Hello and welcome to Downstream. If politics is downstream from culture, then consider

this show a sewage treatment plan. And tonight we are going at a talking love in this club,

euphoria, wisdom in the rave and whether the left needs to rediscover a sense of fun and

very pleased to be joined by the always lit Jeremy Gilbert, professor of cultural and political

theory at the University of East London, and the Chief Psychonore at Navarre Media's very own

ACFM, which makes this the most ambitious crossover events since we got James Butler to come

on Tisky's hour. So, Jim, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. So, this show really is

kind of a rip off or a continuation, whatever way you want to look at it, of some hot

BBC radio for content. What happened was that a couple of weeks ago, Jeremy made an appearance

on Radio 4's moral maze to talk about the morality of clubbing, which was about as surreal as having

a discussion about raving with Melanie Phillips is probably going to be. So, I really recommend

going back and listening to that show after you watch this one, of course, just to get a glimpse

of how weird and remote the prestige, British broadcasting environment can really be, because

here we all are talking about something which most people do at some point in their lives,

with the kind of alien distance, which is usually reserved for analysing, you know, a kind of

microscope sample of bacterial ooze. So, I heard Melanie Phillips describe dancing as a

bacchanalian orgy and later on, and I'm not sure if this bit got edited out or not.

One of the panelists compared the relationship between crowd and DJ to Hitler and his followers.

So, all in all, some pretty weird stuff. I was on the show as well, but because of the setup,

I didn't actually get to talk to Jim directly, but I did want to explore some of what came up

and much more besides, because I think that there are questions, interesting questions, sticky

questions about euphoria, about hedonism, about excess, about fun, and the rave that the left

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