is the complete history of football's governing body and the corruption that has defined it for over a century.
We cover the Havelange years, the 2015 FBI raids, the Saudi Arabia 2034 decision, and why Infantino's cosy friendship with the world's most consistently unpopular president keeps getting stranger.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Your chocolate bar got smaller. Your streaming service started showing adverts. Your phone slowly turned itself into something worse. There's a word for this now.
This episode traces the history of Enshittification, from medieval bakers shaving weight off loaves to Toblerone quietly widening the gaps between its peaks in 2016, and the Kraft Heinz boss who told the world to get used to paying more for food just as the cost of living crisis began to bite.
We then dig into how Big Tech does the same thing with software instead of food: Google search results getting worse, Windows 11's unwanted extras, Netflix reversing its own promises on password sharing, and what Apple really does with its pricing.
Finally, the companies bucking the trend entirely, including the $4.99 rotisserie chicken that Costco refuses to stop subsidising, and the supermarket that took an 86% profit hit rather than raise its prices.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Trust in institutions is at a historic low. Turns out there are about sixty years of very good reasons for that.
From Watergate and Thatcher decimating mining communities, through the cash for questions scandals of the 1990s, Iran-Contra, the fabricated case for the Iraq War, and a British Post Office scandal that ruined the lives of hundreds of people, this is a brief history of how governments, politicians, businesses, and institutions systematically destroyed the trust of the people they were supposed to serve.
We also look at why not all distrust is the same, what manufactured distrust is, and give you examples of people and places that have worked to earn your trust.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Rents in Rome were unaffordable in 164 BCE. We've had 2,000 years to fix the housing crisis. Here's why we haven't.
From ancient Roman insulae and the Great Fire of London to Hoovervilles, Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy scheme, the 2008 financial crash, and BlackRock, this is the complete history of the housing crisis.
We cover the Welsh second homes scandal, Barcelona's tourist backlash, why the richest generation in history can't afford to buy, and the solutions that actually work, including Vienna's social housing model, community land trusts, and the Renters' Rights Act 2025.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Your outrage is worth a fortune. Just not to you.
From a 3,800-year-old complaint tablet in ancient Mesopotamia to cancel culture, Tommy Robinson and Donald Trump, this is the full history of outrage: who manufactures it, who profits from it, and who is laughing all the way to the bank.
We cover Roman emperors, the medieval pillory, the tabloid press, Jon Ronson's "So You've Been Publicly Shamed," the small boats panic (with the actual statistics), and why the richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom 95% of humanity, partly because they're very good at keeping you looking the other way.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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The internet was built by scientists who wanted to share research. Then surveillance capitalism, social media and Big Tech got involved, and ruined it.
From Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web to Cambridge Analytica, Elon Musk buying Twitter, and AI rewriting the rules all over again, this is the full history of the internet: how it began, how it was hijacked, and how to take some of it back.
We cover ARPANET, Google's monopoly, Wikipedia, YouTube, the data harvesting scandal that exposed 87 million Facebook users, and the platforms actually paying creators fairly, including Bandcamp, Substack, and Ko-fi.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Uber, Amazon, Deliveroo. Strip away the apps and the branding and you're left with a system of exploitation as old as civilisation itself.
From ancient civilisations exploiting their populations and medieval serfdom to zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships, this episode traces the full history of work designed to extract everything from you while giving back as little as possible.
We cover the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the matchgirls who walked out of a factory in 1888 and won, and the thinkers from Paul Lafargue to Tom Hodgkinson who argued the whole system was a con. Plus: the four-day work week, worker cooperatives, and why doing less has repeatedly been proven to produce more.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Brexit. Trump. A pandemic. A housing crisis. A culture war nobody asked for. The last ten years didn't break by accident.
From the celebrity deaths of 2016 to Trump's Iran brinkmanship in 2026, this episode charts exactly how a decade of austerity, algorithmic outrage, gig economy exploitation, rising inequality, and the collapse of community life ground down an entire generation.
We cover the 2008 financial crash, COVID-19, the cost of living crisis, political division, the culture war, LGBTQ+ persecution, climate inaction, the slow death of third spaces, and the mental health catastrophe nobody in power wanted to talk about.
We also cover why, despite all of the above, there is still genuine reason for hope.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Burned out, broke, and scrolling at midnight wondering why everything feels impossible? You're not imagining it. This episode breaks down the real reasons modern life is exhausting: the housing crisis, AI killing the job market, social media algorithms built on outrage, subscriptions bleeding your account dry, and why working from home turned millions into sedentary, overstretched husks, all backed by data, and delivered with dark humour. Plus: a special guide on what you can do about it.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Alexander The Great called himself a god, Henry VIII airbrushed his portrait, and Nixon lost a TV debate because he was sweaty. The Cult of Personality is older and more complex than you think.
This episode traces the ancient, ridiculous, and terrifyingly effective history of leader worship. We start with Lysander of Sparta getting a festival named after him, swing through Alexander the Great's divine PR campaign, and watch Henry VIII weaponise oil paintings centuries before Instagram existed.
Then it's the 1930s, where Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin industrialised the whole thing, while FDR, Churchill, and Gandhi proved democracies weren't immune. We hit the Kennedy vs Nixon debate (RIP Nixon's grey suit), Reagan's Hollywood playbook, Thatcher's 'Iron Lady' persona, and land squarely in the age of memes, algorithms, and wannabe dictators.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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From West Virginia coalfields to the longest Senate career in American history, Robert C. Byrd went from political villain to unlikely conscience of a nation. This week we trace a 51-year journey of power, shame, redemption and one absolutely legendary anti-war speech. Complicated people make the best episodes. Trust us on this one. Featuring the legend that is Jeremy Wellman.
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In 1244, a theologian met a wandering dervish in Konya and vanished from public life. What emerged was poetry so universal it outlasted empires. Jalal ad-Din Rumi fled Mongols as a child, became a scholar, then transformed after meeting Shams al-Din of Tabriz. His Masnavi and Divan-e Shams became foundational Sufi texts, and some of the greatest poetry ever written. Eight centuries later, this Sunni Muslim poet outsells every other poet in America. Multiple countries claim him as their own, but his work belongs to everyone.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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Hulk Hogan could slam a giant but couldn't tell the truth. From denying steroids on Arsenio Hall to claiming he auditioned for Metallica, this is wrestling's most prolific liar.
Hogan lied about Andre the Giant's weight (697 lbs), wrestling 400 days yearly, Elvis being his fan (Elvis died before Hogan debuted), and the George Foreman Grill. Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield both denied ever meeting him.
We cover these lies and a dozen more absurd fabrications you won't believe. Featuring the brilliant Kyle Fields.
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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The trad wife trend claims women have always stayed home and deferred to men. History disagrees, loudly. From Assyrian businesswomen on clay tablets to the woman who invented Monopoly before women could vote, this is four thousand years of evidence they'd rather you didn't find.
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A Watergate burglar, a congressman who faked his entire life, and the Iron Lady who divided a nation.
This Greatest Hits episode of History's Greatest Idiots revisits G Gordon Liddy (Nixon's unrepentant operative who went to prison for conspiracy and burglary), George Santos (expelled from Congress shortly before a wire fraud conviction), and Margaret Thatcher (Britain's first female PM who crushed the miners' strike and remains so divisive "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" charted when she died).
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Artist: Sarah Chey
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This week on History's Greatest Idiots (featuring Patreon member Ben Markwart), we explore the Chernobyl nuclear disaster: the catastrophic 1986 explosion that killed dozens, displaced 350,000 people, cost 700 billion dollars, and helped collapse the Soviet Union.
The Safety Test That Wasn't Very Safe
On 26th April 1986 at 1:23 AM, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, exploded during a safety test.
Engineers disabled the emergency core cooling system, ran the RBMK reactor at just 7% power (unstable below 20%), and withdrew most control rods. Within seconds, power surged to over 100 times normal output.
Two explosions blew the 2,000 ton reactor lid off and ignited the graphite moderator, which burned for nine days, releasing massive radioactive contamination across Europe.The RBMK Reactor Design
The Soviet RBMK reactor had catastrophic design flaws operators weren't informed about. It featured a positive void coefficient (coolant loss increased power), control rods with graphite tips that briefly increased reactivity when inserted, and no Western-style containment building.
Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Diatlov, in charge during the accident, genuinely believed the reactor was safe.
The Cover-up and Sweden's Discovery
For 36 hours, Soviet officials said nothing whilst Pripyat's 50,000 residents went about their normal lives at radiation levels 600,000 times background levels.
On 28th April, radiation alarms triggered at Sweden's Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, over 1,000 kilometres away. Only after Swedish authorities announced a Soviet nuclear accident did the USSR reluctantly admit to Chernobyl.
Gorbachev didn't issue a statement until 14th May, 18 days later, calling it a "misfortune" and attacking Western media as spreading "malicious lies."
The Liquidators
First responders weren't told they were confronting an exposed reactor core. Firefighters handled radioactive graphite with ordinary equipment.
28 died within four months from acute radiation syndrome. Firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, aged 25, received 1,300 rem and died on 13th May 1986. About 600,000 liquidators cleaned up the site.
Called "bio-robots," they shovelled radioactive debris from the roof in 40-second shifts because robots were destroyed by radiation. At least 1,800 children developed thyroid cancer from radioactive iodine-131.
How Chernobyl Collapsed the Soviet Union
Gorbachev later stated Chernobyl was "perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union," more than perestroika, glasnost, Afghanistan, or the Berlin Wall. The disaster shattered public trust, contradicting glasnost's promise of openness.
Combined with Afghanistan casualties (15,000 troops), economic stagnation (2.6% GDP growth), and military spending (16% of GNP), Chernobyl's 18 billion rouble cost broke the system.
The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. The USSR dissolved in December 1991, less than six years after Chernobyl.
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This week on History's Greatest Idiots (Featuring Peter of In The Wheels), we explore two Scottish success stories: cyclist David Millar's fall from grace and redemption, and comic writer Mark Millar's controversial rise to Hollywood riches.
Born 4th January 1977 in Malta, David Millar burst onto cycling's scene in 2000, winning the Tour de France prologue and wearing the yellow jersey. He won four Tour stages and became the first British rider to wear the leader's jersey in all three Grand Tours.
On 23rd June 2004, whilst dining in Biarritz, French police arrested Millar. They found empty EPO phials and syringes. Millar confessed to doping in 2001 and 2003. He was banned for two years, stripped of his 2003 World Championship, and fired by Cofidis.
Returning in 2006, Millar transformed into cycling's most vocal anti-doping advocate. He served on WADA's Athlete Committee, became peloton spokesperson during Operación Puerto, and proved he could win clean with stages in the Vuelta, Giro, and a 2012 Tour victory. He achieved almost identical results in both halves of his career, retiring in 2014.
Born 24th December 1969 in Coatbridge, Mark Millar became one of comics' most successful and divisive figures. After The Authority and The Ultimates (Time's "comic book of the decade"), Millar created Millarworld, designing properties to sell to Hollywood. Wanted, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman became films before issues appeared. Netflix purchased Millarworld in 2017.
Critical reception has been harsh. Old Man Logan was called "grotesque" and "without substance", Kick-Ass criticised for undermining its premise, Nemesis dismissed as shock value. When asked about using assaults as a plot device, Millar said: "The ultimate act that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is..."
Politically, Millar supported Brexit as a path to Scottish independence, then resigned from Labour in 2025, calling Keir Starmer's government "nightmarish, totalitarian."
Two Millars. One rebuilt his reputation through honesty. The other built a Hollywood empire on controversy.
David Millar: From Yellow Jersey to Prison CellMark Millar: Comics, Controversy and Self-Promotion
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This week on History's Greatest Idiots, we're trying a slightly different mini-documentary format to explore one of the most bizarre success stories in American comedy: Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr., the man who proved you could become a millionaire by hitting produce with a mallet.
From Science to Sledgehammers
Born 24th July 1946 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Leo suffered severe asthma. His family relocated to South Tampa, Florida, for the warm weather. He became a championship roller skater at his father's rink, but wanted to be a scientist. In 1970, he graduated from the University of South Florida with a chemical engineering degree and English literature minor, then worked as a chemist.
But when he became road manager for musician Jim Stafford, Kenny Rogers' manager asked if he would open for Rogers on a 100-night tour. Gallagher went from no stage experience to performing in America's largest auditoriums overnight.
The Sledge-O-Matic and Cable Television Stardom
Gallagher's big break came in 1975 with an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. But his 1980 Showtime special launched him to stardom as cable television exploded. The centrepiece was the Sledge-O-Matic, a parody of infomercials. Gallagher smashed apples, oranges, cottage cheese, Big Macs, video game controllers, and finally watermelons. Chunks exploded into the audience.
The first rows were covered in plastic sheeting. Audiences brought raincoats. They called it being 'Gallagherized'. From 1981 to 1987, he produced 16 specials on Showtime. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was America's highest-earning stand-up comedian, performing 200 shows yearly for 35 years, over 3,500 performances total, destroying tens of thousands of watermelons.
Critics and Rankings
Whilst Gallagher sold out theatres, the comedy establishment had mixed feelings. Critics dismissed his act as lowbrow. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked him 100th on their list of greatest stand-up comedians. Dead last. Gallagher was bitter, feeling underappreciated despite massive commercial success.
The Brother Wars
In the early 1990s, brother Ron asked to perform Leo's routines. Leo agreed if Ron made it clear he was Ron Gallagher, not Leo. Ron toured as 'Gallagher II'. But promotional materials became unclear. In August 2000, Leo sued for trademark violation. Courts sided with Leo. But Gallagher's entire family sided with Ron. The estrangement lasted for life.
The Final Act
Gallagher continued touring into his 70s. He owned patents for slot machine software. In 2003, he ran for California Governor, finishing 16th of 135 candidates. He appeared in a GEICO commercial. His health declined with three heart attacks between 2011 and 2012, collapsing onstage in Minnesota and before a Dallas show. Each time he recovered and returned. After 2012, he reduced touring. COVID-19 in 2020 stopped him entirely. On 11th November 2022, he died from organ failure in Palm Springs, aged 76.
Legacy
Gallagher never got respect from the comedy establishment, but he had 35 years of sold-out shows, millions of fans, and the satisfaction of making people happy. Not bad for a guy who just wanted to be a scientist.
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