All Episodes - Last Call with John Sweeney and Michael Weiss
Two journalists. One's British, the other's American. Their biggest argument is over whose country is more fucked. Listen to them rant for about half an hour, during happy hour.John Sweeney has pissed off Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, the Church of Scientology and the government of North Korea. An old school reporter, he worked at the London Observer, then the BBC. He's written 12 books, including four novels, the 200,000-copy bestseller ELEPHANT MOON, set in WW2 Burma, two modern-day political thrillers, COLD and ROAD, and his latest, about fake news in Stalin's Moscow in 1933, THE USEFUL IDIOT. He tweets from @johnsweeneyroar.Michael Weiss is no John Sweeney, so let's just get that out of the way. He's a former CNN investigative reporter and the current editor-at-large of The Daily Beast. He's written (ok, co-written) one book, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, which was a New York Times bestseller as well as a satirical TV series (unmade) about a Russian olig
View Podcast Details14 Episodes
Have Fun Storming the Capitol!
John finally concedes that America is more fucked than the UK after seeing the QAnon wilderpeople invade both houses of Congress. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A Very Trumpy Transition
John and Michael on why, against all expectation, things just might be getting a bit better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Bounty Hunter
John and Michael talk to Doug London, the C.I.A.’s former chief for counterterrorism in south and southwest Asia, and a 34-year veteran of the Agency. Doug discusses the alleged GRU payments to the Taliban for killing American and British soldiers in Afghanistan, the way intelligence-gathering and classification works at the Agency, the Mueller Report, Russia's plans for the 2020 U.S. election, and much else. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Vladimir's Victories
John and Michael talk to two bestselling journalists, Luke Harding, author of Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West, and Catherine Belton, author of Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West. Go on, guess what they talked about.Also, pay to keep John and Michael in wine and gin by contributing to The Last Call's Patreon fund. Details here: https://t.co/Q4OSEfMFhP?amp=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Novichok Nightmare
John and Michael talk to Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, the screenwriters and executive producers of the hit BBC mini-series The Salisbury Poisonings, about the GRU's attempted assassination of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and how that terrorist attack in Salisbury eerily prefigured our pandemic paranoia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Statues of Limitation
John and Michael discuss the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the U.S. and UK and why tearing down some statues is better than tearing down others. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Labour Pains
John and Michael talk with former deputy Labour leader Tom Watson about English cheese (yes), life after politics and COVID, and everything that went wrong with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, from the cranks to the Stalinists to the anti-Semites. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Past Perfect
John and Michael talk to Peter Pomeranzev, author of This is Not Propaganda and Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, about how populists flourish in crisis and what the West learned from Vladimir Putin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nostalgia as Future
John and Michael discuss their plague reading and why homebodies like A.E. Housman will win the struggle for a post-pandemic imagination. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When Self-Isolation Ain't a Choice
John and Michael chat with Chris Atkins, a celebrated British documentarian who did five years behind bars for tax fraud. (Well, how else was he going to finance his films?) Chris is the newish author of A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner, which may be the world's only funny jailhouse memoir... unless you consider Gramsci's a bit of a laugh. He discusses the eerie parallels between life on the inside and the way we all live now under plague conditions. Also, why teetotaling Muslim inmates joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
But Then I'd Have to Kill You
John and Michael talk to Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year veteran of the CIA with spent years on the frontlines of the Global War on Terror. Before retiring last summer, Marc was Director of European Operations at the Agency, meaning he was responsible for running American spies "from Dublin to Baku." We talk about the Trump administration's assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Kim Jong-un's rumored health problems, America's curious counterterrorism allies in Syria, and the day Daniel Craig turned up at Langley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Madding Crowd and Sleepy Joe's Odds
John and Michael are joined by "The Death of Expertise" author Tom Nichols, a lifelong Republican who said goodbye to all that after Trump. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Corbyn, Sanders and Soviet Tractors
John and Michael discuss the electoral misfortunes of the far left, Belarus's miracle cure for coronavirus, what Malcolm Muggeridge knew about the authoritarian personality, and why Detroit City Railroad Gin isn't nearly as shit as it sounds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Quarantine Gloom and Doom
Sweeney and Weiss discuss Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus, Vladimir Putin's original sin, and why Sweeney can't pronounce Weiss's surname correctly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.