Latest Novara Podcast Episodes
Downstream: The Truth About Incels w/ William Costello
Novara Media - May 20, 2024 10:34 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsThe 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 ...
Novara FM: Living Through the Chinese Miracle w/ Yuan Yang
Novara Media - May 16, 2024 11:38 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsNo 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 ...
Downstream: Individualism is Destroying Our Freedom w/ Grace Blakeley
Novara Media - May 13, 2024 09:49 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsCommon 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 disc...
Novara FM: Know Your Enemies w/ Matthew Sitman & Sam Adler-Bell
Novara Media - May 10, 2024 12:03 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsGeorge 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 podc...
Downstream: George Galloway’s Plan to Destroy the Labour Party
Novara Media - May 05, 2024 17:44 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsGeorge 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 Rochdal...
ACFM Microdose: Reactionary Democracy w/ Aaron Winter & Aurelien Mondon
Novara Media - May 05, 2024 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsHow 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 Fas...
Novara FM: Your Neighbour Kills Puppies w/ Tom Harris
Novara Media - May 02, 2024 13:59 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsIn 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 Hu...
Downstream: How Austerity Harms Britain’s Most Vulnerable Children w/ Teresa Thornhill
Novara Media - April 29, 2024 08:40 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsTeresa 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 ...
Novara FM: Read Some Effing Jameson! w/ Sianne Ngai and Matthew Beaumont
Novara Media - April 25, 2024 14:10 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsThe 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 t...
Downstream: This Is How Israel Controls Palestinians w/ Eyal Weizman
Novara Media - April 22, 2024 09:59 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsIt’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, ...
ACFM Trip 42: Fascism
Novara Media - April 21, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsA 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-aparthe...
Novara FM: London’s Endless Appetite w/ Jonathan Nunn and Amardeep Singh Dhillon
Novara Media - April 18, 2024 12:41 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsLondon 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 ...
Downstream: The West is Poor, Africa is Rich w/ George The Poet
Novara Media - April 15, 2024 11:29 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsGeorge 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 reshap...
Novara FM: Colonial Capitalism Has Made Us Sick w/ Rupa Marya & Raj Patel
Novara Media - April 11, 2024 12:09 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsCenturies 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 Ele...
Downstream: Israelis Want Genocide w/ Abby Martin
Novara Media - April 08, 2024 08:34 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsAbby 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 ...
Novara FM: What’s Really Causing the Housing Crisis? w/ Nick Bano
Novara Media - April 04, 2024 12:32 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsWhy 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 expl...
Downstream IRL: This Ideology Threatens Our Fundamental Freedoms w/ Judith Butler
Novara Media - April 01, 2024 13:16 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsFor 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...
Downstream: We Are Getting Foreign Policy Very Wrong w/ Steve Coll
Novara Media - March 25, 2024 11:57 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsWith 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 Tra...
Novara FM: Critical Theorists Hate This One Weird Trick w/ Anna Kornbluh
Novara Media - March 21, 2024 12:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsWe’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 behin...
Downstream: On Gaza, Grammar Schools and British War Crimes w/ Peter Hitchens
Novara Media - March 18, 2024 10:39 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsPeter 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...
ACFM Trip 41: Trust Your Gut
Novara Media - March 17, 2024 08:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsFrom 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? I...
Novara FM: The Untold Histories of Black Gay Britain w/ Jason Okundaye
Novara Media - March 13, 2024 13:40 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsResearching 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...
Downstream: Retired Major-General on Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan w/ Charlie Herbert
Novara Media - March 11, 2024 16:10 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsMajor 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....
Novara FM: Not Westminster’s Whipping Boys w/ Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram
Novara Media - March 07, 2024 11:55 - 56 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsLess 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,...
Downstream: Britain’s Economy Will Only Get Worse Forever w/ Gary Stevenson
Novara Media - March 04, 2024 11:47 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsGary 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
Novara Media - March 01, 2024 12:33 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsAs 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 t...
Downstream IRL: We Are in a New Cold War w/ Yanis Varoufakis
Novara Media - February 26, 2024 15:20 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsYanis 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, N...
ACFM Microdose: Aliens On Screen
Novara Media - February 25, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsLast 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 sw...
Novara FM: The Nasty Noughties w/ Owen Hatherley & Ash Sarkar
Novara Media - February 22, 2024 12:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsThe 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 wit...
The US Must Stop Funding Israel | Bernie Sanders meets Ash Sarkar
Novara Media - February 20, 2024 12:13 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsBernie 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.
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