Playwright James Graham on why culture feels stagnant and politics stuck | Radical Thinking podcast

A crisis of imagination

Graham worries that constant scrolling may be connected to a crisis in democracy. He says algorithms have helped bring about what he calls a crisis of the new, limiting people’s ability to imagine another future.

The discussion connects this cultural problem to politics. It suggests that when culture feels unable to move forward, political thinking may also become stuck.

Works by James Graham

Graham’s work includes Dear England, about the national football team, and Quiz, which centres on the British television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? His drama Sherwood is set in the village where he grew up, against the legacy of the miners’ strike. The conversation also refers to the series.

Reading culture’s changes

The suggested reading includes Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture and W. David Marx’s Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century. Both books offer ways to consider how algorithms and wider cultural shifts shape what people encounter.

The list also points to the late Mark Fisher’s writing on the slow cancellation of the future, as well as an essay by Adam Mastroianni. These works share the discussion’s concern with culture and the possibilities people can imagine.