What defines each era? Historians often lean on terms that point to technology: bronze, steam, carbon, silicon. So is technology a fundamental aspect of being human? On this wide-ranging Trip, the gang take on one of their biggest topics yet. Starting from the basis that technology is an application of knowledge for a practical purpose, Jeremy Gilbert, Nadia Idle and Keir Milburn propose the washing machine as the most important invention of the 20th century, theorize a fully automated luxury Ke...
May 22, 2022•1 hr 43 min
Throughout history, countless good ideas have been side-lined or dismissed because they were put forward by women. That’s the frustration which motivates historian Katrine Marçal, who delves into her myth-busting research for a Microdose all about technology’s missed turnings. With ACFM host Nadia Idle, the author of Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men lays out some of the questions and frustrations she’s encountered in her studies. Why did it take 5,000 y...
May 19, 2022•58 min
Just what is it good for? This time on ACFM, Jeremy Gilbert, Nadia Idle and Keir Milburn respond to the Ukraine invasion with a conversation about war. Is it an aberration, or an unavoidable product of human power struggles? Are conflicts between nations better understood as a reflection of domestic divisions? And how is war used to divert the working class from progressive politics at home? The gang think through these questions and more as they relate to global politics and the UK left, with m...
Apr 16, 2022•1 hr 17 min
Has democracy broken down? Is it even an idea worth fixing? Trip 22 is a three-horse race as Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn consider the anti-democratic shifts happening across the political spectrum and ask what it really means to be ruled by the people. The gang discuss whether democracy is necessary to tackle climate breakdown, how democratic relationships can spawn creativity and joy, and what happens when left politics abandons mass movements – as well as selecting some suitabl...
Mar 13, 2022•1 hr 22 min
When he’s not working on #ACFM, show producer Matt Huxley is a musician. His recent EP under the name Muckers is the inspiration for this Microdose – a short audio essay about land, family, trespass and belonging. Recorded while out walking, Acid Camping considers who owns the landscape, the methods by which people have been driven off the land, and how we can dissolve the boundaries within ourselves. Matt draws on ideas from Nick Hayes, Richard King, Jodi Dean and, of course, #ACFM. All the mus...
Feb 22, 2022•12 min
In the first #ACFM Trip of the year, Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn look at the conflicting desires and demands that make up a political movement. Is unity possible? Is coalition desirable? Do we need to agree in order to win? The gang discuss the difference between liberal and radical conceptions of identity and gaze out towards the communist horizon with help from Gilles Deleuze and Jodi Dean and musical selections from Desmond Dekker, Roy Ayers and Fela Kuti. Look out for the acc...
Jan 17, 2022•1 hr 29 min
What can we learn from the women of the Popular Front? Ahead of an #ACFM Trip on Unity and Difference, Nadia Idle talks to actor and activist Norah Lopez Holden about the milicianas who fought in the Spanish Civil War. What brought these women together – and what pushed them apart? Lopez Holden has worked at theatres around the UK, including the Young Vic, Shakespeare’s Globe and The Royal Exchange Manchester, and performed as a voice artist for the BBC Radio Drama Company. She is an organiser o...
Jan 12, 2022•1 hr 6 min
What should political organisation in the 21st century look like? Wiggly? Lumpy? Diagonal? Something rather like that, suggests political theorist and author Rodrigo Nunes, who joins Keir Milburn and Jeremy Gilbert on this additional revolutionary Microdose. Focusing on the last few decades of radical left politics, the trio reflect on on their own experiences in movement building and thrash out alternatives to the old opposition between “vertical” and “horizontal” organising. Surveying the shif...
Dec 01, 2021•1 hr 33 min
The #ACFM gang square up a suitably momentous topic for their milestone 20th Trip: revolution! Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn wonder how the idea of political revolution ever became thinkable, and if it’s still thinkable today. Was the sexual revolution a real revolution? How did disillusionment with Soviet communism affect our political imagination? And who is the revolutionary subject? The gang of three discuss all that and more with reference to Gramsci, the Black Panthers and th...
Nov 07, 2021•1 hr 10 min
In anticipation of the next Trip, the ACFM trio deliver a condensed but essential history of revolution from Oliver Cromwell to Fidel Castro, with stop-offs in France, America, Haiti, China, Spain and Russia. What does it take to cook up a revolution? Is the French Revolution still relevant to our idea of radical social upheaval? Can we have unlimited political reforms without eventually triggering a revolution? Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn speed through several centuries of unres...
Nov 05, 2021•1 hr 20 min
In this #ACFM Microdose to accompany the gang’s recent Trip into space, Keir is joined by Fred Scharmen, author of Space Forces: A Critical History of Life in Outer Space. Drawing on his background in architecture and spatial design, Scharmen unpacks the human desire to go into space and create new worlds from scratch. How do the rocket-powered endeavours of oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk differ from the visions of a communist space utopia set out by Soviet sci-fi writer Alexander Bogda...
Oct 27, 2021•53 min
Jeremy Gilbert, Nadia Idle and Keir Milburn explore the politics of space. What even is space, and why does it so often seem to be the domain of the political right? How does the built environment have the power to discipline or liberate us? And why do all the billionaires want to get off the planet and into outer space? With reference to Reclaim The Night, public-common partnerships, Jeff Bezos’ phallic rocket and ’90s free party culture, the gang work it all out with some suitably spacey music...
Sep 12, 2021•1 hr 15 min
What could our towns and streets become after the pandemic? Ahead of the next #ACFM on space, Nadia Idle goes down to street level to discuss spatial equality with architect and planner Pooja Agrawal . As the co-founder of Public Practice , a social enterprise bringing good design into local government, Agrawal spends a lot time thinking about how public space is used and shared. She talks to Nadia about how councils can take back control from developers, what high streets might be used for in a...
Sep 08, 2021•48 min
Keir Milburn, Nadia Idle and Jeremy Gilbert get on the couch to talk about therapy. Wrangling with how to square their collectivist politics with the introspective work of therapy, they wonder if people on the left are more inclined to seek such treatment, and what role physical exercise plays in their mental wellbeing. Analysing their own very different experiences of the therapist’s couch, the gang also consider the shortcomings of CBT and the twisted logic of positive thinking. Go to Novara M...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 13 min
The point of psychodrama is not to create beautiful theatre, laughs practitioner Nada Sabet. To accompany the next #ACFM Trip on the topic of therapy, host Nadia Idle finds out about an unusual therapeutic technique which borrows elements of theatre, psychiatry and psychotherapy to gain insight into different facets of our identity. Nada explains how psychodrama can be used to deal with trauma, abuse and family dynamics, and how the method can shift focus from the personal to the political. Prod...
Jul 22, 2021•56 min
What do we mean by solidarity? Keir Milburn, Nadia Idle and Jeremy Gilbert consider the meaning of a much-used word in this unusual Trip, recorded live as part of HKW’s online festival, Acid Communism: Spectres of the Counterculture . With music from Nina Simone, The Youngbloods and The Special AKA, the gang consider the legacy of the counterculture in creating solidarity between liberation campaigns, what happened to solidarity with the emergence of identity politics in the 1980s, and how the f...
Jun 20, 2021•1 hr 28 min
In this extended Trip, Keir Milburn, Nadia Idle and Jeremy Gilbert wrestle with the idea of “the long ‘90s”: a set of cultural, political and affective assumptions that have outlasted the 20th century, and from which a certain cohort of today’s politicians, commentators and columnists cannot seem to escape. With music from Roni Size, Stereolab and Kula Shaker, the gang discuss to what extent the long ’90s were shaped by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the Chinese Communist Party, how “new laddi...
May 23, 2021•1 hr 37 min
The proposed new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is an obvious assault on the right to protest, threatening penalties of up to 10 years in prison for “causing public nuisance”. With the bill on its way to becoming law, Jeremy Gilbert, Nadia Idle and Keir Milburn draw on their own experiences to discuss the recent #KillTheBill protests. How is the bill a reaction to movements like Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion? What might it reveal about the social coalition backing up the...
May 15, 2021•57 min
Jeremy Gilbert hits the road for a musical microdose accompanying the #ACFM Trip on Folk. Connecting different strands of folk music with their various political tendencies, Jeremy looks at the communism of Woody Guthrie and the singers of the Dust Bowl era, the Vietnam protest music of Bob Dylan and the Greenwich Village scene, and the folk psychedelia of the Incredible String Band and Vashti Bunyan. This episode includes over 40 musical examples spanning a period of around 100 years, which we’...
May 08, 2021•1 hr 32 min
Nadia Idle, Keir Milburn and Jeremy Gilbert go back to the land to dig into the politics of folk. With music from The Pogues, Steeleye Span and Enigma, the gang discuss island cults, progressive patriotism, Communist folkies and the pitfalls of accelerationism. Turn on, tune in, muck out! Music: Woodie Guthrie – You Gotta Join That One Big Union / Steeleye Span – Hard Times of Old England / The Pogues – The Irish Rover / The Incredible String Band – The Hedgehog’s Song / Ewan MacColl and The Pog...
Apr 04, 2021•1 hr 11 min
Nadia Idle, Keir Milburn and Jeremy Gilbert explore the political power of desire from the storming of the Capitol to the millenarian strands of Corbynism, with music from Portishead and the Au Pairs. Music: Portishead – Glory Box / Tricky – Makes Me Wanna Die / Alton McClain & Destiny – Crazy Love / Alternative TV – Love Lies Limp / The Au Pairs – It’s Obvious Books: Deleuze & Guattari – Anti-Oedipus / Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams / Spinoza – Theologico-Political Treatise / Wilh...
Feb 14, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Nadia Idle speaks to psychosexual therapist and writer Tabitha Bast about dating and desire. They discuss the changing dynamics of dating, how to build romantic resilience, the politics of swiping right and more. Tabitha is a qualified psychosexual therapist who works privately and through a charity, currently conducting her sessions online. She was also involved in ecological and social justice activism for over 20 years. Look out for the next episode of #ACFM on 14 February, with Nadia, Jeremy...
Feb 10, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Nadia Idle, Keir Milburn and Jeremy Gilbert return to talk about the power and potential of crowds – from mobs and marches to mesmeric leaders and terrace anthems, with music from the Joubert Singers, Sham 69 and more. Music: The Polyphonic Spree – Light and Day / The Joubert Singers – Stand On The Word / Pink Floyd – Fearless / Sham 69 – The Kids are United / The Proclaimers – Sunshine on Leith (as sung by Hibernian F.C. fans) Books: Jeremy Gilbert – Common Ground / Nadia Idle & Alex Nunns ...
Jan 17, 2021•55 min
Nadia Idle speaks to Turkish journalist and author Ece Temelkuran about the potency of crowds. Reflecting on their experiences in Tahrir Square and Gezi Park, they talk about feeling powerful in political demonstrations, why raves might be infantilising rather than inspiring, and how Covid-19 has put an end to free assembly. Ece, twice named Turkey’s “most read political columnist”, has published several novels as well as 2019’s How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, ...
Jan 13, 2021•1 hr 11 min
#ACFM is a podcast about left-wing politics, culture, music and experiences of collective joy, brought to you by Novara Media. Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn present a new Trip just about once a month, as well as Microdose interviews with special guests. Search for “ACFM Music” on Spotify to find a playlist of music discussed on the show and join the mailing list to keep up with everything #ACFM: http://novara.media/acfmlist
Jan 12, 2021•1 min
Nadia Idle , Keir Milburn and Jeremy Gilbert are back to discuss the recent rise of conspiratorial thinking within New Age, spiritual and ‘wellness’ communities, and what implications this has for the Left, with music by David Bowie, Mark Stewart and Coki. Edited and produced by Olivia Humphreys and Matt Huxley. PRS LICENCE NUMBER: LE-0016481 Music : Black Sabbath – Paranoid / Mark Stewart + Maffia – None Dare Call It Conspiracy / David Bowie – Moonage Daydream / The Stooges – TV Eye / Coki – Mo...
Aug 16, 2020•1 hr 4 min
Jeremy Gilbert talks to Erik Davis, scholar of weird culture, mysticism, and the fertile crossover between esoterica and politics. From gnostic revivals to conspiracy theories, the JFK assassination to QAnon – why does there seem to be a sudden resurgence in conspiracy theories, sometimes in the most unexpected corners? Is there a connection between conspiracy theory and the ‘California Ideology’? And does rationalism always triumph in politics? Erik’s latest book, High Weirdness, is out now. ht...
Aug 13, 2020•1 hr 7 min
Keir Milburn , Nadia Idle and Jeremy Gilbert discuss the history and theory of friendship, from Aristotle to Elland Road, while reflecting on how the podcast has impacted their relationship as a group, with music by Minutemen and Carole King. Edited and produced by Olivia Humphreys, Matt Huxley and Matt Phull. PRS LICENCE NUMBER: LE-0016481 Music: Babylon Circus – My Friend / Christopher Martin – Mi Friend Dem / Carole King – You Gotta Friend / Joe Cocker – With A Little Help From My Friends / H...
Jun 26, 2020•58 min
Nadia, Jeremy and Keir search for the feeling of freedom, moving from Nina Simone to Buddhist House via Jeremy Clarkson. Edited and produced by Olivia Humphreys, Matt Huxley and Matt Phull. Texts: Isaiah Berlin – Two Concepts of Liberty / Simone de Beauvoir – Second Sex / Wendy Brown – Undoing the Demos / Adam Kotsko – Why We Love Sociopaths / Richard Sennett – The Corrosion of Character. To celebrate our 10th Trip, we’ve compiled a playlist of all the music heard across #ACFM so you can tune in...
May 10, 2020•53 min
Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn discuss Utopias, including the Paris Commune, analogue dreamlands and kettle logic. Edited and produced by Olivia Humphreys, Matt Huxley and Matt Phull. PRS LICENCE NUMBER: LE-0016481 Tracklist: Goldfrapp – Utopia / John Lennon – Imagine / Nairobi Sisters – Promised Land / Harry McClintock – Big Rock Candy Mountain / Joe Meek – I Hear A New World / Noel Brass Jr – Cortex Overflow / Liverpool Cathedral Ringers and Cleo Evans – Imagine. Texts: George Orw...
Apr 19, 2020•52 min
