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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Things get weird on this Trip into Surrealism, a subject of great interest to ACFM and all historians of the weird left. Nadia, Jem and Keir follow a thread of off-kilter expression from Dadaism and André Breton’s manifesto through to Situationism, punk and Afrosurrealism. The gang explore the importance of surrealism to socialist thought and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Most people know that the game is rigged. Those who set the rules – win the game. Grace Blakeley has made a career of studying the rules, exposing the exploitative ways in which powerful institutions govern our lives and figuring out ways in which we can beat the banker and resist the game itself. Grace […]
Who exactly is the ruling class? The conspicuous top hat and tailed Bullingdon Club still exert dominance, but their era is waning. There are new folks in town. They can’t beat the obscene wealth of petrostate oligarchs, so they’ve joined them in ransacking the country. Ash is joined by Sam Bright, author of Bullingdon Club […]
Festivals. The perfect embodiment of the ACFM aesthetic, and even social politics… or are they? As the season comes to a close, Nadia, Jem and Keir ask themselves what festivals are really about. Is it music? Camping? The breakdown of everyday hierachies? Or is it just 20,000 people standing in a field? With help from […]
Mental illness is endemic to life under capitalism, yet it’s still largely talked about as a personal and medical issue. But what if we ditched the campaigns to “raise awareness” and instead turned our attention to criticising the systems that make us mad? Micha Frazer-Carroll is a journalist and the author of Mad World: The […]
We live in exciting times for ufology. We’re also coming to realise that many of the modern-day myths around visiting spacecraft were in fact planted by our own intelligence services. But how to tell fact from fiction? Trevor Paglen is an American artist known for investigating the invisible through the visible. His practice has taken […]
“Democratic media is the oxygen of democracy.” That’s the maxim that motivates Amy Goodman, award-winning American journalist and longtime host of Democracy Now!, the daily news show that has blazed a trail for alternative media in its nearly three decades on air. Whether reporting on East Timor’s independence movement or following the pipeline protests at […]
The media and the public seem to be fixated on sex scandals this year, from household names in the headlines to salacious rumours spread on social media. But haven’t we always been intrigued by the private lives of those in power? Ash Sarkar is joined by Novara Live researcher Steven Methven to delve into the […]
In this bumper Trip, the gang survey the totalising modern phenomenon that is The Internet. Nadia, Keir and Jem dredge up their early interactions with a primitive web and explain how the dream of free and open communication was displaced by closed networks of e-commerce and data harvesting. Following Keir’s recent Microdose episode with Malcolm […]
Ahead of an ACFM Trip about the internet, Keir Milburn is joined by Malcolm Harris to talk about the unique political history of his hometown of Palo Alto, the intellectual laboratory for a century of American hegemony. The Kids These Days author tells a story that connects the founding of California, the violent removal of its […]
Has the left misunderstood the state of our nation? Sociologist and trade unionist Dan Evans thinks so. He talks to Aaron about the unexpected power of the petty bourgeoisie – the insecure class between the working class and the bourgeoisie – and how its Thatcherite values of home ownership and entrepreneurialism have reshaped British politics in the last […]
The global meat industry has grown fivefold since the 1960s and is still growing. Yet sales of vegan and so-called ‘plant-based’ alternatives are soaring, as more of us question our relationship with meat and our attitudes towards animal life and the planet’s health. In her provocative new book Meat Love, writer Amber Husain plucks examples […]
Since 2016 we’ve seen mainstream politics take a turn for the weird, epitomised by the surprise success of populist projects like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Since then, fringe views have continued to muscle into the middle ground, with conspiracy theories and far-right talking points trickling into political discourse. Julia Ebner has been […]
Once upon a time we dreamed of a world free from household drudgery, helped by robot butlers, self-cleaning appliances and “smart” homes that saved energy and tidied after themselves. Yet despite decades of high-tech innovation in the home, we’ve barely reduced our workload – and no one’s managed to automate the folding of laundry. So why […]
