Latest Novara Podcast Episodes
Downstream: Israel Will Never Be Safe While Occupying Palestine w/ Yousef Alhelou
Novara Media - February 19, 2024 11:39 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsYousef 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 compli...
Novara FM: Can International Law Protect Gaza? w/ Rob Knox
Novara Media - February 15, 2024 15:16 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsAs 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...
Novara FM: How To Be Honest About Empire w/ Sathnam Sanghera
Novara Media - February 08, 2024 15:03 - 57 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsCertain 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 “bala...
Downstream: Why No One Should Have More Than £10 Million w/ Ingrid Robeyns
Novara Media - February 05, 2024 15:12 - 57 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsShould 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...
ACFM Trip 40: UFOs
Novara Media - February 04, 2024 13:25 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsShould 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 whet...
Downstream: Would the World Be Better Without Religion? w/ Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar
Novara Media - January 29, 2024 13:11 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsTwenty 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 politic...
Novara FM: Who Dares To Rewrite 40,000 Years of History? w/ David Wengrow
Novara Media - January 25, 2024 12:24 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsThis 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...
Downstream: Everything You Know About The Global Economy is Wrong w/ Philip Pilkington
Novara Media - January 22, 2024 12:29 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsWe 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
Novara Media - January 21, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsMusic 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 s...
Novara FM: The Novels That Inspired Class War w/ Mark Steven
Novara Media - January 19, 2024 08:50 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsWhat 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 retr...
Downstream: We Are in the Post-Climate Change World w/ Gaia Vince
Novara Media - January 15, 2024 17:50 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsDiscussion 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...
Novara FM: Escaping the Tourism Trap w/ Dean MacCannell
Novara Media - January 11, 2024 15:49 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsJanuary 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 hi...
Downstream: White Holes and Radical Politics w/ Carlo Rovelli
Novara Media - January 01, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsFrom 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 ...
Novara FM: The People Vs Football w/ Juliet Jacques & Tom Williams
Novara Media - December 28, 2023 12:30 - 57 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsIs 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 Mickaë...
Downstream: 2023 Year in Review
Novara Media - December 24, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsFor 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 brightenin...
ACFM Microdose: A Festive 50 For 2023
Novara Media - December 22, 2023 12:00 - 56 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsThe 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 an...
Novara FM: It’s A Wonderful Life w/ James Butler
Novara Media - December 21, 2023 12:16 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsReleased 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 shi...
Downstream: The Plan To Privatise Everything w/ Brett Christophers
Novara Media - December 18, 2023 12:05 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsAsset 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 academ...
ACFM Trip 39: Protest
Novara Media - December 17, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsMillions 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 abo...
Novara FM: Palestine 2048 w/ Basma Ghalayini
Novara Media - December 15, 2023 14:51 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsScience 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...
Downstream: This Damage Cannot Be Reversed w/ Daniel Levy
Novara Media - December 11, 2023 10:19 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsDaniel Levy has had a front row seat at some of the most consequential peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine in the last two decades, as president of the U.S./Middle East Peace Project and as an adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. He sat down with Ash Sarkar to talk abo...
Novara Live Extra: Israel’s Illegal War w/ Norman Finkelstein
Novara Media - December 07, 2023 12:58 - 56 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsOn Novara Live this week, Michael Walker spoke to renowned political scientist and activist Norman Finkelstein about Israel’s assault on Gaza and the collapse of the ceasefire. In this extended interview, they discuss the relationship between Hamas and Hezbollah, the use of human shields, and whe...
Downstream: We Don’t Understand History w/ Blindboy
Novara Media - December 05, 2023 10:58 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsBlindboy Boatclub is the Irish broadcaster, author and musician behind The Blindboy Podcast, a massively popular podcast mixing short fiction, comedy and interviews. His new short story collection, Topographia Hibernica, is inspired by the human, animal and emotional geography of Ireland. Blindbo...
Novara FM: Fascism Is Not The Exception w/ Alberto Toscano
Novara Media - December 01, 2023 12:46 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsIn recent years we’ve spent a lot of time arguing about fascism – what it means, what it looks like, and how we would know if it had returned. That typically brings us back to the European fascism of ’30s and ’40s, with its uniforms, symbols, marches and camps. But the philosopher Alberto Toscano...
Downstream: The History of Israel’s War on Palestine w/ Rashid Khalidi
Novara Media - November 27, 2023 19:26 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsTo really understand what’s going in Israel, you need to get your history straight. Rashid Khalidi is one of the foremost historians of the Middle East and the author of several books on the region’s history, including The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine. On the day of the ceasefire in Gaza, he g...
Novara FM: New Cities, Old Scams w/ Quinn Slobodian
Novara Media - November 23, 2023 12:46 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsBusiness is booming for architects and property investors right now, with masterplans being unveiled for dozens of new cities around the world. The hi-tech promise of NEOM, Saudi Arabia’s proposed new desert metropolis, is only the most discussed of these visions – others are being drawn up in In...
Downstream: Does the Labour Party Care About Palestine? w/ Zarah Sultana
Novara Media - November 20, 2023 13:18 - 56 minutes ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsZarah Sultana is one of the youngest MPs in Parliament and has faced intense hostility from the right of the Labour Party since Keir Starmer’s ascent to leader. The MP for Coventry South sat down with Ash Sarkar to talk about the reality of being a Muslim woman in the Labour Party, her interactio...
Novara FM: Why Posh People Have Bad Taste w/ Nathalie Olah
Novara Media - November 16, 2023 18:03 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsDolly Parton was right, as usual, when she revealed that “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap”. But who decided rhinestones were tacky in the first place? Style is a matter of taste, yet taste itself is a a matter of money, morality and identity, as the writer and critic Nathalie Olah […]
Downstream: The Future of Money w/ Brett Scott
Novara Media - November 13, 2023 12:22 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsWe’re heading towards a cashless society. With the dominion of Visa and Mastercard showing no sign of shrinking, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to scrutinise what this shift towards virtual money really means. Brett Scott is an author and former banker who is deeply committed to evaluating ...
Novara FM: Engine of Immortality w/ Jeff Jarvis
Novara Media - November 10, 2023 17:16 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsFor 500 years, societies have been shaped by the authority and permanence of the printed word. What do we have to lose – or gain – when the internet renders print culture obsolete? Jeff Jarvis thinks we should look to the early print era, when Johannes Gutenberg’s invention caused a moral panic a...
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