TRASHFUTURE — "The Parasocial Bookie" feat. Emiliano Mellino

Release Date: October 28, 2025
Guests/Hosts: Rob, Nova, Sam, Emiliano Mellino (Bureau of Investigative Journalism)

Overview

This episode explores two intertwined threads of psychic injury in late capitalism: the collapse of state capacity to protect ordinary people—embodied in the UK’s failing employment tribunal system—and the rise of increasingly immersive, addictive gambling startups in a world where “the economy is a casino.” The show moves with its usual sardonic wit from lampooning gaudy state-corporate spectacles (the new White House ballroom, Saudi megaprojects) to serious investigative reporting on workers’ rights with Emiliano Mellino, revealing why even formal victories in employment tribunals often amount to nothing.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Satire: State, Tech, and Absurd Wealth

• [00:15—05:12]
  The episode opens with a mock announcement: TRASHFUTURE is "sponsoring a pillar" in a fanciful new White House ballroom alongside big tech firms—lampooning the merger of state and corporate spectacle and the performative nature of modern power.
• Hosts riff on the backwardness of UK reform attempts (“flaccid useless dolge”) versus the ruthless, calculated MAGA turn in the US, emphasizing optimism is often unwarranted in British politics.
• Business Model Parody:
  Jokes about starting a podcast endowment and owning Canterbury Cathedral, swans, and swan-hunting rights—poking fun at elite institutional endowments and absurd British legal relics.
  • “Only we are allowed to hunt swans using a satellite that drops tungsten rods from space.” — Rob ([07:21])
  • “Self-care is just using a powerful laser to ablate a swan out of existence.” — Nova ([07:38])

2. Saudi Megaprojects and the Cycle of Futility

• [09:34—24:31]
  • The hosts discuss the Saudi Future Investment Initiative's move away from the failed Neom megaproject toward new AI and tech investments. Saudi Arabia is now “pretending Neom doesn’t exist.”
  • The show unpacks how Western consultancies and contractors—especially firms like McKinsey—were propped up by Saudi megaproject money despite labor abuses and disastrous working conditions.
  • Notable Moment:
    Emiliano explains how Gulf states intentionally diversify their migrant workforce to minimize the ability of any group to assert rights or organize, leading to brutal, unaccountable labor exploitation ([16:30–18:19]).
  • Quotes:
    • “It's a perfect kind of globalization thing to have like a Filipino guy fall off a construction site and die at the behest of ultimately a British or an American contractor to fulfill a Saudi project.” — Nova ([17:14])
    • “The point of it is the imagination as well. It's just absolute sort of exercise in futility that killed a lot of people for no reason.” — Nova ([24:14])
    • “An absolute exercise in futility that killed a lot of people, but at least it enriched McKinsey for a while.” — Rob ([24:23])

3. The Rise of 'Parasocial Bookies': Gambling Startups as Social Media

• [25:14—38:01]
  • The hosts introduce “Cheddar,” a new Andreessen Horowitz-backed gambling startup that fuses endless, TikTok-like streams of real-time betting with social mechanics, targeting a hyper-online, socially isolated youth.
  • Gambling today is reframed as “immersive” and “playful,” engineered to blur the line between social engagement and self-destructive risk—fueled by university sports sponsorship and influencer-driven norm-shaping.
  • Concerns raised about the normalization of gambling, its targeting of young men, and its connection to the broader financialization of everything.
  • Notable Quotes:
    • “This is the TikTok of sports gambling… an endless algorithmic stream of bets that you can make or you cannot make. The number of bets you can make will never end. That is terrifying.” — Rob ([37:19])
    • “All the innovations in gambling… have made it smaller, more inescapable and micro-targeted and universal.” — Rob ([29:15])
    • “You’re not even dealing with a guy who might kneecap you anymore. Now it’s all impersonal. It’s just things being thrown at you endlessly.” — Sam ([30:03])

4. Deep Dive: The UK’s Broken Employment Tribunal System

With Emiliano Mellino, Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• [38:01—1:00:00+]
  • Core Investigation:
    Only half of UK workers who win employment tribunal cases ever receive their award; enforcement is so lax it's likened to mafia-era Sicily.
  • How It Fails:
    • After winning a judgment, employees must enforce it themselves—through a patchwork of pay-to-access county courts, ineffective penalty schemes, and “fast track” bailiffs which rarely deliver results.
    • Shocking Stat:
      “Since 2016, they’ve issued £9.6m worth of fines, and of those, only £95,000 has been paid… less than 1%.” — Emiliano ([41:57])
    • The government promises “naming and shaming” of employers who refuse to pay, but out of ~4,000 requests, zero companies have been named ([43:21]).
  • Legal Loopholes & Repercussions:
    • Company directors frequently evade liability by dissolving the original firm and re-launching under a new name; state capacity to track or penalize this is essentially nonexistent.
    • Regulatory focus (and enforcement resources) are instead directed at immigration violations, never at abusive employers.
    • Quote:
      • “If you hire someone who does not have the right to work in the UK, the state will go after you as an individual… But if you have a judgment against you for breaching employment law… if you don’t pay, you face no consequences.” — Emiliano ([55:02])
    • British Satire:
      • “What if they get shamed into closing up their operations and then we lose valuable tax revenue?” — Rob ([43:48])
  • Bigger Picture:
    The new Employment Rights Bill risks baking all these flaws into law—expanding workers’ rights in theory, but leaving enforcement dependent on the same toothless processes. Massive systemic failure is, as ever, disguised beneath the veneer of progressive policy.
    • “When you substitute process for justice, that always works, right?” — Rob ([57:55])
    • “If most of the rights require employment tribunals to be enforced—well, if tribunals don’t have capacity, then what rights do we really have?” — Emiliano ([47:18])

Notable Quotes & Moments

1. On Disappearing Labor Rights:
   • “Our employment rights are really important to us. But half of people who go to an employment tribunal and win… don’t get paid what the tribunal says they should be getting.” — Emiliano ([38:44])
2. On Tech, Capital, and Casinos:
   • “What you’re doing is trying to run a capitalist system without any of the things capitalists realized they needed to make it work for people who aren’t connected and can’t bias the wheel. It’s just the casino from Casino.” — Rob ([37:19])
3. On Futurist Dystopias:
   • “They will turn the economy into a casino and half the economy into the mafia guys that run the casino.” — Rob ([24:43])
4. On Absurd State Priorities:
   • “We can’t name [exploitative employers] because someone might shame them. Don’t you understand?” — Rob ([45:02])

Important Timestamps

• [09:56] — Discussion of Saudi investment pivot & labor abuses at Neom
• [16:23–18:41] — Exploitation of migrant labor in the Gulf, intentional disempowerment
• [25:14–38:01] — Cheddar, the “parasocial bookie”/TikTok gambling startup
• [38:44] — Start of employment tribunal deep dive
• [41:57] — Only 2% (by number, <1% by value) of tribunal fines collected
• [43:21–43:45] — Zero employers have been named or shamed
• [47:18–49:46] — Structural loopholes and limits of legal recourse for employees
• [55:02] — Sharp contrast: vigorous state enforcement of immigration law vs. employment law
• [57:55] — The “process for justice” satire, summing up the UK’s impotence

Tone & Language

The TRASHFUTURE team blends biting satire, dark humor, and journalistic rigor—skewering British and global capitalism’s hypocrisies while giving deeply informed, unsparing accounts of state dysfunction. Emiliano Mellino's contributions are clear, precise, and devastating in their implications, while the hosts’ jokes drive home the surreal, cruel absurdity of contemporary economic life.

Summary

This episode crystallizes two pillars of what the hosts term "psychic trauma capitalism":

• The UK government’s apparent indifference to enforcing even minimal worker protections, creating a theater of rights for the powerless;
• The seamless absorption of human connection, sports, and play into algorithmic gambling products—turning life itself into an addictive casino.

Interventions and reforms, the hosts suggest, are both urgently needed and chronically unlikely—at least until political will matches the scale of the problem.
As always, things are “going to be fine... probably.”

For further details, find Emiliano Mellino's investigative pieces at tbij.com, and stay tuned to TRASHFUTURE’s Patreon for more.