Backlight: Season 25
Season 25 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of Backlight Season 24.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 25 Progress Shield
The Silent Economic Crisis
Oct 8, 2025 · 23 min
According to former London banker and math genius Gary Stevenson, we are in the middle of a major economic crisis — but not one marked by a sudden shock like a stock market crash.
China’s major charm offensive
Oct 16, 2025 · 23 min
Together with political scientist Maria Repnikova, we dive into the world of soft power. In her book *Chinese Soft Power*, she explores how China no longer seeks to persuade the wo
Apartheid as a business model
Oct 22, 2025 · 19 min
According to author and investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein, Big Tech and governments will increasingly join forces to control — and ultimately oppress — populations. He ar
When will the AI bubble burst?
Nov 6, 2025 · 21 min
The AI industry is a growing bubble. Investments in companies building AI applications are hot — very hot. The question is where we are on the wave right now. Is it nearing its pea
From wrestling hero to autocrat
Nov 19, 2025 · 22 min
From wrestling character to president of the White House: Trump owes his rise, according to journalist and writer Josephine Riesman, to his experience of show wrestling. She examin
Fascism is back
Nov 24, 2025 · 15 min
For the bystander perhaps a remarkable move: Elon Musk who is encouraging the radical right-wing German party AfD. For Timothy Snyder, as a professor of history specializing in Hol
The enshittification of the internet
Nov 26, 2025 · 21 min
American activist and writer Cory Doctorow on why the big American tech companies can criticize their products with impunity and we continue to use them anyway. The endless stream
The murder of capitalism
Dec 1, 2025 · 19 min
Capitalism has not only been broken, but also replaced by something much worse, according to economist and former finance minister in Greece, Yanis Varoufakis. He has been studying
Away with the super rich
Dec 5, 2025 · 18 min
Ingrid Robeyns (1972) is an economist and philosopher and professor of Ethics of Institutions at Utrecht University. She is the founder of limitarism. According to Robeyns, we need
Get rid of the diploma arrogance
Dec 8, 2025 · 19 min
Not class but merit will determine everyone's position in life. Away with the aristocracy, live the meritocracy, where everyone would have equal opportunities at the start, and tho
Consultant in power
Dec 10, 2025 · 18 min
and talk to Mariana Mazzucato about her book The Big Con, about how consultants are weakening our companies, hollowing out our governments and harming our economies. Young talent p
Why reality does not exist
Dec 15, 2025 · 19 min
Carlo Rovelli is theoretically physicist and quantum mechanics is his great love. He argues that the reality does not exist, because the reality we experience arises mainly from th
Does satire still have a future
Dec 19, 2025 · 24 min
Democracy is under pressure and in the post-truth era, truth has given way to spectacle. How can we, now that reality seems more absurd than ever, best question power? Does this in
The dark site of the energy transition
Dec 22, 2025 · 26 min
French journalist Guillaume Pitron warns of the shadow side of the energy transition and digitization. Rare metals are essential for the production of electric vehicles, fighter je
Are we alone in the universe?
Dec 24, 2025 · 28 min
Astronomer Casper Farret Jentink works deep in the forests above Geneva on one of the biggest questions humanity has ever asked itself: are we alone in the universe? We are born al
The new perspective on our evolution
Dec 26, 2025 · 25 min
How did complex life on Earth come about? Thanks to scientists like bioinformist Berend Snel, we know that a unique event has occurred on our planet billions of years ago.
Drones that think
Dec 31, 2025 · 22 min
The moment when humanity is on the verge of creating something that can think, learn, feel, or even desire to survive—perhaps at our expense—sometimes seems closer than ever. Can w