The world is going to hell in hand basket, and Fatima Ayub wants to talk to you about it. She’s a political scientist currently based in Jordan, with 15 years’ background in conflict, security and human rights issues in the Middle East and South Asia. She currently works with the global consulting firm Adam Smith International seeking solutions to Jordan’s economic challenges and is an associate policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She is also a professional contrarian and peddles insight and absurdity on Twitter as @thecynicist. Fatima and I talked about similarities between the problems facing Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries; the failure of politics in the Middle East and in the West; the challenge of parsing through human rights and sectarianism; what the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war tells us about our own failures; and our shared love of Radiohead.