Oh God, What Now? formerly known as Remainiacs, is a British hour-long twice-weekly
political podcast about
Brexit, speaking from the pro-Remain point of view. It was started on 26 May 2017 as Remainiacs after the
European Union membership referendum as "a no-holds-barred podcast for everyone who won't shut up about Brexit".[1] In October 2020, Remainiacs was renamed "Oh God, What Now?", due to the nature of Brexit making the
unlikelihood of re-joining and changing nature of the British government.[2]
Description
It is presented by The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey, former academic for
London School of Economics Ros Taylor, actor and columnist Alex Andreou, and journalist and former music magazine editor
Andrew Harrison, who was also the producer. Former guests political commentator
Nina Schick and Minnie Rahman, Interim Chief Executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants have later become regular panelists as well. Former regulars include newspaper columnist for i newspaper
Ian Dunt and
Best for Britain's
Naomi Smith.
It follows a format of half the show in a rundown of the news about Brexit with discussion along with a weekly guest, and then the other half with a straight interview with the guest in question. The podcast was both named one of the "Best Podcasts of 2017" by The Guardian'sMiranda Sawyer,[3] and nominated for a podcasting award, the 2018 Broadcasting Press Guild Awards' "Podcast of the Year",[4] however it lost to
Ed Miliband's Reasons to Be Cheerful.[5] The show is recorded at Podmasters’ own studio in Highbury, North London.
As well as the weekly show, there is a series of “Remainiacs Live” and “Oh God, What Now? Live” shows at which the hosts spoke among themselves about Brexit. Venues included The Phoenix gastropub in
Cavendish Square, Marylebone, the Stoke Newington Literary Festival,[6]Leeds City Varieties,[7] the
Epstein Theatre in Liverpool,[8]Hove's The Old Market Theatre [9] and regularly at the
Leicester Square Theatre.[10] Remainiacs was part of the Podcast Live: Politics day long festival of different political podcasts on 7 April 2019 at
Friends House, Camden.[11]
After the relative success of Remainiacs, the ending of
the withdrawal period and with the extra funding from their Patreon backers, the producers of the show created an hour-long non-Brexit general politics podcast called The Bunker in January 2020.[40] This show follows the same format as Remainiacs, but without the reference to Brexit. After just one show, it became one of top ten politics podcasts on the UK iTunes chart.[41] Due to the large amount of news that being produced during the
COVID-19 pandemic, from 26 March short one to one interviews half-hour shows were made under the title of TheBunker Daily. Success of The Bunker Daily has led to the show being a permanent feature of the podcast. There was also a Saturday culture edition of the Bunker, The Culture Bunker, which ran until Sept 2022.