Post-truth politics

Yeah.

And he says, "Post-truth is pre-fascism." Great line.

I mean-

It's kind of interesting-

Joining me today is Elizabeth Finkel, a science journalist, co-founder at Cosmos Magazine, and adjunct senior research fellow at La Trobe University.

She is the author of the book, Prove It, A Scientific Guide to the Post-Truth Era.

Welcome, Elizabeth.

Thanks, Matt.

I wouldn't ...

Post-truth is kind of the wrong way to look at it.

You're looking at a political organization now that is comfortable in delivering big policy announcements without costings, 'cause this thing does not have a costing attached to it.

And so that is usually what parties would do.

It's so interesting.

'Cause I also think, I read this book called Post-Truth, which is about the fact that we're in the post-truth era and the, in the era of kind of creating shock and the attention economy, truth doesn't even matter anymore, it's just what grabs attention.

And that book was really interesting, but it just kind of feels like as a result the movies are becoming more, we're more interested in truthful emotions and documentary or characters that are kind of reflective or representative or close or copies of people that are actually in power or people from real life.

Um, shall we talk about the river? Shall we talk about the river?

no You prick!

Emil and the Sniffers have a cool new live album called Truth or Consequence, live from El Coyote.

And apparently there's a concert film of the same title where they perform country-influenced versions of their songs.

There's also two previously unreleased tracks on here and a cover of the classic Lights on the Hill, a song made famous by Slim Dusty.

I think that's how you say it.

The single is called Mean to Be Mean.

It's the lead track from their upcoming third album called Pre-Post-Truth.

And the track features a call-and-response duet between frontwoman Amelia Fletcher and bandmate Hugh Williams.

So, and I often think you've got to put populism alongside two other Ps.

neither of which the title of my book, which is Polarization and Post-Truth.

And Trump is the driver of these things.

He's the one that has the most noise around it.

It's Eva, who's in the chords, and Archie, who's this young guy who also is known as Stone Anthem, had an LP out on Glass Modern.

earlier this year really interesting people and they've come together to make this rather beautiful quite sort of reverb-y lush pop music so again another very young band who are doing something really interesting and then but what's really taking my time up at the moment is that I'm finishing the next Swansea Sound LP which is going to be called Pre-Post Truth and that'll be out in November as long as I manage to get these

bloody mixes finished Right, so your finale track.

So you're not the first person to choose, Lily put, interestingly.

It's a memoir of a, you know, written from a personal perspective of a person who's been through great traumas and difficulties and so on to, you know, if you're stupid enough to buy a memoir and expect it to be based in truth, then, you know, caveat emptor.

And I thought, yeah, this is, And this comes back to a sort of worry I have, which is that it is becoming possible to say anything about anything.

Now, Matt, you and I first interacted properly on the publication of your fantastic book, Post-Truth.

What year was that? That was seven or eight years ago?

Oh, no, no.

brilliant political editor, James Ball, who also had a book out.

That's right.

Everyone was writing books called Post Truth.