Corona Chronicles: Conspiracies, Censorship and Life under Lockdown

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April 17, 2020 • 96 mins

It’s Week 4 of Lockdown in the UK and we’ve got the band back together. Well, the duo. Andrea and Jon are back in the virtual studio to make some sense of a world awash with fear, confusion, conspiracy theories and lots of very bad science.

What does the coronavirus mean politically, socially and culturally? How far should the state be involved in tackling the crisis? Are Sweden’s fears justified that any kind of lockdown opens the door to a totalitarian state that’d somehow be far worse than mass death? Andrea breaks down the science and the numbers (bad news, Sweden – you’re fucked).

Despite that, Andrea is unusually optimistic about the world that might come after the crisis. What if breaking our routines or an unreflective faith in capitalism might lead us to build a more balanced, compassionate civilisation? How might that happen, and dare we believe it’s even possible?

What the hell is going on with David Icke and conspiracy theories about 5G? In times like these, it’s hard to know what to think, and in the UK the authorities are clamping down hard on these ideas. But what about free speech? What’s the difference between censorship and ‘no-platforming’? Should we be supporting the principle of free speech, or should we be getting misleading fools off the airwaves?

Away from the media, what are you doing during lockdown? There’s a strange sense of pressure to be super creative – to start all those projects you’ve been putting off for a rainy day… but is it really so bad (or ‘unproductive’) to just sit on the couch and rest?

We also ask what The Black Swan has to teach us about the present moment and whether outsourcing your moral compass makes you a monster (like Batman).