Novara Media
1,526 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsNovara Media is an independent media organisation addressing the issues – from a crisis of capitalism to racism and climate change – that are set to define the 21st century.
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Episodes
Downstream: The Truth About Incels w/ William Costello
May 20, 2024 10:34 - 1 hour - 142 MBThe involuntary celibate community (aka ‘incels’) are often thought to be rightwing, white supremacist, and prone to violence. But how much of that is true? Ash Sarkar is joined by William Costello – a researcher whose work focuses on the psychology of incels – to discuss what we get wrong about incels, what incels get […]
Novara FM: Living Through the Chinese Miracle w/ Yuan Yang
May 16, 2024 11:38 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBNo country has ever changed so fast as China. From the west, we see only the dazzling headline figures – 15% growth in some years. But it’s on the ground, in the huge shifts in the patterns of daily life, where the story comes alive. Journalist Yuan Yang’s first book Private Revolutions provides just that insight, […]
Downstream: Individualism is Destroying Our Freedom w/ Grace Blakeley
May 13, 2024 09:49 - 1 hour - 96 MBCommon sense tells us that free-market economies maximise freedom and that planned economies, typically found under socialist governments, curtail it. But what if this is completely the wrong way around? On this episode of Downstream, Aaron is joined by economist and author Grace Blakeley to discuss Henry Ford, Boeing and the nature of democracy. You […]
Novara FM: Know Your Enemies w/ Matthew Sitman & Sam Adler-Bell
May 10, 2024 12:03 - 1 hour - 122 MBGeorge Bernard Shaw once joked that the US and the UK are “two countries divided by a common language.” Can the same be said of their conservatives? As we brace for a joint election year, Eleanor Penny talks to Sam Adler-Bell and Matthew Sitman, two expert guides to US conservatism via their podcast Know Your […]
Downstream: George Galloway’s Plan to Destroy the Labour Party
May 05, 2024 17:44 - 1 hour - 118 MBGeorge Galloway has been elected as a member of parliament for four separate constituencies – with only Winston Churchill beating him. Perhaps more remarkably still, he won on three of those occasions while not being a member of a major political party. Most recently, he became the MP for Rochdale in the north of England. […]
ACFM Microdose: Reactionary Democracy w/ Aaron Winter & Aurelien Mondon
May 05, 2024 05:00 - 1 hour - 92 MBHow do mainstream politicians and pundits contribute to the normalisation of far-right ideas, even as they claim to reject racism and populism? That’s one of many vital questions asked by Aaron Winter and Aurelien Mondon in their book, Reactionary Democracy. Following ACFM’s recent Trip about Fascism, Keir and Jem speak to Aaron and Aurelien about […]
Novara FM: Your Neighbour Kills Puppies w/ Tom Harris
May 02, 2024 13:59 - 1 hour - 118 MBIn the ’00s, animal rights protestors nearly won their battle to ban vivisection in the UK, shutting down multiple breeding farms that were supplying laboratories with cats, dogs and guinea pigs. But at the last moment, the government made a dramatic U-turn, blocking their attempt to shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences and throwing activists in […]
Downstream: How Austerity Harms Britain’s Most Vulnerable Children w/ Teresa Thornhill
April 29, 2024 08:40 - 1 hour - 127 MBTeresa Thornhill is an author and former child protection lawyer. Throughout her long career, working for both local authorities and advocating on behalf of parents, she has been a first hand witness to how the system fails parents, social workers and, most importantly, children. Teresa sat down with Aaron to talk about the untrained volunteers […]
Novara FM: Read Some Effing Jameson! w/ Sianne Ngai and Matthew Beaumont
April 25, 2024 14:10 - 1 hour - 111 MBThe exhortation to “read some effing Orwell!” is an old chestnut of the online left, whether ironic or sincere, or somewhere in between. But if we’re looking for a writer whose body of work truly anticipates the world we live in now – globalised, postcolonial, postmodern – we might instead turn to the American Marxist […]
Downstream: This Is How Israel Controls Palestinians w/ Eyal Weizman
April 22, 2024 09:59 - 1 hour - 97.8 MBIt’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove. For years, Forensic Architecture has exposed state crimes against civilians, nature, and humanity. This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar meets its director Eyal Weizman to discuss Israel’s settler colonial project, the police killing of Mark Duggan, and how the testimony of blindfolded torture victims helped […]
ACFM Trip 42: Fascism
April 21, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour - 155 MBA lot of people are saying that fascism is on the rise. But what are we pointing to when we call a system, or a person, fascist? On this Trip, Nadia, Keir and Jem map out a complicated ideology, from its roots in 19th century industrialisation to its resurgence in ethnonationalism and eco-apartheid. Exploring how […]
Novara FM: London’s Endless Appetite w/ Jonathan Nunn and Amardeep Singh Dhillon
April 18, 2024 12:41 - 1 hour - 103 MBLondon is a foodie metropolis: undoubtedly one of the best places to eat in the world. But eating in London is also, like everything else in the city, shaped by its history as the capital of a globe-spanning empire. How did the contraction of this formal empire change infamously terrible British cuisine? How did multiculturalism […]
Downstream: The West is Poor, Africa is Rich w/ George The Poet
April 15, 2024 11:29 - 1 hour - 94.2 MBGeorge The Poet is a poet and author best known for his acclaimed BBC audio series, Have You Heard George’s Podcast? He joins Ash for an expansive conversation about his journey from grime MC to poet to academic, how Black music lost its radical politics, and how his politics was radically reshaped when he started […]
Novara FM: Colonial Capitalism Has Made Us Sick w/ Rupa Marya & Raj Patel
April 11, 2024 12:09 - 1 hour - 104 MBCenturies of colonial capitalism have reordered life on the planet and inside our bodies, from industrial farming and the uneven advances of modern medicine, to night shifts, chronic stress and inflammation. Has the system made us sick? That’s the concern of Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, who join Eleanor Penny to talk about the history […]
Downstream: Israelis Want Genocide w/ Abby Martin
April 08, 2024 08:34 - 1 hour - 85.3 MBAbby Martin is an American journalist and activist, host of the interview series The Empire Files, and a co-founder of the citizen journalism website Media Roots. She joins Ash Sarkar to discuss her political journey after 9/11, working for the state broadcaster Russia Today, how Israelis really talk about Palestinians, and why she believes the […]
Novara FM: What’s Really Causing the Housing Crisis? w/ Nick Bano
April 04, 2024 12:32 - 1 hour - 91.5 MBWhy is it so expensive to rent in the UK? In a divisive new book, barrister Nick Bano places the blame squarely on price-gouging landlords, rejecting the conventional wisdom that calls for more new housing as a solution to the crisis. He goes head to head with Novara Live’s Michael Walker to explain the thinking […]
Downstream IRL: This Ideology Threatens Our Fundamental Freedoms w/ Judith Butler
April 01, 2024 13:16 - 55 minutes - 76.5 MBFor a special edition of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar is joined by philosopher, author, and one of the world’s most cited academics, Judith Butler. Their new book, ‘Who’s Afraid of Gender’ charts how a transphobic moral panic morphed into an all-our war on so-called ‘gender ideology’. Together, Ash and Judith explore how Britain became TERF […]
Downstream: We Are Getting Foreign Policy Very Wrong w/ Steve Coll
March 25, 2024 11:57 - 1 hour - 91.1 MBWith hindsight, the wars waged by the US and Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq look like terrible failures, both strategically and politically: the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, and living standards are worse in Iraq than they were before Saddam Hussein. In his new book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States […]
Novara FM: Critical Theorists Hate This One Weird Trick w/ Anna Kornbluh
March 21, 2024 12:00 - 1 hour - 99.6 MBWe’re living in a world of hurry and shortcuts, of intimacy on tap and just-in-time production. Immediacy, according to Anna Kornbluh, is the link between flow-states and Fleabag, between food delivery apps and a mistrust of political systems. She joins Richard Hames to explain the thinking behind her new book – Immediacy: Or, The Style […]
Downstream: On Gaza, Grammar Schools and British War Crimes w/ Peter Hitchens
March 18, 2024 10:39 - 1 hour - 130 MBPeter Hitchens is an author and journalist whose contrarian takes on drug policy, education and foreign policy have found him occupying a singular place in the British media – with his brand of conservatism often angering audiences who would consider themselves staunchly conservative. He sat down with Aaron to discuss grammar schools, Gaza and Britain’s […]
ACFM Trip 41: Trust Your Gut
March 17, 2024 08:30 - 1 hour - 111 MBFrom fecal transplants to the yoghurt-industrial complex, we’ve never been more absorbed in the workings of our gut. But can we trust it? Nadia, Jem and Keir investigate the mysterious connections between mind and body, reason and instinct. How did capitalism separate our minds from our bodies? Is a belief in intuition filling the gap […]
Novara FM: The Untold Histories of Black Gay Britain w/ Jason Okundaye
March 13, 2024 13:40 - 1 hour - 100 MBResearching Black British history “often feels like a rescue effort, a race against time,” writes Jason Okundaye. In his first book, he narrates the mingled histories of seven astonishing lives in the Black gay community of South London during the 1980s. The narrative he pieces together from oral history, archival research and even gossip (a […]
Downstream: Retired Major-General on Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan w/ Charlie Herbert
March 11, 2024 16:10 - 1 hour - 108 MBMajor General Charlie Herbert has stood out in recent months for his vociferous condemnation of Israel’s war on Palestinians. His media appearances have proven vital in synthesising a moral and strategic critique of war in which civilians are treated in a manner he characterises as unprecedented. He sat down with Ash to talk about serving […]
Novara FM: Not Westminster’s Whipping Boys w/ Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram
March 07, 2024 11:55 - 56 minutes - 78.2 MBLess than 20% of the promised levelling-up projects for England have been completed. The problem lies not only with the current government, but with the whole way the UK’s political system is set up, with its whips and Lords and not a constitution in sight. So say Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, the mayors of […]
Downstream: Britain’s Economy Will Only Get Worse Forever w/ Gary Stevenson
March 04, 2024 11:47 - 1 hour - 163 MBGary Stevenson went from being Citibank’s most profitable trader to one of the world’s most incisive critics of the financial system. Gary sat down with Aaron to discuss the lightbulb moment that led him away from trading, why economists can’t predict anything and why the UK middle class is doomed.
Novara FM: Russia After Navalny w/ Tony Wood
March 01, 2024 12:33 - 1 hour - 98.5 MBAs the war in Ukraine enters its third year, the question of what Russia is really thinking remains as crucial, and mysterious, as ever. To paint a picture of the current political climate, Richard Hames talks to Tony Wood, author of Russia Without Putin and an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado […]
Downstream IRL: We Are in a New Cold War w/ Yanis Varoufakis
February 26, 2024 15:20 - 1 hour - 97 MBYanis Varoufakis is an economist and author who served as Greek Finance Minister in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash. Since then, he has become one of the most sought after public speakers on the left. He joined Aaron Bastani for an IRL edition of Downstream at EartH in Hackney, North-East London to […]
ACFM Microdose: Aliens On Screen
February 25, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour - 140 MBLast time on ACFM, the gang explored the impact of UFOs on politics, from deep-state conspiracies to the Posadists. But to really understand how aliens influence our thought – and what our belief in E.T. says about ourselves – we have to go to the movies. In this Microdose, Keir, Jem and Nadia sweep through a […]
Novara FM: The Nasty Noughties w/ Owen Hatherley & Ash Sarkar
February 22, 2024 12:00 - 59 minutes - 82 MBThe 2000s in Britain was a decade of education, regeneration, falling inequality and Dizzee Rascal. But beneath the fleeting prosperity lurked a culture of cruelty. It was palpable in politicians’ disdain for single mothers, in the media’s vilification of chavs, and in TV producers’ obsession with pointing and laughing at just about everyone – but don’t […]
The US Must Stop Funding Israel | Bernie Sanders meets Ash Sarkar
February 20, 2024 12:13 - 17 minutes - 25.3 MBBernie Sanders needs no introduction. Ash caught up with the senator to talk about his new book ‘It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism’, the speed of political change and whether what is happening in Gaza constitutes a genocide.
Downstream: Israel Will Never Be Safe While Occupying Palestine w/ Yousef Alhelou
February 19, 2024 11:39 - 1 hour - 126 MBYousef Alhelou has spent the four or so months since October 7th covering the Israeli assault on Gaza through his Instagram account. In that time, his audience has grown by hundreds of thousands. Aaron sat down with Yousef to talk about international law, the genocide in Gaza and Britain’s complicity in it.
Novara FM: Can International Law Protect Gaza? w/ Rob Knox
February 15, 2024 15:16 - 1 hour - 124 MBAs Israel extends its bombardment of Gaza into Rafah – a supposed safe zone where 1.7 million Palestinians are seeking refuge – the limits of the “laws” of war seem horribly apparent. Following South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ last month, legal scholar Rob Knox joins Eleanor Penny to offer an urgent account of […]
Novara FM: How To Be Honest About Empire w/ Sathnam Sanghera
February 08, 2024 15:03 - 57 minutes - 79.3 MBCertain historians and politicians like to claim that the British Empire was “on balance” a good thing. Slavery was evil, they admit, but abolition was good. Racism was wrong, but free markets are desirable. In his new book Empireworld, journalist and historian Sathnam Sanghera rejects this “balance sheet” reading of history in order to wrestle […]
Downstream: Why No One Should Have More Than £10 Million w/ Ingrid Robeyns
February 05, 2024 15:12 - 57 minutes - 79.9 MBShould there be a cap on how much wealth one person can have? If we’re serious about tackling poverty, the answer can only be yes, says Ingrid Robeyns, author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Robeyns tells Ash Sarkar what a wealth cap could do for the world, how the global north is living […]
ACFM Trip 40: UFOs
February 04, 2024 13:25 - 1 hour - 118 MBShould the left care about the existence of aliens? The ACFM gang explore the impact of UFOs on political thought in this Trip. Keir, Jem and Nadia discuss the connections between UFO conspiracies and right-wing thought, why some communists think aliens will bring about world revolution, and whether Fermi’s paradox means we’re not alone, with […]
Downstream: Would the World Be Better Without Religion? w/ Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar
January 29, 2024 13:11 - 1 hour - 138 MBTwenty years ago, it was taken for granted that on average, people globally were shrugging off the shackles of organised religion. The world was destined for secularism. But with demographics trends in many countries pointing towards a growing religious population and with secular liberal politics failing to offer solace from falling living standards, we should […]
Novara FM: Who Dares To Rewrite 40,000 Years of History? w/ David Wengrow
January 25, 2024 12:24 - 1 hour - 117 MBThis episode was first released in November 2021. In the bestselling book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, archaeologist David Wengrow and the late anthropologist David Graeber offer a radically different story of our social evolution. Drawing on groundbreaking research gathered over a decade of collaboration, the book challenges just about everything […]
Downstream: Everything You Know About The Global Economy is Wrong w/ Philip Pilkington
January 22, 2024 12:29 - 1 hour - 122 MBWe are in a drastically different world from the one most of us grew up in. This has been proven by the rapid escalation in the events in the Middle East over the last six weeks. No longer are we in a world where, essentially, the US run the show. And this has huge global […]
ACFM Microdose: Plugged-in Protest w/ Jeremy Gilbert
January 21, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour - 99.6 MBMusic has the uncanny power to stir up big feelings, which makes it an obvious vehicle for political statements of hope, anger, despair, or how to cast your vote. In this Microdose episode to accompany ACFM’s recent Trip on Protest, Jem takes us through 60 years of plugged-in protest music – no strumming folkies or […]
Novara FM: The Novels That Inspired Class War w/ Mark Steven
January 19, 2024 08:50 - 1 hour - 84.6 MBWhat role does literature play in revolution? If the question seems bizarre to you and the answer obvious, you’re not alone. Yet some of the most important revolutionaries in history have turned to literature in times of crisis. Mao Zedong started writing poetry during the Chinese Red Army’s retreat, adopting traditional Chinese forms to do […]
Downstream: We Are in the Post-Climate Change World w/ Gaia Vince
January 15, 2024 17:50 - 1 hour - 117 MBDiscussion of climate change mainly focuses on mitigating rising temperatures, de-carbonising and getting to ‘net zero’. Author and broadcaster Gaia Vince argues that we also need to focus on how we’ll deal with with’s already happening and about to get much much worse: huge swathes of the planet becoming uninhabitable and 2 billion people needing […]
Novara FM: Escaping the Tourism Trap w/ Dean MacCannell
January 11, 2024 15:49 - 53 minutes - 74 MBJanuary is historically the busiest month of the year for holiday bookings. But if you’ve ever felt uncomfortable with the idea of being a tourist, you’re not the first. Back in 1976, anthropologist Dean MacCannell theorised both our drive to see the world and its manipulation by capitalism in his book The Tourist: A New […]
Downstream: White Holes and Radical Politics w/ Carlo Rovelli
January 01, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour - 122 MBFrom his radical youth in 1970s Italy to his research as one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli is as comfortable talking politics as he is explaining quantum theory. He sat down with Aaron to talk about the future of Europe, his theory of white holes, and why we’re not actually living in […]
Novara FM: The People Vs Football w/ Juliet Jacques & Tom Williams
December 28, 2023 12:30 - 57 minutes - 79.9 MBIs football the place for political struggle? Is there a limit to the success of fan-owned clubs? How disappointed can we be when pundits and players turn out not to be comrades? Cultural critic Juliet Jacques and Pro Revolution Soccer host Tom Williams unite for a conversation inspired by Mickaël Correia’s book, The People’s History […]
Downstream: 2023 Year in Review
December 24, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 86.6 MBFor this end-of-year edition of Downstream, the Novara Media team look back on the biggest stories of the year. Ash Sarkar is joined by Moya Lothian-McLean, Michael Walker and Owen Jones to talk about the Labour Party, the climate crisis, the rise of AI and the war on Gaza. From clouds brightening to prospects dimming, […]
ACFM Microdose: A Festive 50 For 2023
December 22, 2023 12:00 - 56 minutes - 77.5 MBThe ACFM gang get together for the last time this year to deliver a Festive 50. Keir, Jem and Nadia select the best bits of culture and politics from 2023, from music, films, books to games, strikes and actions. Unwrap to find sci-fi blaxploitation, comedy history, gobby glam-punk, Judge Dredd analysis, a fresh angle on Silicon […]
Novara FM: It’s A Wonderful Life w/ James Butler
December 21, 2023 12:16 - 1 hour - 99.6 MBReleased in 1946, Frank Capra’s fable of Christmas despair in small town America has become – rather improbably – a staple of festive television. Starring Jimmy Stewart as virtuous everyman George Bailey, It’s A Wonderful Life is not just a feelgood tale of moral redemption, but a clue to the shifting social terrain of post-war America. Is […]
Downstream: The Plan To Privatise Everything w/ Brett Christophers
December 18, 2023 12:05 - 1 hour - 110 MBAsset management companies like Blackrock, Vanguard and Macquarie have avoided real scrutiny for decades, but their secretive activities are starting to attract attention from political researchers and academics. What do these companies do, and what risk do they pose to society? Author and academic Brett Christophers sets out to answer this question in his new […]
ACFM Trip 39: Protest
December 17, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 144 MBMillions have protested against the bombing of Gaza by taking part in marches, boycotts, sit-ins and other demonstrations. But what difference does it make, either to the world or to ourselves? The gang confront a contentious topic in this Trip. Do “A to B” marches ever achieve anything? What about joining hands around an RAF […]
Novara FM: Palestine 2048 w/ Basma Ghalayini
December 15, 2023 14:51 - 54 minutes - 75.2 MBScience fiction isn’t a mode usually associated with Palestinian literature, perhaps because dreams of the future seem like a luxury when you can barely hold onto your past, or even present. In 2019, translator and editor Basma Ghalayini asked 12 Palestinian authors to imagine their world in 2048 – a century after the Nakba that […]