Jolyon Rubinstein has made a career out of tackling controversial subjects — through comedy, satire, and sometimes provocative content.
He acted in the BBC comedy Nathan Barley, co-wrote and starred in BBC 3’s The Revolution Will Be Televised, a comedy series taking a pop at corruption, created and produced ITV’s hip hop panel show Don’t Hate The Playaz, he’s got his own YouTube channel. And now he is launching the third series of a podcast The New Conspiricist to tackle an internet-fuelled trend that ranges from entertaining escapism to deeply worrying.
“Like a lot of people, I think that for most of the time post-2016, I started to become increasingly concerned by the responses that seemingly rational people who I knew and respected and loved — some of them were just starting to have these really wacky ideas that I found quite concerning,” Rubinstein says.
He started writing a scripted piece of satire to tackle these ideas, treating it as though the conspiracy theory were real, but he ran into difficulty: “It’s not that easy to satirise people who believe that the Queen is a lizard, for instance.”
Instead, he created the podcast, which aims to unpack a different conspiracy theory in each episode. He’s joined by co-host, investigative journalist James Ball, and guests including Labour MP Stella Creasy; feminist activist Caroline Criado Perez, and Ola Labib, currently the only black, Muslim, female, Sudanese comedian performing on the stand up circuit.
“I’d been looking into this for a good couple of years,’ Rubinstein says, “and it was the sort of stuff we used to talk about down the pub. But then we realised that we needed a show that each week looked at a different conspiracy theory, not to allow essentially, crazies, more airtime, but as a form of comic catharsis to the ever-spreading, malign nature of the world seeming to become more and more detached from reality.”
They podcast explores topics from Russia’s use of the chemical agent Novichok and Jeffrey Epstein’s death, both the subjects of widespread conspiracy theories, to chemtrails (the white trails created by planes flying through the air) and whether singer Avril Lavigne really was replaced by a body-double (spoiler: she was not).
But in his exploration of the deepest, darkest corners of conspiratorial thinking, a familiar scapegoat for many of the world’s troubles appeared time and again.
“It’s also quite disturbing that I’d say at least 80 per cent of the conspiracy theories always come back to the same conclusion that the conspiracy theorist has, which is, the Jews did it,” Rubinstein says. “And, you know, that in itself started to almost become a kind of comic fait accompli to most of the episodes.” David Baddiel is a guest on one episode, discussing this phenomenon.
Rubinstein grew up in north London and attended the King Alfred School in Golders Green, the University of Sussex where he studied politics and the University of the Arts in London where he graduated in performance. “Although my name is Rubinstein, I am not Jewish, as in I do not practise the faith. But I am Semitic,” he says.
His grandfather on his paternal side was an eastern European Jew who came to the UK after the First World War, and converted to Christianity through the Church of England when he married.
But Rubinstein says that he considers himself to be “culturally Jewish”, and Jewish comedians have been strong influences throughout his career.
“Definitely Jewish humour has been a fundamental part of my development as a human being, thanks to Larry David, and our friend Seinfeld, and also, obviously, our friends David Baddiel and Matt Lucas and the like.”
In 2014, he provoked an angry response from some in the Jewish community by filming a sketch dressed as workmen pretending to be employed by the Israeli embassy in Kensington who were supposedly expanding their land, in a critique of Israel’s settlement program.
He’s happy to defend it, and goes as far as suggesting that accusations of antisemitism are used to deflect criticism of Israel. “The sketch you’re referring to was one of 18 sketches in a half-hour episode in a series of six episodes, which covered a huge amount of ground.
“I think comedy’s goal, satire’s goal is to open up debate around those issues.
“And the UN resolutions on particularly the 1973 borders, and what the UN deemed to be illegal occupation was the only thing we were covering within that sketch.”
Although Rubinstein clearly wants to have an impact on the public debate surrounding contentious issues, with this latest podcast he is clear. “Let’s be real about this: it’s a comedy entertainment podcast. We’re not thinking it’s going to change the world.
“Most of my work has always been about trying to basically use the comedy as the spoonful of sugar that helps the fact medicine go down.
“This is a show that walks into territory that most people know better than to tread for fear or cancellation or offending people or whatever.
“We’re living in a world where far too often, people who live right next door to each other are tuning in to a completely different movie of reality, and it’s really important that you have a shared narrative in order to have any form of meaningful debate.
“What we’re trying to do with the podcast is create that common ground so people can sort of say, ‘look, I was concerned about this, but having listened to that I feel maybe a little less anxious, and a bit more like I’ve got the tools in order to take on my mate down the pub who’s talking utter nonsense’.
“And I think that’s kind of the goal of satire at the minute : to create the space to have a conversation and then to engender some form of debate.”
The New Conspiricist is available on podcast platforms
