Novara Media
Novara Media is an independent media organisation that covers issues such as capitalism, racism, and climate change, which are expected to define the 21st century. The podcast features discussions and analysis on these topics.
Episodes
Do Your Own Research: How China Wins the Resource War w/ Thea Riofrancos
We need critical minerals for the green transition, the military and the AI boom. In barely a year, lithium and the rare earths have become some of the most fought-over objects on earth. But the scarcity is manufactured — by refineries, choke points and the states that control them.
Richard talks to Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, about what these mineral
Downstream: Governments Do Capitalism Wrong. Here’s How We Fix It. w/ Mariana Mazzucato
Mariana Mazzucato is a towering figure in contemporary economics, best known for her work on the entrepreneurial state and mission-oriented economics. Her congregation is broad, ranging from an ascendant Andy Burnham, to the Pope, to Marco Rubio. Ash Sarkar sat down with her in front of a live audience at EartH Theatre in Hackney to test the ideas in her new book, The Common Good Economy.
S
ACFM Trip 61: Resilience
A weird-left look at the magical properties of resilience, from the colonial legacy of the stiff upper lip to contemporary narratives of trauma and victimhood.
Nadia, Keir and Jem wonder whether humans and animals can flourish in the ruins of capitalism, and what a left politics of resilience could look like in an era of constant economic and climate shocks.
No tunes in this show, but plenty of id
Downstream: What the US-Iran Peace Negotiations are Really About w/ Daniel Levy
Daniel Levy is a British-Israeli analyst, commentator, and former Israeli government negotiator whose biography reads like a map of the peace process’s rise and fall.
Ash Sarkar sat down with him as a new Iran deal is announced, with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz set to reopen and the US-Iran ceasefire extended for 60 days.
In this conversation, Daniel picks apart what these peace ne
Do Your Own Research: How Private Equity Bought the World w/ Hettie O’Brien
Secret backrooms where deals are done in private: the realm of conspiracy theories? Or an increasingly large part of capitalism?
Since the financial crisis, some of the big winners have been private equity firms. They’ve snapped up bargains on everything from high street brands, to care homes and nurseries – and maybe even the house you own.
Hettie O’Brien is a journalist for The Guardian and the
Downstream: The Truth About the US Military w/ Matt Kennard
The war on terror ended in 2021 with a catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the consequences of that conflict continue to play out both overseas and at home.
Aaron Bastani sat down with investigative journalist Matt Kennard, founder of Declassified UK, to talk about the status of the American empire, Trump’s war-hungry administration, and how the US government has been captured by
Do Your Own Research: Israel Is Literally Burying Evidence of Its Genocide w/ Eyal Weizman
The so-called ceasefire in Gaza has not ended the genocide.
The bombing runs may be quieter, but the bulldozers roar on. Israel is tearing up homes, orchards, schools and hospitals, then flattening the rubble to erase the memory that Palestinian life was ever there.
To understand this architecture of death, Richard Hames spoke to Eyal Weizman, author of Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide an
Downstream: AI Billionaires Want to Control Every Aspect of Your Life w/ Karen Hao
It has been a year since Aaron Bastani first met with AI investigative journalist Karen Hao, to discuss her book Empire of AI. A year is a long time, in the fastest growing sector on the planet. To bring us up to date, Aaron and Karen sat down again to discuss the major shifts in the empire – and their impacts on us all.
Billions of people now use, AI as it has become more integrated into our li
ACFM Microdose: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
The ACFM crew gather for a close reading of Walter Benjamin’s foundational contribution to 20th century cultural and media theory.
Download the short text and follow along as Nadia, Keir and Jem consider The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, published in 1935.
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Do Your Own Research: From the Bible to ChatBots: A History of Psyops w/ Trevor Paglen
We are all subject to manipulation campaigns all the time: advertising, political campaigning, social media. You don’t know what’s true and you can’t stop watching slop.
And the technology is getting better all the time – there are now systems that predict what your brain state will be when you see a particular video on the internet.
We’re living in a jungle of manipulative media objects: sycophan
Downstream: The Woman Who Invented Intersectionality w/ Kimberlé Crenshaw
The far right holds power in the US, inflaming tension along racial lines. ICE agents terrorise the streets, while Black history is erased from school curricula. In the UK too, Nigel Farage’s far right party Reform is on the ascendancy, riding a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment that he himself helped to stoke.
Our guest on Downstream this week is Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, civil rights advocate
Do Your Own Research: AI Is Not A Bubble. The Reality Is Far Worse w/ Garrison Lovely
AI progress isn’t slowing down. The bubble doesn’t seem to be popping. And who in power actually cares about the environmental impacts anyway?
All that is to say: AI is here to stay. And what will be its fruits? Greater control of workers or even their brutal repression, some say.
So, is there a positive future for AI at all?
Garrison Lovely is the author of Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion-Do
Downstream: Top Economist Exposes Inequality Death Spiral w/ Gabriel Zucman
A wealth tax on the very richest people in our society has never been more popular. Recent polling puts the plan at 90% approval, a figure almost unheard of for any policy proposal.
This week’s guest, Gabriel Zucman, is a French economist who has done the most comprehensive work on what such a tax could accomplish.
And he’s also a key inspiration for the UK’s leading wealth tax advocate – an
Do Your Own Research: The Scandal of the Century? Hondurasgate Explained w/ David Adler
It’s a dizzying set of allegations.
A trove of leaked voice notes and call recordings — published by the anonymous outlet Hondurasgate.ch and Spain’s Canal RED — allege that Israeli money helped secure US President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving 45 years in a US prison for trafficking some 400 tons of cocaine.
The record
ACFM Trip 60: Shock!
Jem, Nadia and Keir apply their weird-left lens to the power and potential of shock. Starting with an investigation into economic shock therapy and the way that Trumpism models the concept of shock doctrine, they move onto modern art’s relationship with the shock of the new, from Dada and Eisenstein to gangsta rap and radio shock jocks.
Can you acclimatise yourself to shock either through r
Downstream: British Politics Is in Meltdown. Here’s Why w/ James Butler
It has been a seismic week in British politics. The two-party system has collapsed. Keir Starmer is digging in at Downing Street, while Labour leadership contenders line up outside, and Reform clouds gather overhead. Now: the most important by-election in more than a century looms. How did we get here? And what happens next?
On this week’s Downstream, Aaron Bastani is joined by James Butler, contr
Do Your Own Research: Do Androids Dream of Human Rights? w/ Lisa Siraganian
Are you a person? Sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t. Until pretty recently, the idea that everyone was a human in the same way was almost unthinkable.
But the world order that established universal human rights is crumbling. The question of who or what counts as a person is getting harder to answer. Companies have rights to religious freedom – but Muslims detained in Guantanamo Bay
Downstream: The Most Influential Leftist You’ve Never Heard Of w/ Peter Mertens
British politics is in turmoil. The two party system has collapsed, the far right has won huge gains across the country. Crises of this scale can create huge opportunities for socialists too, but only when the left is organised and ready.
Peter Mertens is the general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium. If recent years in British politics have had a manic-depressive quality, with extreme hi
ACFM Microdose: New Weird Britain
Are we living through a new era of British weirdness? Keir and Jem mark the start of spring by taking in the weird-left politics of leylines, weird walks and standing stones.
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Do Your Own Research: What the World’s Most Famous Marxist Really Thinks of Zohran Mamdani w/ David Harvey
David Harvey is a legendary Marxist geographer. He’s taught Marx for over half a century – maybe you’ve even been one of his millions of students.
He’s the author of the new The Story of Capital as well as many others, such as the classic The Limits to Capital.
Talking from his home town of New York City, he told Richard Hames what he’s learned from decades of studying the most important radical i
Downstream: British Politics Is About to Collapse w/ James Meadway
The two-party system has defined British politics for centuries, but the status quo is under attack from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and an insurgent Green party – both looking to clean up in the local elections on 7 May.
This week Aaron Bastani speaks to economist James Meadway about the disruptive new progressive party on the block. Meadway was an economic advisor to John McDonnell during Jeremy
Do Your Own Research: How The Far Right Captured British Politics w/ Daniel Trilling
A decade and a half ago, the British far right was a fringe concern. But since then, the ruling party – whether it be The Conservatives or Labour – has played into their hands over and over again. Whether through appeasement or ineptitude, more than a decade of rightward drift has put Reform within reach of Downing Street.
Can anyone stop them? Is anyone actually in control? Or are the emotional f
Downstream: The Truth About Smartphones’ Dirty Supply Chain w/ Nicholas Niarchos
The 21st century runs on batteries: from phones and laptops to electric vehicles, drones and clean energy. Embedded in these batteries are rare earth minerals, drawn from a brutal supply chain that begins in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The race to electrify the global energy system is underway, but most people know almost nothing about how the necessary batteries are made – even those of us
Do Your Own Research: You Can’t Have Billionaires and Democracy. Ancient Collapse Proves It. w/ Luke Kemp
It’s the question that will come to define our lives: is our society going to collapse? But the field of collapse research is fragmented, chaotic, and often plain deranged. Who can you trust?
Luke Kemp is the author of Goliath’s Curse and a research affiliate at the Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He’s also a political radical.
He told Richard Hames about how close w
Downstream: Europe’s Ancient Myths, Current Crises & Future Possibilities w/ Roderick Beaton
As the American empire teeters, China gains dominance, and war spreads across Eastern Europe and West Asia, questions arise as to Europe’s place in this rapidly changing world order. On Downstream this week, Ash Sarkar speaks to Roderick Beaton, former Koraes Professor of History at King’s College London, about his latest book Europe: A New History.
How did the boundaries between Europe and
The Human Cost of Britain’s Dark Money Industry w/ Peter Geoghegan & Stephanie Brobbey
To accompany our podcast series, Death in Westminster, hosts Kojo Koram and Dalia Gebrial met with investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan and former private wealth lawyer Stephanie Brobbey at EartH in Hackney last month.
Digging into the dark money that flows through Westminster, Kojo and Dalia find out what made Stephanie quit her job hiding rich people’s assets, why Peter couldn’t
Downstream: The Secrets of the Chinese Internet w/ Yi-Ling Liu
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In China in the 1990s, the arrival of the internet was swiftly met with the ‘great firewall’: a complex matrix of censorship, surveillance and state control. Since then there have been two internets: the World Wide Web, and the Chinese internet.
Aaron Bastani talks to China analyst Yi-Ling Liu about the cultures and innovations that have evol
ACFM Trip 59: Hobbies
After mulling over the problem of boredom in the last Trip episode, the ACFM gang return with a solution: hobbies.
In this episode Nadia, Jem and Keir wonder why hobbies tend to mutate into jobs, which hobbies are appropriate for commoners, whether men and women approach their hobbies differently, and why having a hobby is often framed as uncool.
It’s a weird-left spin on private pastimes wi
Do Your Own Research: The Iran War Will Collapse the American Empire w/ Alfred McCoy
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For fifty years, Alfred McCoy has exposed covert operations. In 1972 he uncovered the CIA and French intelligence’s complicity with the heroin trade during the Vietnam War – research that the CIA tried to suppress.
He’s the author of many books, most recently Cold War on Five Continents, which gives a comprehensive account of late 20th centu
Downstream: Is Liberalism Finally Waking Up to the Crises it has Caused? w/ Adrian Wooldridge
Liberalism, in one form or another, has been the pervading political ideology of the past 200 years. It has become so pervasive, as an ideology, that it lays claim to the middle ground and common sense itself. But liberalism is a set of dogmas and doctrines like any other political ideology, and unfathomable horrors as well as huge advances have been made in its name.
Today on Downstream, the idea
The Greens WILL Beat Labour w/ Hannah Spencer and Faiza Shaheen
To mark the launch of our new podcast series, Death in Westminster, host Dalia Gebrial sat down with Hannah Spencer, the new MP for Gorton and Denton, and Faiza Shaheen, the director of Tax Justice UK, at EartH in Hackney.
They talked about Hannah’s landslide victory, her first few weeks in Parliament, and what a wealth tax would actually look like. What approach did Faiza and Hannah take w
ACFM Trip 58: Boredom
When was the last time you were bored? Nadia, Jem and Keir wonder if ennui is a feeling that belongs in the past – and what a boredom-free life might be missing.
Is compulsive scrolling a modern symptom of boredom? Why are spiritual practices often based around tedious repetition? Do bored workers make better organisers? What about the “stuckness” experienced by migrants, or the drudge
Do Your Own Research: Isolated, Scared, and Furious: Welcome to the Age of Hyperpolitics
In the last decade and a half, society has got vastly more politicised: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Me Too Movement and many other movements besides mobilised hundreds of millions of people around the world.
So where are the massive organisations that big mobilisations brought in the 20th century? They don’t exist. For all the increased political activity, society hasn’t become much more organ
Downstream: The Right Is Winning. Here’s How We Change That w/ Ash Sarkar
Aaron Bastani sat down with Novara Media’s own Ash Sarkar, to celebrate the paperback release of her bestselling book, Minority Rule. ‘Minority rule’ is the term Ash used to describe the irrational fear that minorities are trying to overturn and oppress majority populations. She revealed how minority elites rule majorities by creating the culture wars that have taken over our politics,
Do Your Own Research: How Musk’s Paranoid Empire Really Works w/ Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff
The most powerful CEO in history is barely a person anymore. But it’s not just his X-addled brain that has transformed him. He has deeply integrated himself in the ‘cyborg collective’ – a world of electrons, brain implants, fantastical promises, financial systems, bots, and memes – he has made for himself.
Henry Ford gave his name to Fordism. According to Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, we’re ent
Downstream: The Middle Class Is Collapsing. Fascism Could Be Next w/ Clara Mattei
Rising unemployment, increased military spending, and a decline in living standards for most people, including the middle class: the description fits both the 1930s and the 2020s. In the 1930s, it was a situation that morphed into the destruction and horror of the Second World War.
On Downstream with Aaron Bastani this week is Clara Mattei, professor of economics at the University of Tulsa, and au
Do Your Own Research: Welcome to the Slavery-Driven Slop Economy w/ Marek Poliks
Trillions of dollars of AI build-out. An economy poised on the edge of a giant crisis. Some say it’s a bubble. But what if it’s an entirely new kind of economics? One that has no need of humans at all?
Marek Poliks is the co-author with Roberto Alonso Trillo of Exocapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits. Together, they are the co-hosts of the Disintegrator podcast.
He speaks to Richard Ham
Death in Westminster: 4. The Tunnel
The final episode. Back in Westminster, Kojo confronts the human cost of hidden wealth – and asks if change is still possible.
Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.
Full credits and more
Death in Westminster: 3. The City
In episode three, the dark web of offshore finance connects Britain’s imperial past with its political present.
Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.
Full credits and more information: ht
Death in Westminster: 2. The Island
In episode two, the trail leads offshore. From Westminster to the Cayman Islands, Kojo uncovers how tax havens are fuelling London’s housing crisis.
Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.
Death in Westminster: 1. The Station
New four-part podcast. A homeless man dies in Westminster surrounded by vast wealth and empty homes. His death sparks a disturbing investigation into how secrecy and evasion have become normalised in the heart of British power.
Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Ge
Downstream: We Are Witnessing the Return of Empires & the End of Nations w/ Rana Dasgupta
Nearly all of us on Earth live within a ‘nation-state’. Nation-states are an invisible and seemingly inevitable and eternal part of the infrastructure that forms our society: the water we swim in. Rarely do we pause to consider how this global system of nation-states came into being, and what might replace it after its gone. But as the United States wages a war of aggression on Iran, i
ACFM Microdose: The Green Party
[Audio error updated! Please refresh or re-download if correct episode isn’t playing.] Have the Greens got what it takes to become the main political vehicle of the radical left?
Following their Trip episode on Ecology, the ACFM crew take a closer look at Zack Polanski’s party as it nudges past Labour in the polls.
From the ’60s dream of ‘steady state economics’ to th
Do Your Own Research: The Israel-ification of the US Military w/ Susannah Glickman
The US military is changing shape: it’s increasingly high-tech, intelligence led, and focused on assassinations. In short, the Israeli model.
And the changing shape of war means changing flows of money and power. The primes, which have dominated the military industrial for decades, now face competition from Silicon Valley companies like Palantir and Anduril.
But does their tech actually work? Or d
Downstream: The Next Shocks Will Hit Wealthy Countries Hardest. Here’s Why w/ John Rapley
The notion that the Global South is affected ‘first and worst’ by global shocks they didn’t cause, namely climate change, is one of the cornerstones of leftist thought. But what if it’s not entirely true? What if, contrary to this tenet, it’s wealthy Western nations who have over-developed and lost their resilience in the process?
This is the argument made by John Rapley in his latest book ‘Icarus
Do Your Own Research: Seed Oils, the CIA, and the Metabolic Shitshow w/ Jason Moore
Cheap food holds capitalism together. But to get it, we’ve had to cheapen almost everything on the planet: the work of women, nature and colonies.
We’ve made strange new ecologies all over the world, and now we’re living in the metabolic sh*tshow.
How will the ruling class keep control?
On this week’s Do Your Own Research, Jason Moore tells Richard Hames why the end of cheap nature means the ris
Downstream: How the Democrats Abandoned Working People w/ Eric Schlosser
In 2001, Eric Schlosser published Fast Food Nation: an investigation into the toxic depths of America’s food industry. Twenty five years later, the book remains an urgent intervention, as much for what it says about workers’ rights as for our agricultural systems and dietary health.
On Downstream this week, Ash Sarkar talks to Eric Schlosser about what’s changed since 2001, and what remains unref
ACFM Trip 57: Ecology
Are humans distinct from nature? Are there natural limits to inequality? Can you have action without effort? Do bacteria have agency?
Jem, Nadia and Keir find themselves dwarfed by the concept of ecology in this planetary-scale episode, which touches on cybernetics, systems thinking, ecofeminism and actor-network theory. Their ACFM guide to ecological thinking includes ideas from Rachel Carson, Pe
Do Your Own Research: Megafarms and Megafamines: Secrets of the Global Food System w/ Charles C. Mann
There’s nothing in the world more important than the food system. The twentieth century was scarred by enormous famines – and, like the one in Gaza, they are still deliberately engineered. But since the 1970s, the absolute number of deaths from famine have dropped by over 90%.
On a global scale, we now make so much food that farmers will sometimes destroy it just to keep the prices high.
How is th
Downstream: Mandelson & the Perverted Fantasies of New Labour Liberalism w/ Maurice Glasman
Just a week ago, the architect of Starmer’s rise to power, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over his connections to Peter Mandelson, after further proof of Mandelson’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein emerged in the newest batch of files released by the US Department of Justice.
According to this week’s guest, this scandal isn’t an anomaly, but an inevitable outgrowth of the New Labour politics that hav
Downstream: Vape Shops, Crypto and Luxury Watches: How Money Laundering Is Everywhere w/ Oliver Bullough
When it comes to the relationship between capitalism and crime, those on the left generally think of exploitation. People often turn to crime, so the thinking goes, because they can’t make ends meet by legitimate means. Whatever your views on that framing, there is also another – far less discussed – connection between capitalism and crime, namely the relationship between elites, the s
Downstream: China, AI and the West’s Free Speech Crackdown w/ Ai Weiwei
Over the past three years, the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people has become a flash point for freedom of speech in the West. Expressing solidarity with Palestinians has given Western governments an excuse to crack down on dissenters. There has been intimidation and job insecurity at one end of the scale, through to brutal policing, arrests, and extraditions at the other.
Our guest on Down
Downstream: 2008 Whistleblower on the Next Big Crash w/ Ann Pettifor
This week, Donald Trump continued his streak of threatening tariffs against any country that opposes him, increasing the odds of an escalating trade war and further destabilising the global economic system. But according to this week’s guest, the system is in desperate need of reform. Indeed, she thinks without a complete structural overhaul, it will soon ‘blow itself up.’
On Downstream this week
Downstream: Exposing the Lies of the 20th Century w/ Tariq Ali
Our guest this week was born in 1943, in what was then British India – modern day Pakistan. Unlike most, who have learned history through books and second-hand sources, he has witnessed first-hand a great deal of the 20th and 21st centuries. Tariq Ali founded Verso Books, the leading left-wing publishing house in Britain, as well as the New Left Review. He met Malcolm X, was friends with John Lenn
Downstream: Venezuela, China and the End of the Dollar w/ Glenn Greenwald
It has been a bellicose start to 2026, with the US army kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and threatening to annex Greenland, putting many more nations, including Mexico and Colombia, on high alert.
On Downstream this week is investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who’s best known for helping Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the NSA’s global surveillance program come to light, as
Downstream: Exposing the Israeli Capture of British Politics w/ Peter Oborne
After ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ on October 7th, a specific narrative quickly emerged and pervaded the entire Western mainstream media. Namely, that unprecedented horrors were committed against the state of Israel and that whatever way it responded was justified. Any deviation from this narrative was quickly shut down.
In the intervening years, the British state has aided Israel in its response, a
Downstream: 2025: What Actually Happened? w/ Ash Sarkar and Aaron Bastani
Ash Sarkar and Aaron Bastani joined each other on 17th December for a special end-of-year Downstream, wrapping up the year in politics.
Downstream: ‘Gaza Is Over, It’s Gone. There’s Nothing Left’ w/ Norman Finkelstein
Norman Finkelstein is one of the west’s leading anti-Zionist scholars. The son of Holocaust survivors, he has spent his life studying and critiquing Israel’s assault on Palestine, decades before it became socially acceptable to do so.
Yet despite having dedicated his career to it, by the day before Hamas’ attack in October 2023, Norman had all but given up on the cause of Palestinian liberation. H
ACFM Microdose: The ‘Radical Realists’ of Mainstream, Labour’s New Faction
After a Trip episode about the meaning of mainstream, this time the gang go deeper into ‘Mainstream’ – that is, the new soft-left faction inside Labour. Yes, a festive episode about the inner workings of a political party! Don’t say we don’t spoil you.
Jem, Nadia and Keir explain the emergence of Mainstream’s ‘radical realists’ – who include Andy Burnham and Clive Lewis – by exploring the lesser-k
Downstream: The Truth About Hamas, October 7th & Israel’s Ongoing Genocide w/ Tareq Baconi
Since Hamas launched its assault on October 7th, 2023, the group has become synonymous with evil in large parts of the Western media. Condemnation has come at the expense of critical engagement with the group’s actions, objectives, and history, leaving a vacuum that has been filled with racist assumptions and conspiracy theories.
Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian scholar whose doctoral thesis on Hamas
Downstream: The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse Forever w/ Cory Doctorow
Did you know that the standard of Google searches has actually gotten worse over recent years? Once you think about it, it makes sense. Highly effective search means fewer searches overall. And fewer searches means less ad revenue. The financial basis of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company, is, of course, digital advertising. Which means that undermining the quality of the company’s corners
ACFM Trip 56: The Mainstream
Jem, Nadia and Keir debate the meaning of ‘mainstream’ – something none of them could ever possibly be, of course.
Is ‘woke’ the new mainstream? Can there be a mainstream if we don’t all have access to the same culture? Is Tommy Robinson shifting the Overton Window? Why is nonconformity associated with coolness? And who engineers the ‘typical girl’? The ga
Downstream: How to Create A Revolution w/ Roger Hallam
Whether you love or loathe his tactics, it’s hard to deny the disruptive impact that Roger Hallam has had on British politics via the activist organisations he has led, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.
He joins Ash Sarkar fresh from his latest stint in prison, where he wrote a treatise for Your Party that sets out his vision for an emancipated future, and strategies for how to get there.
Downstream: Zack Polanski Is Coming for Starmer and Farage
Support for the Green party in Britain has been steadily rising for the past few decades. However, few predicted that when Zack Polanski took office as Green party leader in September, membership would surge from 70,000 to 150,000 members in a matter of months. According to the latest polling, the party’s share of the vote has soared too: growing from 10 to 17 per cent.
In front of a live audience
Downstream: Ex-World Bank Insider on Western Decline & the Chinese World Order w/ Branko Milanovic
At Novara, we focus on the trends that are remaking the world and affecting our lives: technological development and automation, multipolarity, the demise of an American-led world order and the rise of China. On Downstream this week is a man whose work draws together all of these themes: former World Bank macroeconomist and leading expert on global inequality, Professor Branko Milanovic.
In conver
Downstream: The Dark Truth About Starmer’s Rise to Power w/ Paul Holden
Investigative journalist Paul Holden has spent the last four years digging into the political machinations that brought Keir Starmer’s Labour Party into office – findings that propel his powerful 2025 book, The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Labour Together and the Crisis of British Democracy.
He tells Ash Sarkar about the cache of leaked emails that revealed the secret dealings of Morgan McSweeney –
Downstream: Putin’s War in Ukraine Has Ancient Roots w/ Serhii Plokhy
In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, then a very young political scientist, declared that history was over. He wrote a book with the same title just a couple of years later. The Cold War had finished, the USSR had collapsed, liberal democracy and market capitalism reigned supreme, and it wasn’t going to change. And yet in the last few years, the script has moved quite significantly. History has returned. Em
ACFM Microdose: What’s Going On With Your Party?
After last week’s episode on Parties, this time ACFM exposes the predicament facing Your Party, the new leftwing faction led by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn.
What expectations do leftwing voters have for Your Party? Does the Corbyn faction distrust the membership? Is Zarah a politician or a poster? And does ‘Yorp’ stand a chance of overtaking the ascendant Greens? Nadia, Jem and Kei
Downstream: The West Misunderstands Iran w/ Vali Nasr
Iran has been in the news a lot in 2025. Over recent decades, it has been a variable in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. But during the Twelve Day War with Israel in June of this year, Iran very much took centre stage. People started asking questions, chief among them being: What does Iran really want?
On Downstream this week is Vali Nasr, professor of Middle East Studies
Downstream: Kidnapped at Sea by the Israeli Military. The Full Story w/ Kieran Andrieu
The Gaza Strip, home to 2.2 million people, is a tiny land mass about the same size as the Isle of Wight. Yet in terms of munitions by weight, Gaza has been subjected to more than all of the bombs dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined, over the whole of World War II. Another even more terrifying statistic: in Ukraine, after two years of conflict, there were around 30 cases of child ampu
Downstream: What Really Changed on 7th October w/ Ahmed Alnaouq, Yara Eid and Tareq Baconi
Just over two years after the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, and just days after the announcement of a ceasefire, Aaron Bastani spoke to three Palestinian writers in front of a live audience at EartH in Hackney.
Ahmed Alnaouq is the host of Palestine Deep Dive and the co-founder of ‘We Are Not Numbers’, an organisation that provides international mentors for Palestinian writers.
Yara Eid is a
ACFM Trip 55: Parties
Amid the bumpy launch of a new left-wing party and the rise of the Greens and Reform, the ACFM crew turn their attention to parties. Do we still need them? Do parties work by drawing people together, or by excluding the uninvited? And should a political party have anything in common with a dance party?
Nadia, Keir and Jem discuss, with reference to the Paris Commune, Unite the Right, Abigail’
Downstream: Democracy Is Under Massive Threat From AI w/ William MacAskill
Artificial intelligence is set to be one of the most disruptive technologies this century. For some, a machine capable of augmenting its own intelligence is a matter of time — and could even arrive within a decade.
This week’s guest is philosopher and author William MacAskill. One of the leading thinkers in the Effective Altruism movement, MacAskill is the author of several highly influential book
Downstream: Was the 20th Century a Catastrophe, or a Miracle? w/ Yanis Varoufakis
Economist, and former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis joins Aaron to discuss his most recent book Raise Your Soul: A Personal History of Resistance, a memoir about the women in Yanis’ family who raised him, and gave him his political conscience.
They discuss the Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic, is patriarchy harmful to the perpetrators, as well as women? Did Tony Blair do more to priv
Downstream: The Right Is Stirring up Anti-Muslim Hate – and It’s Getting Worse w/ Myriam François
In the summer of 2024, hotels sheltering Muslim asylum seekers across Britain were attacked by violent mobs. A year later, as the summer of 2025 drew to a close, a far-right demonstration of 100,000 people marched through London, bearing St George’s flags and led by Tommy Robinson.
On Downstream this week is Myriam François, a broadcaster and journalist, whose conversion to Islam 20 years ago has
ACFM Microdose: Sci-Fi
After last week’s ACFM Trip to the Future, Jem and Keir reconvene to talk about science fiction. Is sci-fi a reaction to the “time-space compression” of the present? Is it inherently progressive? How did dystopian and paranoids visions of the future come to dominate sci-fi? Was Arthur C. Clarke an early acid communist?
Find all the books and films mentioned in the show: https://n
Downstream: How Brexit Paved The Way For Farage’s Bid for Downing Street w/ Tom McTague
It’s almost 10 years since Britain voted to leave the EU, and we’re still dealing with the consequences. In his new book, Between The Waves, Politico’s chief UK political correspondent Tom McTague argues that the journey to Brexit really began with Enoch Powell, before be taken up by his political heir, Nigel Farage.
He talks to Aaron Bastani about how the dissolution of empire
ACFM Trip 54: The Future
What if we stopped treating the future like a speculative asset and started trying to actually build and prepare? The ACFM gang look to the horizon in this Trip episode.
Did young people always worry so much about their futures? Has the currency of emergency been devalued? Does conservatism have an idea of the future? Nadia, Jem and Keir wonder what’s next with ideas from Max Weber and Kate
Downstream: The Political Possibilities of the Ancient World w/ Josephine Quinn
What were the ancient alternatives to democracy? Did people in the Bronze Age forget how to write – or deliberately stop? And what’s the use in studying ancient languages?
In a Downstream IRL recorded at EartH Hackney, Aaron Bastani speaks to Josephine Quinn, Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, about some lesser-known aspects of the ancient world, as explored in her book Ho
Downstream: Are We Living Through the End of an Empire? w/ Lea Ypi
What can the collapse of the Ottoman Empire teach us about the danger of the current discourse around migration?
‘Re-migration’ is not a new concept conjured up by the far-right, but rather something that would be familiar to many Europeans of a century ago. What would those involved in these tragedies think of the direction in which the world is heading?
To answer these questions and more, Aaron
