How can we resist exploitation when the boss has been replaced by a computer? That’s the premise of Cyberboss, a new book by Craig Gent, North of England editor for Novara Media, which explains how “algorithmic management” is being rolled out in the workplace, starting with Amazon packers, Deliveroo drivers and online supermarket shoppers. He talks to NM’s head of audio Chal Ravens about the strange forms of resistance that emerge when even your boss has no idea how the system actually works. Cy...
Sep 27, 2024•1 hr 17 min
Guy Shrubsole is an author and campaigner whose new book The Lie of the Land seeks to expose the history of the British elite’s relationship to the land they own and debunk the myths that they perpetuate. He sat down with Aaron to talk about grouse moors, planning permission and exactly what we should do about The Fens.
Sep 23, 2024•1 hr 44 min
Dr. Munther Isaac is the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, serving a community of Christians that dates back to the time of Jesus. He joins Ash to discuss Israel’s continuing annexation of the West Bank, the role of Christian Zionists, and the origins of western hypocrisy.
Sep 16, 2024•59 min
A month after racist riots engulfed the country, the ACFM crew ask what fascism – and antifascism – look like in Britain today. Do the riots and counter-protests mark a return to “street politics”? Why didn’t the Labour party align itself with opponents of the pogroms? And how popular are extreme rightwing views among Britain’s frustrated youth? Jem, Nadia and Keir take a closer look at the make-up of the rioters and the reaction from the public, the media and politicians. Sign up to the ACFM ne...
Sep 15, 2024•1 hr 27 min
“Don’t mourn, organise” were the final words of American labour activist Joe Hill before his execution in 1915. But sometimes our feelings of grief don’t lend themselves to good organising – sometimes we might just want revenge. In her forthcoming book, critic and journalist Sarah Jaffe looks at the many kinds of grief that shape our social and political lives, from family bereavement and mass death during a pandemic, to factory closures and the spectre of climate breakdown. She joins Eleanor Pe...
Sep 12, 2024•1 hr 14 min
Political scientists agree that we are now living in a “multipolar” world, with power contested by multiple states and blocs. But how we arrived at this formation, and whether the newly powerful actors on the global stage are inherently problematic, remain areas of disagreement. Someone with has a distinct perspective on this new world order is Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Anne sat down with Aaron t...
Sep 10, 2024•1 hr
Motherhood was once at the centre of the feminist movement’s demands, from campaigns for reproductive rights to the mobilisation of anti-nuclear mums at Greenham Common. But in the 21st century, the politicisation of mothering seems to have shrunk in its ambition. In her new book Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood , literary scholar and historian Helen Charman tells the story of motherhood in the UK and Ireland from the 1970s to the 2010s. From Margaret Thatcher’s weaponisation of f...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Everybody hates a tourist, as Jarvis Cocker once pointed out, and the ACFM gang are no exception in this ACFM Trip exploring the allure of holidays. Keir, Jem and Nadia consider all the different ways we avoid work, from holy days and vay-cays to grand tours and gap yahs. Does travel make fools of us all, or is there a smarter, more ethical way to go sightseeing? Is the promise of an annual getaway the only thing keeping the working population docile? Featuring ideas from John Urry, David Harvey...
Aug 25, 2024•1 hr 49 min
In 2019, mines expelled 100 billion tonnes of solid waste. Vast and destructive almost beyond imagination, mining is nevertheless essential to the green transition: without the minerals that we pull from the Earth, we cannot wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Thea Riofrancos is associate professor of political science at Providence College and an expert on the politics of resource extraction, green energy transition, the global lithium sector and the Latin American left. She tells Eleanor Penny ab...
Aug 22, 2024•1 hr 34 min
During 1960s, fears of planetary ‘overpopulation’ became widespread. And yet, in more recent years, an altogether different worry has emerged: future population decline. Fertility rates have fallen for decades – and in some places centuries – as humans live in cities, gender equality improves and access to birth control becomes widespread. But, according to some, if they fall too far, and too fast, the basis of the modern welfare state is in jeopardy – not to mention our entire economic order. C...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr 52 min
People walk around San Francisco in Make America Great Again hats. Major CEOs endorse Trump. JD Vance is a hit among the crypto whales. So what? It’s part, perhaps, of a cultural change in Silicon Valley: a swing decisively to the right in a state famed for its contributions to radical politics, from the Black Panthers to the counterculture. There’s no one better to understand this change than Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World . He explains t...
Aug 15, 2024•58 min
The Green Party of England and Wales now has four MPs in Parliament, and even more impressively has doubled its vote share to 7%, coming second in 39 other seats. So what happens now? How will the Greens exercise their new agency in government, and how can they navigate a biased media landscape and increase their influence? Aaron is joined by Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party and MP for Bristol Central, to talk about the challenges ahead. Help us build people-powered media: novara.media...
Aug 05, 2024•1 hr 11 min
What happens when you lose? In this Trip, the ACFM crew explore the role of humility – and humiliation – in politics. Should we cultivate humility to cope with political weakness? Is fear of humiliation a product of patriarchy? Can humility help us be better political thinkers and organisers? And who’s the humblest ACFM host of them all? Nadia, Keir and Jem apply their weird-left lens to the topic with ideas from Nietzsche and Lyotard, and music from Erik Satie, Kendrick Lamar, Ravi Shankar and ...
Aug 04, 2024•1 hr 17 min
A foundational principle of the state of Israel is that it keeps Jews safe. This principle has been profoundly challenged in the last nine or so months. But what if Israel never really had the will or capacity to keep all Jews safe and, in fact, has made them less safe? Avi Shlaim is a historian and author of “Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew”. He joined Ash to talk about the Israeli right, Mossad’s covert operations in Baghdad and what it means to have hyphenated identities.
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 6 min
It’s part of the national myth: the English invented football and to England it will return (next time!). But if football is part of what makes England England, it’s equally part of the story of how Europe became Europe. In this Pro Revolution Soccer season finale, Tom Williams and Juliet Jacques tell this story of oddballs, war, oligarchs, dodgy deals and footballing genius. Along the way, they discuss how football relates to what is ‘pragmatic’ in politics, why Gareth Southgate is a bit like a...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr
Jeremy Corbyn was a Labour MP for almost four decades – and led the party at two general elections. This year however, and despite still being a party member, Corbyn was blocked from standing again in his seat of Islington North. As soon as Rishi Sunak declared a snap general election, and the Labour leadership chose a different candidate, Corbyn announced he would stand as an independent. He was consequently expelled as a party member. Defying all the odds Corbyn managed to keep his seat, winni...
Jul 15, 2024•51 min
The French left have played a blinder. Or, at least, the centre-right chaos agent and French President Emmanuel Macron has played it for them. Macron called snap elections, hoping to crush both the left and right. He failed. Instead, the far right briefly surged, coming top in the first round before a newly cohesive French left took the largest share in the second, decisive round. Is this the end of the Fifth Republic? Olly Haynes tells Richard Hames about the long crises of French politics, the...
Jul 11, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Tom and Juliet expose the surprisingly rich history of football as a wing of political resistance, from Algeria to Palestine to the growing power of the grassroots game in Britain. They also process England’s shock win against Switzerland, TV pundits’ criticism of Southgate, and the silence around Cristiano Ronaldo. Music by Matt Huxley. Help us build people-powered media: http://novara.media/support
Jul 10, 2024•47 min
The ACFM crew offer their first reactions to Labour’s landslide election win. Can Starmer’s government rescue the public sector? Where will the money come from? And can they make it to a second term? Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min
The United States’ impact on British culture and foreign policy is obvious. But its influence on our domestic politics, business, and daily lives warrants closer examination. To discuss this, Aaron is joined by Angus Hanton, author of ‘Vassal State: How America Runs Britain’.
Jul 08, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Asked in a recent poll to summarise Britain in a word, ‘broken’ was the people’s top choice. This brokenness is concrete stuff: crumbling bridges, sewage-filled rivers, failing computer systems, cancelled rail projects. But it’s also bundled with the collective stories we tell about what it means to be a nation, and who belongs in it. To find out why it feels like nothing works in Britain anymore, Moya Lothian-McLean talks to Dom Davies, author of The Broken Promise of Infrastructure . He explai...
Jul 04, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Tom and Juliet are joined by Keir Milburn to take the long view on the Premier League. Juliet explains how ’80s hooliganism and stadium disasters led to the formation of a new top flight, boosted by Rupert Murdoch’s TV empire and resulting in the iron grip of the Big Five clubs today. Are we stuck like this? They also discuss the incoming Labour government’s vision for football and take a moment to dwell on England v Slovakia. Tune in next Wednesday for the final episode in our Euro 2024 miniser...
Jul 03, 2024•49 min
If you want to understand how power works in our society, you can’t just examine what journalists say – you have to pay attention to what they’re silent about. To discuss the world of corporate media, secret intelligence services and the problem with liberal think tanks, Ash is joined by Matt Kennard, head of investigations for Declassified UK and author of The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire .
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 13 min
This time next week, Keir Starmer will likely be settling into No 10 with a thumping majority. Yet Labour has largely avoided the question of what they’re going to do with all that power once they get it, and the political media has barely posed the question. Meanwhile the Conservative party as we know it has shattered into pieces, and the far-right is filling the vacuum. To paint a picture of Britain at this historic crossroads, Eleanor Penny is joined by Novara Media co-founder and LRB contrib...
Jun 28, 2024•1 hr 19 min
This week Tom and Juliet are joined by David Goldblatt, author of The Ball Is Round, to answer a seemingly simple question: who runs football? David explains why billionaires and foreign investors love sinking their money into football, and what accusations of “sportswashing” leave out. Plus, we talk about what’s going on with Southgate’s strategy. Has pragmatism become dogmatism for England? Music by Matt Huxley. Design by Pietro Garrone. Produced by Chal Ravens. https://audiofiles.novara.io/pr...
Jun 28, 2024•1 hr 13 min
If you mention the Israel lobby in the mainstream media then, more often than not, you’ll face accusations of antisemitism. There are of course people who talk about the Israel lobby in antisemitic terms, but that doesn’t undermine the fact that it exists, and has existed for well over a century. This week’s guest is Israeli historian and author Ilan Pappé. His new book details the origins of zionism and the struggles against it throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. He joins Aaron to discuss H...
Jun 26, 2024•1 hr 31 min
Mick Lynch is the General Secretary of the RMT. He joined Ash Sarkar to discuss leveraging Keir Starmer, the importance of council housing and why it’s vital that people vote for the Labour Party.
Jun 25, 2024•1 hr 18 min
Former chief political correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and self proclaimed conservative, Peter Oborne, speaks to Aaron Bastani about the collapse of the conservative party. Support Novara Media: https://novara.media/support
Jun 25, 2024•1 hr 10 min
It’s easy to think that the Labour left is gone for good. But it’s not so certain. From the 80s to the 10s, the Labour left endured almost three decades of isolation and exile. The difference this time is that their ideas are still popular. Will they be back once more, or have they now truly been left for dead? To find out, Eleanor spoke to Andy Beckett, author of The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies...
Jun 25, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Was the Iraq War the exception or the rule? Throughout the twentieth century, Labour governments have been involved in some of Britain’s most disastrous colonial acts: the partition of India, the counter-insurgency in Malaya, and the Nakba. So, what can we expect this time? Eleanor Penny asks David Wearing, author of AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain. Support independent journalism: https://novaramedia.com/support/
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 23 min
