For Whom The Booth Tolls – or, Strait to Hell

Oh God, What Now?

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.6 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2026

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Trump threatens the literal obliteration of an entire civilisation, then announces a ceasefire. So war crimes work, right? Er, not when you create the “Tehran Tollbooth” in the Strait and transform your enemy into potentially the Middle East’s richest, best-armed hostile power with a $90bn war and reconstruction chest. We examine possibly the biggest self-own in geopolitical history. Plus: Labour squares up to the Greens in the local, Scottish and Welsh elections. How do they fight Polanski without coming across like bullying establishment incumbents? We look at the Kanye West fiasco. And in the Extra Bit for Patreon backers, what was that strange feeling we got from the Artemis moonshot? Was it… hope? This week’s special guest is James Ball, political editor of The New World. • Save our classic theme tune Demon Is A Monster by Cornershop for posterity. • Questions for But Your Emails? Thoughts? Comments? Email us at ogwn@podmasters.co.uk. ESCAPE ROUTES • Jonn recommends HBO Max medical drama The Pitt starring Noah Wylie. • Ros recommends Danish life-juggling comedy drama Rita on Netflix. • James recommends video game Greedfall: The Dying World plus old series of Taskmaster on C4 (for sleeping to). • Seth recommends the rediscovered episodes of Doctor Who: The Daleks’ Master Plan. www.patreon.com/ohgodwhatnow Presented by Seth Thévoz with Ros Taylor and Jonn Elledge. Audio Production by Tom Taylor. Art direction: James Parrett. Theme tune by Cornershop (thank you for everything!). Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. OH GOD, WHAT NOW? is a Podmasters production. www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Like the podcasts, but not the advert, no problem. Just support us on Patreon. You'll get every
0:05.3	episode without interruptions and you'll be helping independent podcasts like Oh God What Now to thrive.
0:10.7	Follow the link in the show notes to find out more. Hello and welcome to O'God What Now, the politics podcast that conspicuously does not issue ultimatums of Armageddon.
0:28.4	I'm Seth Table. On today's edition, after Donald Trump made veiled nuclear threats to destroy Iranian civilization this week, there's now what J.D. Vance calls a fragile peace in place.
0:40.2	But with Iran now planning to charge $2 million per ship passing through the Straits of Hormuz,
0:45.4	has the Iran war turned out to be a self-defeating disaster for the US? At home, the battle lines
0:50.5	have been set for the local elections and for the Scottish and Welsh parliament elections, while Labour risks a serious landslip of support to the Greens.
0:58.4	Plus, Kanye West is banned from the UK leading to the cancellation of the Wireless Festival.
1:03.5	What on earth were the promoters thinking?
1:05.6	And should politicians get tangled up in arguments about pop culture?
1:09.8	And in the extra bit for Patreon people, has the Artemis Moon Mission given us a tiny glimmer of hope for the future?
1:16.3	Let's meet the panel.
1:17.6	Our special guest today is a returning friend of the podcast, James Ball, who is political editor of the New World, writes opinion for the eye, and he's the author of the other pandemic, how Q&ON contaminated the world.
1:29.8	Hello, James.
1:30.8	Hi there.
1:32.0	What does the Iran ceasefire tell us that threats of genocide work?
1:37.2	I don't think – I mean, look, if this is what a total US victory, which is what Donald Trump says it is, looks like, I'd really
1:45.2	hate to see a defeat. They've managed the issue of the succession of the Ayatollah in a very
1:51.1	weird way. The old Ayatollah's got what he wants. He's got dynastic succession. The IRGC has a tighter
1:56.5	grip on the country than they ever had before, and they've got a potentially new 80 billion a year
2:01.7	revenue stream for the straight of all mus. Most interestingly, you would have to lift sanctions on
2:08.3	Iran for Western companies to be able to pay the new toll on the strait. And that's a bigger lift
	...

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