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Oh God, What Now?

Shake your money-maker – Why you’re getting Capitalism wrong

Oh God, What Now?

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.62.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Capitalism: Where did it come from and what does it want? Is it falling to pieces or just reinventing itself to remain immortal, as it always has done? Is it about to enter a dark new digital era where it doesn’t even need people? What do we get wrong about it? Can we fix it? What even IS it? Sven Beckert is the author of the epic exploration of money-making, Capitalism: A Global History. He joins Andrew Harrison and Jonn Elledge for the unexpected, untold story of how profit made power.   • Questions for But Your Emails? Thoughts? Comments? Email us at ogwn@podmasters.co.uk.   ESCAPE ROUTES  • Sven Beckert recommends the Neapolitan Quartet novels by Elena Ferrante. Start with My Brilliant Friend. • Jonn Elledge has been revisiting This Life on the BBC iPlayer. Don’t miss the This Life episode  of our partnerpod Talk ’90s to me.  • Andrew Harrison loved the film DJ Ahmet – if you’re only going to see one Macedonian sheep-herding rave movie this year, this is the one.    When you buy books through our affiliate bookshop you help the podcast by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too.  www.patreon.com/ohgodwhatnow  Presented by Andrew Harrison and John Elledge. Audio Production by Chris Jones. Art direction: James Parrett. Theme tune by Cornershop. 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

Selling your car can be super simple.

0:02.0

If you choose, we buy any car because they sort out any outstanding finance for you.

0:08.0

Just bring along your final settlement agreement.

0:10.0

If only they could make parallel parking simpler.

0:13.0

To the right bit, mate.

0:15.0

Yeah, back. Back a bit more. A bit more.

0:18.0

Oh, no, too far. We buy any car. Selling made simple. To sell your car today, enter your regn number now at webuanycar.com. I'm Hello and welcome back to Oh God What Now, the politics podcast that doesn't care whether it's chocolate egg, says Easter, Eid, Passover or Vaisaki on it, as long as it's not 90% palm oil.

0:52.8

I'm Andrew Harrison. Apologies if I sound a little bit weird. I've got the podcast plague, so I'm recording from home, so it's not to spread the cough to the people in the studio. A bit of news before we start. We've got some changes coming up in the podcast. We tried a few different approaches with the pod over the past few months, but from what you've told us, the version you like most is four familiar voices sat around a table putting the political

1:14.7

world to rights. So we're going to move back to that format soon, with occasional guests,

1:19.1

of course, from next week. And we'll be recording a lot closer to the time of release

1:23.5

to make sure that we're as up to date as we can possibly be. One of those voices is here with us today. John Eledge is in the middle of writing 35 inventions that changed your world, how we built modern life. But we can't keep about the studio. Hello, John. How you doing? I'm all right. I'm incredibly tired, but the writing is basically done now. It's just like lots and lots of rewriting. So that's progress.

1:45.4

Writing is rewriting. And before we get into today's edition, one story that we have to register,

1:50.2

the mystery of Morgan McSweeney's Missing Mobile, which sounds like a cozy crime novel in the supermarket

1:55.7

near you, for people not reading the mail or the telegraph, what has gone on here and why is

1:59.7

it agitating our right-wing press so much?

2:03.6

So last October, Morgan McSweeney, who I think at that point was still Chief of Staff, I think that's before he stood down, got mugged.

2:12.4

He was somewhere, it's actually a bit hazy wear for reasons we'll come to.

2:16.7

He was somewhere and someone snatched his phone out of his hand.

2:22.6

And he filed a police report.

2:24.5

The police had actually taken the unusual step of putting out a transcript of that so we know it happened.

2:30.4

The reason all this has come to light now is because it means that we can't see any

2:36.2

conversations he may have had regarding the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the government's

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