The Last Mixed Tape

Julian Casablancas sparked controversy after comparing American Zionists to Black people living under slavery on SubwayTakes. It was a comparison I believe was historically clumsy, rhetorically reckless and ultimately damaging to the point he was trying to make.
But five weeks later, at the Oxford Union, Casablancas returned to the subject with a clearer argument centred on settlements, expansion and the reality facing Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores why context matters, why criticism and clarification can coexist, and why the conversation about a musician’s words can sometimes eclipse the people living through the reality those words were attempting to describe.
From The Strokes’ politically charged Coachella performance to Douglas Murray’s comments on Irish voices discussing Israel and Palestine, this episode asks a broader question:
What happens when a bad analogy becomes more famous than the reality it was trying to describe?

Phoebe Bridgers is back with Lost Boys, her first solo music in six years — a song haunted by nostalgia, isolation, masculinity and the machines we carry in our pockets.
At its centre is a dark inversion of one of the most famous slogans in protest music. Where Woody Guthrie wrote “This Machine Kills Fascists,” Bridgers sings: “This machine is killing me.”
In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores what Lost Boys tells us about smartphones, social media, male loneliness and generations who no longer simply use technology, but have grown up inside it.
From the reckless young men haunting the song’s lyrics, to Bridgers’ phone-free Lost Tour and her attempts to rebuild a more direct emotional connection with audiences, this is a story about the machines built to connect us, the people getting lost inside them… and what happens when we decide to leave the machine at the door.
The song identifies the machine. The tour attempts to dismantle it.

Following renewed controversy around Roisin Murphy over comments about transgender people, criticism from artists including The Blessed Madonna and CMAT, and a growing divide between Murphy and the LGBTQ+ community that helped shape her career, this episode explores a larger question.
What happens when an artist becomes estranged from the community that gave their work meaning?
From queer club culture and collective memory to the politics of belonging and audience, this episode examines how music is shaped not only by the people who create it, but by the communities who embrace it.

Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album features Robert Smith of The Cure, but this collaboration tells a much bigger story than a pop star working with one of her heroes.
In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, we explore why The Cure continue to resonate with younger listeners, how TikTok and streaming have transformed music discovery, and whether modern audiences are inheriting music differently than previous generations.
Drawing on an idea from David Byrne, we examine how music now exists in a giant cultural “bucket” where new and old songs coexist without chronology, allowing artists like Olivia Rodrigo to become gateways into entire musical worlds.
From The Cure and Talking Heads to Spotify playlists and TikTok algorithms, this episode is about the changing nature of musical discovery and why great songs continue to find new listeners.

Following the recent unrest in Belfast, I found myself returning to one of the most powerful songs in Irish music: Christy Moore’s Viva la Quinta Brigada.

What begins as a song about Irish volunteers who travelled to Spain to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War reveals a much deeper story about Ireland itself.

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, I explore the Connolly Column, the Blueshirts, Irish support for Franco, and Christy Moore’s role as one of Ireland’s great custodians of cultural memory.

More than a history lesson, this is a story about identity, belonging, and a question Ireland has been asking for nearly a century: Who gets to define what Ireland is?

From the Spanish Civil War to modern Ireland, Viva la Quinta Brigada remains a song that refuses to let us forget the choices that surround us.

Topics discussed:

• Christy Moore
• Viva la Quinta Brigada
• The Spanish Civil War
• The Connolly Column
• The Blueshirts
• Irish history
• Anti-fascism
• Belfast and modern Ireland
• Protest music and cultural memory

The Last Mixed Tape is a podcast and video essay series exploring music, culture and the stories that connect them.