97 - These Dreams of Menwith Hill
Added 2025-03-25 21:41:15 +0000 UTCWe’re setting the table for the year ahead in Ghost Stories, and to do so we’ll be following a number of threads that may or may not have much to do with each other. Key to this one is the UK’s relationship with the US, which we use to explore how unnerving it feels to be alive in the Hermit Kingdom in the last days, its mind blown out by redundant upper management and a deep state that no longer has any purpose. We mainline the DMT released from the dying spider’s brain, exploring Keir Starmer as the Last Man, dreams in the imperial core, surveillance, terrorism, the dregs of empire, classified US-UK programs like GHOSTHUNTER and APPARITION, temporal dislocation, and long-dead spree killers haunting the Yorkshire moors.
Comments
Just listened through to this again. Just phenomenal work. Obviously he’s a big influence but there’s definitely a Ben Wheatley vibe in the telling of these stories/story. I’ve finally, very much too late, started reading David Peace’s Red Riding quartet (again due to your recommendations) and the same colour palette is all over these tales. What you have here is a doorway that leads you into the same world of British politics, but it’s like in China Mieville’s “The City & The City”, where everyone is sharing the same space but in two different worlds. One is the world of sensible politics for grown-ups, who follow the polls and read autobiographies of Nick Clegg, watch reruns of old elections on BBC Parliament and live post them on BlueSky. It’s a world where Keir Starmer is a decent chap trying his hardest in tough circumstances to enact sound policy as a statesman. The second is the real world of power, one that the denizens of the first city are terrified to catch a glimpse of, in which the corruption swirls everywhere - the world where Colin Wallace’s revelations are taken seriously, where every single scandal from spy cops to letting LIFG gunmen in and out of the country during the Libyan civil war is seen not as independent bad apples or vague policy errors, but the script that runs under all of this. I’m fascinated at the ability to bring the second into narratives of the former in a way that the citizens of the first city can be enticed to accept them, or if any attempt would be killed off like white blood cells killing a virus that would destroy the comfortable world of op-eds etc. This is glorious and important work.
David Moon
2025-05-05 08:00:57 +0000 UTCWhat’s the song at the end?
chorchy
2025-04-26 12:30:29 +0000 UTC
