Novara Media

Épisodes

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  Downstream: The Next Big Shock Is Coming. Green Energy Is the Only Way Out w/ Tessa Khan 14.09.2026 1h 15min

  This summer’s extreme heat, wildfires and thousands of excess deaths have shown that the climate is destabilising faster than predicted. In the face of this undeniable crisis, what should be done? Tessa Khan is the founder of Uplift, an organisation working to decarbonise our energy system before it’s too late. The former human rights lawyer realised a decade ago that none of the other social questions matter if we don’t address the climate crisis. Tessa talks to Aaron Bastani about the calls to keep drilling in the North Sea, whether renewables are susceptible to economic shocks, and how an ageing population impacts climate politics. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
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  ACFM Trip 63: Situationism 13.09.2026 2h 2min

  What did the Situationists actually achieve? Nadia, Jem and Keir look back on the antics and manifestos of the socialist revolutionaries who gathered under the banner of the Situationist International. With ideas from Debord and Khayati and music from the KLF and Negativland, the gang chart the SI’s influence on politics and media theory, from the central concept of the Spectacle to their lingering influence on pop music, psychogeography and political organising. Find the music and books mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Follow our playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
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  Downstream: The Big AI Lie w/ Cory Doctorow 07.09.2026 2h 9min

  AI is set to take all of our jobs. It will irrevocably transform our relationships – and it might even kill us all. These are some of the big claims made about artificial intelligence today. And they are claims that on Novara, we take seriously. This week’s Downstream guest thinks that giving weight to those grand concerns is a mistake. He believes that by talking up the possibility that AI could replace significant amounts of labour – or develop an agency of its own – only serves to exaggerate the capacity of AI – and therefore just helps tech CEOs drive more investors to buy their already overpriced stocks. Cory Doctorow is a writer and activist – who’s written 36 books – spanning non-fiction and science fiction. He famously coined the term “ensh*ttification” to describe the modern trajectory of the internet. And he has a new book on AI – it’s called the “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI”. As Aaron Bastani takes time off on paternity leave, Michael Walker, host of Novara Live, sat down with Cory to ask one of the world’s leading tech writers his burning questions about AI. Is Cory surprised at the speed of AI’s so-called “evolution”? What does the latest AI “Hugging Face” tell us about AI? Does the AI presented to us in 2026 present a threat to life on Earth, or is that just hype? Is it really intelligent, or just a simulacrum of intelligence? Does it matter?  
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  Downstream: Multiculturalism Will Save the Working Class w/ Jonas Patrick Marvin 31.08.2026 1h 18min

  We live in a moment when the working class is fractured along a great many lines. Gone are the days of solidarity built around a shared experience of factory work that formed the bedrock of Karl Marx’s analysis of class struggle – and his vision of emancipation. Meanwhile in the halls of power, elites in our politics have failed for decades now to really grasp what people in Britain care about and need – resorting to lame stand-ins such as ‘Mondeo man’ and ‘Stevenage woman’, Farage’s new favourite: ‘alarm clock Britain’. What are they missing? Lived experience, apart from anything else. On Downstream this week, Ash Sarkar sat down with campaigner and author Jonas Patrick Marvin to discuss his new book ‘The Breaking of the English Working Class’. Weaving autobiographical detail with political theory, Marvin tackles head-on the class forces that have shaped his own life. Why can’t people born in London afford to stay and build lives there? Who gets to define themselves as working class, and on what grounds? How should the left respond to rising anti-immigration politics? Why has the working class become so fragmented, and what can be done to repair it?  
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  Downstream: Elites Have No Plan for Climate Change w/ Bill McGuire 25.08.2026 1h 25min

  The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2026 is roughly the same as when, in the very, very distant past, the Earth was between 6 and 8 degrees warmer. If the Earth were to reach those temperatures again, the majority of mammals would go extinct. While we’re not at those temperatures now, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could cause the climate to accelerate towards planetary conditions that pre-date the dinosaurs. This is the stark warning of this week’s guest, Bill McGuire. A geologist and volcanologist by training, he has spent time as an expert and government advisor on extreme weather events, before becoming an author. According to him, there is no plan for the extreme climactic upheaval that is to come.
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  Downstream: The Journalist Who Terrifies Corporate America w/ Amy Goodman 17.08.2026 1h 14min

  The genocide of Palestinians, carried out by the Israeli army with backing from the US and the British state, has lead to an almighty breakdown in public trust in the West. Now more than ever, citizens are turning away from establishment media sources in search of journalism that more closely resembles the world as we see it.  This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar sits down with Amy Goodman, veteran journalist and founder of Democracy Now!, one of the leading independent media organisations in the US. Goodman is the subject of a new film, Steal This Story, Please!, which documents her storied career covering some of the most consequential moments in American living history. She has confronted sitting presidents, bore firsthand witness to 9/11, survived a firing squad in East Timor and exposed major corporate crime in the Niger Delta. What drives Amy to do the work she does – shining light on humanity’s darkness, decade after decade? How did her Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn inform her work? What does good journalism look like to her? Why does she believe we all need to re-learn the lost art of disagreement? And does she think American democracy can survive? 
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  ACFM Microdose: How Britain’s Coastal Communities are Reclaiming Power w/ Hazel Sheffield 16.08.2026 53min

  Nadia visits reporter and author Hazel Sheffield in her Hastings beach hut to talk about the coastal communities that are reimagining their economies in the face of government neglect and climate breakdown. They talk about the Hastings Commons project, a constellation of community-owned buildings in a deprived part of the town, and the seaside village in Somerset that built itself a £7m art gallery. Hazel’s book, Frontierlands: Britain’s Survival in the Making, is available now. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
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  Downstream: Ex-Oil Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: “We Face Collapse” w/ Kevin Anderson 10.08.2026 1h 46min

  The summer of 2026 will go down in history books as the hottest, driest and most deadly set of heatwaves Britain has ever experienced. This weather isn’t normal – but it is predictable according to a global consensus of scientists. And yet this summer, according to the science, will be one of the coolest summers we ever have again. Things will only get hotter from here. Beginning his career as an oil-rig engineer before retraining as a climate scientist, Kevin Anderson’s career has been an extraordinary journey. On Downstream this week, Aaron Bastani sat down with him to discuss what has become his life’s work: sounding the alarm on man-made climate change, and on the fossil fuel industry that gave him his start. Just how much has the planet heated, and why? Is the Paris Agreement’s aim of keeping heating to beneath 1.5°C still achievable, or delusional cope? What are the political obstacles to tackling the issue? Having worked with Andy Burnham in Manchester, what does Kevin think he will do on climate, as PM? Is avoiding catastrophe still possible, and if so, how much time have we got to act, before it’s too late?
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  ACFM 62: The Beach 09.08.2026 2h 2min

  Nadia, Keir and Jem wonder why humans are drawn to the beach in a weird-left conversation that spans geological deep-time, the birth of surf culture, the politics of faded seaside towns and more, plus music from 808 State and The B-52’s. Find the music and books mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Follow our playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
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  Downstream: The West is Over. Here’s Why w/ Pankaj Mishra 03.08.2026 1h 38min

  In the years since October 7th, the world has been bitterly polarised over how to make sense of the violence. While polling shows that a majority of people do believe Israel’s actions amount to genocide – having witnessed it with their own eyes via their smartphones – it has been woefully hard to find mainstream media outlets in the West prepared to use this language. On Downstream this week, Aaron Bastani sat down with Indian essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra. His most recent book, ‘The World After Gaza’ takes stock of a world order shattered by the genocide, and a media class unprepared to recognise the truth. In response to these crises, Mishra and colleagues have just launched Equator magazine, pulling together leading writers from across the globe who are unafraid to tell the truth. When did the so-called West first begin to lose standing in the eyes of the rest of the world? Why is the British media class positioned so uniquely close to power, so delusional, and so compromised over Gaza? Will China replace America, in the coming century, as the new hegemonic power? Has it already?
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  Do Your Own Research: Is This Podcast the Problem? w/ Joshua Citarella 01.08.2026 1h 20min

  Joshua Citarella built his reputation by mapping synthetic e-deologies of terminally online politics, expressed in memes, micro-disputes and merch drops. Now the artist, Doomscroll host and Do Not Research founder has come to a blunter conclusion: it’s time to lock in. Behind the seeming diversity of online politics, one ideology has already won: the technolibertarianism of the platforms and supply chains that actually make it all run. So maybe it’s time to get serious, tune out the noise, and get back to basics: workers versus capital. This episode is the finale of Do Your Own Research Series 1. We’ll be back soon. Get the map: novaramedia.com/dyor Music by Iglooghost.
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  Downstream: Who Profits From Genocide? w/ Andrew Feinstein 27.07.2026 1h 32min

  A new consensus has emerged in Westminster, seemingly overnight: we need more defence spending, and we need it now. But the Ministry of Defence has a record for waste that would put Tony Soprano to shame. £13 billion down the drain, since 2010, at the very least. Aircraft carriers that come in late, overbudget, and beset by mechanical failures. IT systems that cost millions, and are wildly out of date. No other government department could get away with it. But the arms trade spends billions of dollars on greasing the wheels of political consent. They employ armies of lobbyists, print reams of analysis, and bribe politicians the world over to keep the war machine funded. The result isn’t just a crisis of corruption. It’s a threat to our survival as a species. Andrew Feinstein is a former-minister in the South African government, turned investigative reporter. He is the executive director of Shadow World Investigations, and serves on the board of Declassified UK. And in 2024, he stood against Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras. He joins Ash Sarkar on Downstream to lift the lid on how the arms industry really works, and tell us about his political journey.
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  Do Your Own Research: What JD Vance and Tucker Carlson Actually Believe w/ James Pogue 25.07.2026 1h 38min

  The American empire is in crisis – and there is a new generation of more vocal critics coming from the right. So what do JD Vance and Tucker Carlson actually believe about American power? James Pogue has reported on empires and their decline for years, from West and Central Africa, where Wagner Group picked over the corpse of French neo-colonialism, to California’s secessionist fringe and the absurdities of Washington. He also happens to be one of the closest observers of JD Vance, who is just a heartbeat from one of the most powerful positions in the world. The president’s real job is keeping the machine running: asset prices up, markets juiced, the war economy fed. Can anyone actually change that? And would we even want them to try, if it’s as ideologically peculiar and dangerous as Vance? Get the map: novaramedia.com/dyor Music by Iglooghost.
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  Downstream: You Will Rent Forever. Here’s Why. w/ Peter Apps 20.07.2026 1h 48min

  We live in times of crisis. But perhaps none of the crises affect so many people in the here and now, as the housing crisis. Solving it could provide the skeleton key to unlocking so many of society’s problems. Despite this, decades of successive governments in the UK have failed to bring housing under control. The social contract which told us that if we worked hard all our lives, we can own a home and be secure in retirement, has been completely broken. To discuss the crisis in Britain and beyond, Aaron Bastani sat down with Peter Apps. He is an award-winning journalist who knows the field of housing – its failures and its potential fixes – better than almost anyone. He wrote an article about the threat of flammable cladding a month before Grenfell caught fire. How has housing policy shaped Britain in the last 50 years? Who did more to damage the housing system, Labour or the Tories? Is more housing supply always the solution? And why is no one talking about the crisis facing our ageing population, one million of whom will be in housing insecurity and poverty by 2030?
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  Downstream: The Middle Class Will Collapse Unless We Tax the Rich w/ Gary Stevenson 13.07.2026 1h 36min

  The idea of a wealth tax has never been more popular in Britain, and while many have campaigned for it, none have done more to boost the demand than one man: Gary Stevenson. The former city trader first joined us on Downstream four years ago. A lot has changed since then. This week, after a bruising round of media including attacks from Piers Morgan and the Guardian, Gary sat down to give his side of the story to Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani. What are the fair critiques of a wealth tax, and how does Gary engage with them? What would he say to Andy Burnham? What does he think needs to be done to keep out Farage and Reform? And do the recent spate of attacks in the media show that Gary’s actually winning the argument?
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  ACFM Microdose: Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations 12.07.2026 1h 36min

  The Meditations of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius are perhaps the best-selling self-help book of all time. Rooted in the rational philosophy of the Stoics, the 12 books offer a stream of personal musings on everything from cultivating self-discipline to being a successful leader. Following their episode on Resilience, Nadia, Keir and Jem offer a weird-left perspective on the Meditations, looking at their influence on western thought and current popularity among tech bros and the alt-right. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
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  Do Your Own Research: The True Cost of AI Girlfriends w/ James Muldoon 10.07.2026 1h 15min

  AI boyfriends and girlfriends are all the rage – for some. For others, they just inspire rage. So what’s the truth about these seductive machines? Do they open up our erotic potential, or are they just an absurd fantasy? And how are they even made? James Muldoon is the author of Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships and co-author of Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI. Put these two books together, and his work takes us along the strange journey of AI from deeply exploited workers in the slums of East Africa to the cores of our deepest desires.
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  Downstream: Who Really Won the War on Drugs? w/ Kojo Koram 06.07.2026 1h 20min

  Last year, Zack Polanski’s Green Party suggested changes could be made to Britain’s prohibitionist approach to drugs – and felt the full force of the mainstream media’s indignation. But all over the world, the War on Drugs is shifting shape. Drugs are being legalised and commercialised. America now has its first legal weed-selling billionaire, while others serve out huge prison sentences for possession. Ash Sarkar sat down with Professor Kojo Koram, to discuss his latest book The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs, which travels from a plantation-turned-prison in Louisiana to the psychedelic boom of Silicon Valley. So what does a drug policy fit for the 21st century actually look like?  
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  Do Your Own Research: How China Wins the Resource War w/ Thea Riofrancos 29.06.2026 1h 32min

  We need critical minerals for the green transition, the military and the AI boom. In barely a year, lithium and the rare earths have become some of the most fought-over objects on earth. But the scarcity is manufactured — by refineries, choke points and the states that control them. Richard talks to Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, about what these minerals really are, the gutted landscapes the green transition runs on, and the new geopolitics of extraction, from Trumpian state capitalism to Latin America to China.
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  Downstream: Governments Do Capitalism Wrong. Here’s How We Fix It. w/ Mariana Mazzucato 29.06.2026 1h 8min

  Mariana Mazzucato is a towering figure in contemporary economics, best known for her work on the entrepreneurial state and mission-oriented economics. Her congregation is broad, ranging from an ascendant Andy Burnham, to the Pope, to Marco Rubio. Ash Sarkar sat down with her in front of a live audience at EartH Theatre in Hackney to test the ideas in her new book, The Common Good Economy.   Support