Having long promised to decentralise power, Bitcoin is looking more and more like it will end up as a tool of American power under Trump. But blockchains could also be used to empower local economies. And why should the left stay attached to a money system controlled by the state? Sam Hart is a developer, writer, and editor of the Cryptoeconomic Systems journal. He spoke to Richard Hames about the promises and perils of the new era of blockchain technologies. Comments, questions, corrections? fm...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 13 min
In Richard Curtis’ Love Actually , a selection of mainly white and middle-class Londoners seem to be living in a parallel universe – one in which the war on terror never happened and the ’90s never ended. What kinds of love are really on offer in this misty-eyed vision of modern Britain? Following Novara FM’s investigation into Die Hard , Eleanor Penny tackles another festive Alan Rickman vehicle with Nathalie Olah, author of Bad Taste and Steal As Much As You Can . Comments, questions, correcti...
Dec 24, 2024•58 min
On 10 December, Ash Sarkar, Michael Walker and Aaron Bastani discussed an epoch-defining year and its implications for the future. Is Starmer screwed? Are expansionist wars back? Has ‘woke’ died? Find out in our end-of-year Downstream special. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 36 min
Die Hard is a perennial of festive TV, but is it really a Christmas movie? James Butler and Eleanor Penny explore what the 1988 action comedy reveals about corporate power, class antagonism, mid-century terrorism and women in the workplace. Who is Bruce Willis’ shoeless cowboy cop out to rescue? And what is going on with Hans Gruber’s accent? Comments, questions, corrections? fm@novaramedia.com Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Just two months before a general election, Germany finds itself in a precarious position. The European project is fragile, the country’s manufacturing innovation has stalled, and Germany’s dependence on Russian resources has become, quite obviously, disastrous. So what will happen to this once deeply consequential world power, and what does its story tell us about the future of Europe and the upending of global power in the 21st century? Wolfgang Münchau has a thorough understanding of this stor...
Dec 16, 2024•1 hr 48 min
In the 2010s, we found out that we were all being watched. A series of leaks, from Wikileaks and others, revealed that our governments were conducting mass surveillance operations on their own populations. But what were the longer term consequences of those leaks? And why hasn’t something of equivalent size stepped in to replace Wikileaks since? Stefania Maurizi is a journalist who worked with Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald on the Edward Snowden revelations. She’s also the author of Secret Power:...
Dec 13, 2024•1 hr 28 min
When the Taliban retook all of Afghanistan in 2021, it came as a shock to much of the West. The day after the last American soldier left, journalist and filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at flew into Kabul to spend a year filming with the Taliban’s senior military leadership. What he found was a regime drunk on power, in control of far more territory and with better weaponry than ever – courtesy of the Americans, who left it all behind. Ibrahim joins Ash to talk about the making of Hollywoodgate , which is...
Dec 09, 2024•53 min
Which side are you on? Keir, Nadia and Jem consider the ebb and flow of political commitment with ideas and music from Jodi Dean, Gramsci, John Coltrane and the Raincoats. Is cultural production the same as political action? What’s the difference between an ally and a comrade? And why do some communists end up as right-wing turncoats? Find the books and music mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Follow our ever-expan...
Dec 08, 2024•1 hr 44 min
In 1891, the French drew the borders of what became Mali. Like many colonial borders, they were arbitrary, absurd to the many nomads who supposedly lived within them. Now climate change is ravaging the Sahel region, and many of those nomads are being forced to settle down. And Russia and China have arrived to replace the long tail of French colonial domination. As has Al-Qaeda. So what does this all have to do with the far-right anti-imperialism of Steve Bannon? James Pogue is a journalist with ...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 22 min
Humanity has long pursued an elixir of youth and dreamed of eternal life. For the Abrahamic faiths, physical immortality was lost in the Garden of Eden, with only the soul remaining of permanence. More recently, futurists and thinkers have speculated about the possibilities of radical life extension. For neuroscientist Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston there is another alternative, however. He believes that the human brain could be fully mapped and digitally reproduced – with the first part of that proc...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 17 min
Imagine a person arrested for keeping a brothel. Who are they? An abusive pimp? Such people exist, no doubt, but the law isn’t set up just to catch abusers: it also targets sex workers working together to stay safe. With Labour in power, big changes could be afoot, but legalising sex work could harm sex workers as well. That’s the view of the English Collective of Prostitutes, one of the leading sex worker right organisations in the UK. Their new report ‘Proceed Without Caution’ shows how the la...
Nov 28, 2024•1 hr
While the first modern trains were built in the early 19th century – more people travel by rail today than ever before. Not only have passenger numbers risen in the UK but the likes of China, Iran and Uzbekistan now have high-speed networks. On this episode of Downstream, Aaron Bastani is joined by author and railway engineer Gareth Dennis. They discuss the rationale behind HS2, why Hyperloop was always destined to fail and the real reason Britain has so many potholes. Plus: does every major cit...
Nov 25, 2024•1 hr 34 min
In October 2024, SpaceX caught a rocket. An astonishing feat of engineering, it took humanity one giant leap closer to the era of everyday space travel – and possibly one small step closer to its own obliteration. Despite a long list of treaties attempting to prevent it, space is now a militarised zone. Nuclear-laden ICBMs and weapons systems on satellites are just the tip of a secretive iceberg of new risks, whose enormous power threatens us all. And next year Elon Musk, avatar for this new era...
Nov 22, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Global heating is a serious problem, but the question of just how urgently to fight it is a fraught one. Should 2C or 1.5C of warming be our limit? Or can we blow past these limits now, and come back down to them later, using technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? There’s only one problem: those technologies don’t yet exist. In this Downstream, Andreas Malm, human ecologist and author with Wim Carton of Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown spoke with Ash Sa...
Nov 18, 2024•37 min
Disruption is a byword for success in the tech industry, but when it affects people’s daily routines – say, when JSO activists are slow-marching down a road – it becomes nothing short of criminal. On this Trip, Jem, Nadia and Keir unpack the political uses and abuses of disruption and the ‘creative destruction’ inherent to capitalism. Featuring music from Björk, Disrupters and Stormzy and ideas from Joseph Schumpeter, Michał Kalecki and the Communist Manifesto . Find the books and music mentione...
Nov 17, 2024•1 hr 28 min
In 2016, the alt-right seemed to come from the internet and infest politics. In 2024, the internet and politics have become identical. Are we swimming in the world the alt-right built for us? Perhaps no one knows the world of online politics better than Joshua Citarella, an artist and political theorist whose 2018 book Politigram and the Post-Left kickstarted a flurry of investigations into new political cultures. His Doomscroll podcast looks at the development of online politics now. As the res...
Nov 15, 2024•1 hr 18 min
Everyone knows that the Roman Empire rose, then fell. Historians don’t all agree on the reasons for the collapse, but their misunderstandings can shed plenty of light on the current state of the world, according to the authors of How Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West . Peter Heather, a historian of antiquity, and John Rapley, a political economist, talk to Aaron about the uncanny parallels and productive differences between ancient history and the present day. What do most h...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 30 min
The rise of artificial intelligence will bring about a planetary-scale shift in human life and politics – and, it seems, a lot of weird social media spam. But for all the grand pronouncements from techno-utopians and pessimists alike, the reality is that there’s still much to be decided about the future that AI portends. At the forefront of those investigations is Marek Poliks, a composer, theorist and co-host of the Disintegrator podcast, where he and Roberto Alonso explore the frontiers of hum...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 25 min
War is spreading throughout West Asia, a situation understood by many observers as an outgrowth of Israeli expansionism. In a return visit to Downstream, historian Ilan Pappé provides a century’s worth of context to the unfolding crisis. He talks to Aaron to talk about the lack of a viable left in Israel, why nation-states haven’t worked in the Middle East, and why the British Empire is ultimately to blame. Pappé’s new book, A Very Short History of Israel-Palestine Conflict , is available now. H...
Nov 05, 2024•1 hr 21 min
In their new book Loving Corrections , adrienne maree brown poses a crucial conundrum for all progressive thinkers: how do we liberate people from bad ideas? One of America’s most energetic thinkers talks to Rivkah Brown about putting the pol back in idpol, understanding the IDF, navigating the US election, and why we might need to suck it up and ‘bear hug’ our enemies. Comments, questions, corrections? fm@novaramedia.com Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support...
Oct 31, 2024•59 min
What if instead of talking about history from the perspective of humanity, we told it from the perspective of the resources that made human expansion possible? Sunil Amrith is a historian and author of The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of The Last 500 Years . He sat down with Ash to explain how a bumper crop of grass powered the Mongol empire, how the two world wars irreversibly changed the planet, and to wonderif the global north can ever come to terms with the need to consume fewer r...
Oct 28, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Around the world, far-right movements are mobilising support by placing the blame for real catastrophes – Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, their own riots and insurrections – on entirely made-up enemies, among them Muslims, immigrants and feminists. This is what Richard Seymour, a writer, theorist and founding editor of Salvage magazine, calls disaster nationalism. He joins Richard Hames to discuss the current irruption of riots, pogroms and genocide, the global south’s incipient fascism, the far-r...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 34 min
From pollinating crops to managing organic waste on a continental scale, insects are vital to life on Earth. They are also disappearing. Dave Goulson is an entomologist and ecologist whose books communicate the majesty of insects and arthropods – along with a grave warning about their demise. He talks to Aaron to Bastani talk about the critical lack of scientific expertise in government, the allure of dung beetles, and how to make your garden a haven for insect life. Help us build people-powered...
Oct 22, 2024•1 hr 50 min
What does Israel hope to achieve this time, nearly 20 years after its last failed ground offensive in Lebanon? And how should we understand its adversary, a political party that also functions as a fighting force, a historical movement, and a regional power? Richard Hames is joined by Elia Ayoub, a Lebanese-Palestinian researcher and writer based in the UK, to sketch the political roots and strategic goals of Hezbollah. He explains the group’s complex links with Iran and Syria, why the killing o...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Stephanie Kelton is an author and economist, and subject of the new film ‘Finding The Money’. Her work as a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory and as an advisor to Bernie Sanders has put her front and center of the debate around government debt, taxation and the potential green industrial revolution. She sat down for a remote conversation with Ash to discuss debt, Liz Truss and whether you really need to tax the rich. You can watch the trailer for ‘Finding The Money’ here. And you can learn mor...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr
Of all the unseen forces that shape human society, could death be the most powerful? The ACFM crew take a leftwing look at mortality in this Trip, asking how capitalism has altered our approach to the inevitable. Jem, Nadia and Keir think about how industrialised workers were taught to prepare for death, why powerful men are obsessed with their legacies, why we failed to ritualise or remember the Covid dead, and their fear of being desensitised to killing. Find the books and music mentioned in t...
Oct 13, 2024•1 hr 44 min
The English language is full of pejoratives for large groups of people: mob mentality. Herd behaviour. Crowd contagion. Much of this apprehension stems from one of the most influential works of psychology ever written, Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind . Unfortunately, Le Bon’s big idea – that crowds produce derangement and violence in even the most rational subject – was not based on any actual research. So why the lingering suspicion? In his new book, Multitudes: How Crow...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Xi Jinping is possibly the most powerful person in the world, but what do we know about his origins, ways of thinking and goals for China and the human race in general? To answer these questions and more, Aaron is joined by Olivia Cheung, author of “The Political Thought of Xi Jinping”. They discuss his early difficulties with the CCP, his treatment of the Uyghurs and how China is manoeuvring it’s soft power in Africa. You can buy Olivia’s book here: https://novara.media/BuyCheung...
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr 28 min
The Palestine solidarity movement is the largest movement in British politics for a century. Yet has been vilified and policed as if it were a tiny group of extremists. In this investigative episode of Novara FM, series producer Richard Hames is joined by Simon Childs, commissioning editor at Novara Media, to expose the authoritarian turn inside the British state that is driving the crackdown on Palestine solidarity. From Suella Braverman’s demonisation of “hate marchers” to Michael Gove’s attem...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 36 min
The Silk Road has dominated the way we imagine the trading relationship between Europe and Asia to have worked in antiquity. In his new book, The Golden Road, William Dalrymple busts that myth. He sat down with Ash to talk about the origins of algebra, Indian gems in Anglo-Saxon Britain and why Genghis Khan was scared of India.
Oct 01, 2024•52 min
