Novara Media

Novara Media is an independent media organisation addressing the issues—from a crisis of capitalism to racism and climate change—that are set to define the 21st century.

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301 episodes
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March 30 · 40 min
The Greens WILL Beat Labour w/ Hannah Spencer and Faiza Shaheen
To mark the launch of our new podcast series, Death in Westminster, host Dalia Gebrial sat down with Hannah Spencer, the new MP for Gorton and Denton, and Faiza Shaheen, the director of Tax Justice UK, at EartH in Hackney. They talked about Hannah’s landslide victory, her first few weeks in Parliament, and what a wealth tax would actually look like. What approach did Faiza and Hannah take with Reform voters when they went canvassing? What lessons should progressives learn from past failures? And what are the conspiracy theories swirling about Hannah online? Listen to Death in Westminster, hosted by Dalia and Kojo Koram, in the Novara Media podcast feed.
March 29 · 1 hr 39 min
ACFM Trip 58: Boredom
When was the last time you were bored? Nadia, Jem and Keir wonder if ennui is a feeling that belongs in the past – and what a boredom-free life might be missing. Is compulsive scrolling a modern symptom of boredom? Why are spiritual practices often based around tedious repetition? Do bored workers make better organisers? What about the “stuckness” experienced by migrants, or the drudgery of housework? The gang offer their theories of Boredism (and Post-Boredism) in a perfectly mind-numbing Trip, with ideas from Lukács, Gramsci, the Pet Shop Boys and loads of 1970s punk. 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-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
March 28 · 1 hr 35 min
Do Your Own Research: Isolated, Scared, and Furious: Welcome to the Age of Hyperpolitics
In the last decade and a half, society has got vastly more politicised: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Me Too Movement and many other movements besides mobilised hundreds of millions of people around the world. So where are the massive organisations that big mobilisations brought in the 20th century? They don’t exist. For all the increased political activity, society hasn’t become much more organised. This has produced what Anton Jäger calls ‘hyperpolitics’. He’s the author of Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicisation without Political Consequences as well as a columnist at The New York Times and a lecturer at Oxford University. He explained to Richard Hames how we got so isolated, why fascism isn’t even the biggest threat right now, and whether the worldwide organising around Palestine, anti-ICE uprisings in the US and the Gen Z Revolutions have already hurtled us into yet another era of political struggle. Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost.
March 23 · 1 hr 8 min
Downstream: The Right Is Winning. Here’s How We Change That w/ Ash Sarkar
Aaron Bastani sat down with Novara Media’s own Ash Sarkar, to celebrate the paperback release of her bestselling book, Minority Rule. ‘Minority rule’ is the term Ash used to describe the irrational fear that minorities are trying to overturn and oppress majority populations. She revealed how minority elites rule majorities by creating the culture wars that have taken over our politics, stoking fear and panic in our media landscape. Together before a live audience at EartH Hackney, Ash and Aaron dug into the question of what has changed since the book was published. What can be learned from Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York? Does the left hate Britain? What do we need to do, in order to establish a ‘majority rule’? And is there such a thing as a middle-class dog?
March 21 · 1 hr 45 min
Do Your Own Research: How Musk’s Paranoid Empire Really Works w/ Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff
The most powerful CEO in history is barely a person anymore. But it’s not just his X-addled brain that has transformed him. He has deeply integrated himself in the ‘cyborg collective’ – a world of electrons, brain implants, fantastical promises, financial systems, bots, and memes – he has made for himself. Henry Ford gave his name to Fordism. According to Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, we’re entering a globe-spanning era of capitalism we might soon call ‘Muskism’. Those two are the authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. It’s a whistle-stop tour of the world that made Musk, from the fortress futurism of Apartheid South Africa to the financial fabulations of the Bay Area. And, of course, the cyborg world that Musk is now making for us all. They told me about what they see as Musk’s ongoing land grab in space, about what’s really going on with his plan for brain implants, how our supposed climate saviour became obsessed with prepping for the end of the world, and how Musk came to define an entirely new way of making technology – and not making it, but at least making it seem like you might. Do Your Own Research is a new show about the systems that make modern life possible. Music by Iglooghost.
March 16 · 1 hr 20 min
Downstream: The Middle Class Is Collapsing. Fascism Could Be Next w/ Clara Mattei
Rising unemployment, increased military spending, and a decline in living standards for most people, including the middle class: the description fits both the 1930s and the 2020s. In the 1930s, it was a situation that morphed into the destruction and horror of the Second World War. On Downstream with Aaron Bastani this week is Clara Mattei, professor of economics at the University of Tulsa, and author of ‘Escape From Capitalism: Economics Is Political and Other Liberating Truths’. Mattei’s PhD was on the relationship between austerity and fascism in inter-war Italy, and her book is a comparative study of Britain and Italy in that period. What, they ask, is the relationship between austerity and fascism – both then and now? Is capitalism a ‘natural fact’, as its proponents would have you believe, or a contingent set of affairs designed and propped up by governments? And if capitalism is in fact a choice, how can we go about building an alternative?
March 14 · 1 hr 56 min
Do Your Own Research: Welcome to the Slavery-Driven Slop Economy w/ Marek Poliks
Trillions of dollars of AI build-out. An economy poised on the edge of a giant crisis. Some say it’s a bubble. But what if it’s an entirely new kind of economics? One that has no need of humans at all? Marek Poliks is the co-author with Roberto Alonso Trillo of Exocapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits. Together, they are the co-hosts of the Disintegrator podcast. He speaks to Richard Hames about the head-spinning world of AI economics, what the left gets wrong about technofeudalism, and what will happen to all of us bags of meat when capitalism can simply run itself. Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost.
March 10 · 37 min
Death in Westminster: 4. The Tunnel
The final episode. Back in Westminster, Kojo confronts the human cost of hidden wealth – and asks if change is still possible. Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice. Full credits and more information: https://novara.media/westminster Produced by Planet B Productions and distributed by Novara Media.
March 10 · 24 min
Death in Westminster: 3. The City
In episode three, the dark web of offshore finance connects Britain’s imperial past with its political present. Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice. Full credits and more information: https://novara.media/westminster Produced by Planet B Productions and distributed by Novara Media.
March 10 · 31 min
Death in Westminster: 2. The Island
In episode two, the trail leads offshore. From Westminster to the Cayman Islands, Kojo uncovers how tax havens are fuelling London’s housing crisis. Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice. Full credits and information: https://novara.media/westminster Produced by Planet B Productions and distributed by Novara Media.
March 10 · 28 min
Death in Westminster: 1. The Station
New four-part podcast. A homeless man dies in Westminster surrounded by vast wealth and empty homes. His death sparks a disturbing investigation into how secrecy and evasion have become normalised in the heart of British power. Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice. Full credits and information: https://novara.media/westminster Produced by Planet B Productions and distributed by Novara Media.
March 9 · 1 hr 37 min
Downstream: We Are Witnessing the Return of Empires & the End of Nations w/ Rana Dasgupta
Nearly all of us on Earth live within a ‘nation-state’. Nation-states are an invisible and seemingly inevitable and eternal part of the infrastructure that forms our society: the water we swim in. Rarely do we pause to consider how this global system of nation-states came into being, and what might replace it after its gone. But as the United States wages a war of aggression on Iran, in a move that will drive up oil prices and the cost of living for ordinary citizens all over the world, the question presents itself anew: who do nation-states serve; what are they for? On Downstream this week is the author and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose latest book, After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order, tackles these questions head-on. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, they discuss: What is a nation-state? How did they come to replace the role of religion in the liberal era? Do states need their citizens to have rights? What are the most salient challenges to the nation-state today? And were the gains in workers’ rights of the last century a sign that progress and democracy will triumph in the end, or something more like a historical blip?
March 8 · 1 hr 57 min
ACFM Microdose: The Green Party
[Audio error updated! Please refresh or re-download if correct episode isn’t playing.] Have the Greens got what it takes to become the main political vehicle of the radical left? Following their Trip episode on Ecology, the ACFM crew take a closer look at Zack Polanski’s party as it nudges past Labour in the polls. From the ’60s dream of ‘steady state economics’ to the anarcho-green convergence of ’90s rave culture, the Green tendency is mapped out by Nadia, Jem and Keir, with ideas from Playboy, Zack Goldsmith, David Icke and some sensible people too. Follow our Spotify playlist of all the music discussed on ACFM and subscribe to the ACFM mailing list to get weirder and leftier. Music by Matt Huxley. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novaramedia.com/support
March 7 · 1 hr 43 min
Do Your Own Research: The Israel-ification of the US Military w/ Susannah Glickman
The US military is changing shape: it’s increasingly high-tech, intelligence led, and focused on assassinations. In short, the Israeli model. And the changing shape of war means changing flows of money and power. The primes, which have dominated the military industrial for decades, now face competition from Silicon Valley companies like Palantir and Anduril. But does their tech actually work? Or does it just drag the US into wars it doesn’t even know why it’s fighting? Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media mapping the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost.
March 2 · 1 hr 34 min
Downstream: The Next Shocks Will Hit Wealthy Countries Hardest. Here’s Why w/ John Rapley
The notion that the Global South is affected ‘first and worst’ by global shocks they didn’t cause, namely climate change, is one of the cornerstones of leftist thought. But what if it’s not entirely true? What if, contrary to this tenet, it’s wealthy Western nations who have over-developed and lost their resilience in the process? This is the argument made by John Rapley in his latest book ‘Icarus Economics’. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Rapley discusses how the West’s growth has reached certain limits, most notably those imposed by the natural world in which we are all embedded. Has a focus on the wrong kind of growth in the West reduced resilience to shocks from the natural world? Are the majority of us already in a recession, despite what GDP figures tell us? And what can the Global North learn from the Global South?
February 28 · 1 hr 32 min
Do Your Own Research: Seed Oils, the CIA, and the Metabolic Shitshow w/ Jason Moore
Cheap food holds capitalism together. But to get it, we’ve had to cheapen almost everything on the planet: the work of women, nature and colonies. We’ve made strange new ecologies all over the world, and now we’re living in the metabolic sh*tshow. How will the ruling class keep control? On this week’s Do Your Own Research, Jason Moore tells Richard Hames why the end of cheap nature means the rise of the security state. Music by Iglooghost
February 23 · 1 hr 10 min
Downstream: How the Democrats Abandoned Working People w/ Eric Schlosser
In 2001, Eric Schlosser published Fast Food Nation: an investigation into the toxic depths of America’s food industry. Twenty five years later, the book remains an urgent intervention, as much for what it says about workers’ rights as for our agricultural systems and dietary health. On Downstream this week, Ash Sarkar talks to Eric Schlosser about what’s changed since 2001, and what remains unreformed. How have we developed one food system for the rich and another for everyone else? Could the food industry operate – and America eat – without migrant workers? And did Eric foresee that marijuana edibles would become the new fast food?
February 22 · 2 hr 9 min
ACFM Trip 57: Ecology
Are humans distinct from nature? Are there natural limits to inequality? Can you have action without effort? Do bacteria have agency? Jem, Nadia and Keir find themselves dwarfed by the concept of ecology in this planetary-scale episode, which touches on cybernetics, systems thinking, ecofeminism and actor-network theory. Their ACFM guide to ecological thinking includes ideas from Rachel Carson, Peter Kropotkin and Donna Haraway, plus music from Joni Mitchell, Brian Eno and Marvin Gaye. 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-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
February 16 · 1 hr 45 min
Do Your Own Research: Megafarms and Megafamines: Secrets of the Global Food System w/ Charles C. Mann
There’s nothing in the world more important than the food system. The twentieth century was scarred by enormous famines – and, like the one in Gaza, they are still deliberately engineered. But since the 1970s, the absolute number of deaths from famine have dropped by over 90%. On a global scale, we now make so much food that farmers will sometimes destroy it just to keep the prices high. How is there so much food? And, amid all these calories, how are so many people still malnourished? Why is it suddenly all so expensive? And is it all about to come crashing down? Charles C. Mann tells Richard Hames about the historical power of bird shit, the strange reason Indian scientists put wheat in a nuclear reactor, and how the genius who made modern farming possible also invented the gas that was used to murder millions in the Holocaust. Music by Iglooghost
February 16 · 1 hr 34 min
Downstream: Mandelson & the Perverted Fantasies of New Labour Liberalism w/ Maurice Glasman
Just a week ago, the architect of Starmer’s rise to power, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over his connections to Peter Mandelson, after further proof of Mandelson’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein emerged in the newest batch of files released by the US Department of Justice. According to this week’s guest, this scandal isn’t an anomaly, but an inevitable outgrowth of the New Labour politics that have shaped Britain since Tony Blair took office in 1994. Maurice Glasman is a Labour peer and founder of Blue Labour, a campaign group that unites culturally conservative values with left-wing economic policies. He sat down with Ash to talk about meeting Steve Bannon, Tottenham Hotspur, and what Marx got wrong.