On 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 whether US pressure can restrain Israel’s “high-tech massacre”. Subscribe to the Novara Live podcast for news and analysis five times a week: https://novara.media/live * We need 1,500 more people to become ...
Dec 07, 2023•56 min
Blindboy 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. Blindboy sat down with Ash for a freewheeling discussion about everything from Eminem’s ’90s style and the situation in Palestine to why cats are magical. * We need just 1,500 more people to become monthly supp...
Dec 05, 2023•1 hr 19 min
In 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, currently teaching at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, wants us to look beyond historical comparisons to think of fascism not as an aberration, but as an aspect of a much longer process of colonia...
Dec 01, 2023•1 hr 9 min
To 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 guides Ash through the history of the Zionist project that created Israel and the basic facts of the 75-year struggle for Palestinian independence. * We’re up against huge power and influence, but Novara ...
Nov 27, 2023•53 min
Business 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 Indonesia, China and Senegal. What sets these new cities apart from the skyscrapers and sprawling settlements that defined the 20th century? Quite a lot, as Richard Hames finds out with Canadian historian ...
Nov 23, 2023•1 hr 20 min
Zarah 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 interactions with Starmer’s office, the Islamophobia she faces in the public sphere, and why the majority of her Labour colleagues voted against a ceasefire in Gaza.
Nov 20, 2023•57 min
Dolly 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 reveals. Olah’s new book, Bad Taste: The Politics of Ugliness, is an expose of the industries of taste-making in an image-obsessed world, as well as a critique of the impact that taste has on our sense of se...
Nov 16, 2023•1 hr 14 min
We’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 the dangers of removing cash as a payment system. He sat down with Aaron to talk about Bitcoin, gold and the central paradox at the heart of modern libertarianism. His new book, Cloudmoney: Why the War o...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 28 min
For 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 across Europe, for clues to our current predicament. A media journalist and associate professor at the City University of New York, Jarvis recently published The Gutenberg Parenthesis, an inquiry into the...
Nov 10, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Slavoj Žižek is perhaps the most famous living Marxist philosopher. This year he will publish three books on topics ranging from the nature of freedom to his deeply pessimistic view of the future. Slavoj sat down with Aaron for a typically provocative, freewheeling and humorous conversation spanning ideas from Stalinism to Zionism to Eurocentrism. He explains why he’s a “law and order leftist”, why popular movements like the Arab Spring don’t excite him, and what he thinks of the deepening stale...
Nov 06, 2023•1 hr 35 min
Ever feel like there’s too much change these days? Don’t worry, you’re not (necessarily) becoming more conservative. On this Trip, Nadia, Jem and Keir think about the ebb and flow of political currents, social movements and our inner lives. What’s the difference between being still and being stuck? When does a campaign turn into a movement? Why do we talk about feminism coming in waves? How can you tell you’re approaching a tipping point? The gang turn such abstract questions into concrete histo...
Nov 05, 2023•1 hr 52 min
In the second half of the 20th century, revolutionaries across Africa were striving towards a decolonised future that never fully materialised. Folding together Marxism and Black radicalism, the global project of Third Worldism envisaged complete liberation, not only from colonial powers but from every kind of oppression. Kevin Okoth, a political theorist who grew up between Kenya and Germany, believes it’s time to reacquaint ourselves with the revolutionary politics of ‘Red Africa’ – the title ...
Nov 02, 2023•1 hr 20 min
The 2010s were a time of mass protest, from the Arab Spring uprisings to Occupy Wall Street, Euromaidan and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Many of these movements shared a ‘horizontalist’ or leaderless approach, and most of them ended in failure. Why? American journalist Vincent Bevins talks to Ash about the pitfalls of protest and what lessons we can learn from these movements, several of which he experienced up close while working as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and the Financial ...
Oct 30, 2023•1 hr 21 min
Just Stop Oil is a group focused on climate change. So what were they doing blocking the path of a coachload of migrants last week? It all has to do with the effects of a warming world and predictions about the displacement of millions of people. In this episode, Richard Hames follows JSO activists as they prepare for direct action on the road to the Bibby Stockholm barge. Talking to protestors, climate researchers and activists from other campaigns, he finds out about the complexity of ‘climate...
Oct 25, 2023•56 min
John Gray’s writing on political philosophy is not easily pigeonholed. Over the last half century he has explored ideas that span the whole political spectrum, and pissed off just about everybody with his central thesis that growth and progress are not inevitable. In his latest book, The New Leviathans, his attention turns to the changing fate of the west and the revival of feudalism, religious orthodoxy and ultra-nationalism. Aaron sat down with John to discuss the nonsense of centrism, the opi...
Oct 23, 2023•1 hr 30 min
After 9/11, the writer and essayist Pankaj Mishra found himself losing faith in journalism’s ability to convey the complexity and nuance of the situation. Much of what he knew of the world, he realised, from history to political psychology, had originally been gleaned from fiction. Since then, Mishra has published several novels – including last year’s Run And Hide – as well as numerous powerful essays and non-fiction works exploring empire, globalisation, populism and the life of the Buddha. He...
Oct 19, 2023•53 min
From his early career following Nelson Mandela on the campaign trail to his stint as US correspondent for the Guardian, Gary Younge has long been one of the most thoughtful and compassionate voices on the British left. He joins Ash Sarkar to discuss his eventful career in journalism, his experiences of reporting in Soviet Russia, the current crisis facing the Labour Party and the time he spent 13 hours getting drunk with Maya Angelou. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/supp...
Oct 16, 2023•1 hr 25 min
Born and raised on an ‘overspill’ estate in Birmingham, the writer Lynsey Hanley has experienced what a politician would call social mobility. In her books on housing estates and the British class system, she uses her own life to think through the psychosocial dimensions of crossing the class divide. In the third episode of our series on class, Lynsey talks to Juliet Jacques about whether anything like social mobility is possible in Britain today. They discuss autodidactism, the political impact...
Oct 12, 2023•57 min
In his new book, ‘Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism’, Yanis Varoufakis explores how giant tech firms, both in the US and China are expanding their control over the planet. His analysis is that, whilst material resources certainly matter, the real battle ground is over digital real estate. Aaron sat down with Yanis to talk about how Europe’s power has faded, Elon Musk’s wet dreams and why the US is really afraid of China.
Oct 09, 2023•57 min
Last month it was revealed that 98% of Europeans are breathing toxic air. We’re slowly realising that the modern world is covered in the dust of environmental devastation, from particle air pollution to nuclear fallout and dried-up lakes. And as life on Earth gets hotter and drier, it’s going to get even dustier. As Jay Owens tells Eleanor Penny, dust might seem like nothing much at all, but only by paying attention to the tiniest particles can we really understand the scale of our impact on the...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 8 min
When we were in lockdown, conspiracy theorists went on the march. The emergence of anti-vaccine scaremongering coupled with virulent antisemitism was disconcerting for all of us. But it was even more nuts for renowned journalist and author Naomi Klein, who noticed that she was being constantly getting mixed up with another author: Naomi Wolf. Klein found herself drawn into a strange mirror world as she tracked her doppelganger’s journey from feminist academic and liberal darling to gun-toting an...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 13 min
For the second episode of our series on class, writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik takes us through three centuries of thought to explain the origins of identity politics. It all starts with Haitian Revolution and its contribution to the radical Enlightenment – a movement that sought to overcome the racism inherent in the other, liberal Enlightenment. Malik explains how this schism is at the root of our present day confusion about race, and makes the anti-racist case against identity politics in ...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Nick Dearden has been an economic justice campaigner for over 20 years, and his attention was on the pharmaceutical industry when Covid-19 hit. But as the world began to sing the praises of pharmaceutical companies, Nick saw an unprecedented PR coup. Giant corporations capitalised on the crisis, tightening their stranglehold over the health of the poor. Nick sat down with Aaron Bastani to explain how ‘Big Pharma’ is run like a hedge fund, why the contracts between the government and Pfizer were ...
Sep 25, 2023•1 hr 19 min
The politics of ‘deep adaptation’ is as intriguing as it is controversial. Jem Bendell, a former professor of sustainability leadership, launched the Deep Adaptation movement in 2018 by claiming that social collapse is not just a plausible outcome of climate change, but an extremely likely one. He sat down with Richard Hames in Berlin to talk about the impact of his ideas on the movement, the promise of eco-libertarianism, the necessity of gallows humour in a crisis, and whether there is a clima...
Sep 22, 2023•1 hr 17 min
Rory Stewart has led a colourful life: diplomat in Indonesia, governor in post-invasion Iraq, founder of an NGO and a Member of Parliament. He’s also run for London Mayor and leader of the Conservative Party. But his latest occupation is podcaster, hosting ‘The Rest is Politics’ with Alastair Campbell. Rory sat down with Ash Sarkar to discuss his admiration for Jeremy Corbyn, why Tony Blair was wrong about Iraq and Afghanistan, and what makes the left think all conservatives are ‘evil’.
Sep 18, 2023•1 hr 12 min
We’re going back to basics on Novara FM this autumn with a series about the big one: class. What does it mean to look at the world through the lens of class in the 2020s, an era of precarious work, rising inequality and elusive social mobility? Three classy thinkers join FM to investigate: political researcher Nihal ElAasar, cultural critic Juliet Jacques and writer and Verso editor John Merrick. They begin the series with an introspective session on the meaning of class today, drawing on their ...
Sep 15, 2023•55 min
