Downstream – Novara Media Podcasts

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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’.

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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

Renewable energy technology is only getting cheaper. And yet it hasn’t increased its share of the energy mix for two decades. So what explains this paradox: cheap green energy with incredibly slow adoption? According to Brett Christophers, there is a straightforward explanation for this seeming paradox: the capitalist need for profits. And green energy projects […]

The Indian election will be one of the largest the world has ever seen, with almost 1 billion people eligible to vote. It’s often said that India is the world’s biggest democracy. But what if that isn’t quite true? What if Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister for the last decade, has undermined the very building […]

The involuntary celibate community (aka ‘incels’) are often thought to be rightwing, white supremacist, and prone to violence. But how much of that is true? Ash Sarkar is joined by William Costello – a researcher whose work focuses on the psychology of incels – to discuss what we get wrong about incels, what incels get […]

Common sense tells us that free-market economies maximise freedom and that planned economies, typically found under socialist governments, curtail it. But what if this is completely the wrong way around? On this episode of Downstream, Aaron is joined by economist and author Grace Blakeley to discuss Henry Ford, Boeing and the nature of democracy. You […]

George Galloway has been elected as a member of parliament for four separate constituencies – with only Winston Churchill beating him. Perhaps more remarkably still, he won on three of those occasions while not being a member of a major political party. Most recently, he became the MP for Rochdale in the north of England. […]

Teresa Thornhill is an author and former child protection lawyer. Throughout her long career, working for both local authorities and advocating on behalf of parents, she has been a first hand witness to how the system fails parents, social workers and, most importantly, children. Teresa sat down with Aaron to talk about the untrained volunteers […]

It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove. For years, Forensic Architecture has exposed state crimes against civilians, nature, and humanity. This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar meets its director Eyal Weizman to discuss Israel’s settler colonial project, the police killing of Mark Duggan, and how the testimony of blindfolded torture victims helped […]

Abby Martin is an American journalist and activist, host of the interview series The Empire Files, and a co-founder of the citizen journalism website Media Roots. She joins Ash Sarkar to discuss her political journey after 9/11, working for the state broadcaster Russia Today, how Israelis really talk about Palestinians, and why she believes the […]

For a special edition of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar is joined by philosopher, author, and one of the world’s most cited academics, Judith Butler. Their new book, ‘Who’s Afraid of Gender’ charts how a transphobic moral panic morphed into an all-our war on so-called ‘gender ideology’. Together, Ash and Judith explore how Britain became TERF […]

With hindsight, the wars waged by the US and Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq look like terrible failures, both strategically and politically: the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, and living standards are worse in Iraq than they were before Saddam Hussein. In his new book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States […]

Peter Hitchens is an author and journalist whose contrarian takes on drug policy, education and foreign policy have found him occupying a singular place in the British media – with his brand of conservatism often angering audiences who would consider themselves staunchly conservative. He sat down with Aaron to discuss grammar schools, Gaza and Britain’s […]

Major General Charlie Herbert has stood out in recent months for his vociferous condemnation of Israel’s war on Palestinians. His media appearances have proven vital in synthesising a moral and strategic critique of war in which civilians are treated in a manner he characterises as unprecedented. He sat down with Ash to talk about serving […]

Gary Stevenson went from being Citibank’s most profitable trader to one of the world’s most incisive critics of the financial system. Gary sat down with Aaron to discuss the lightbulb moment that led him away from trading, why economists can’t predict anything and why the UK middle class is doomed.

Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and author who served as Greek Finance Minister in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash. Since then, he has become one of the most sought after public speakers on the left. He joined Aaron Bastani for an IRL edition of Downstream at EartH in Hackney, North-East London to […]

Bernie Sanders needs no introduction. Ash caught up with the senator to talk about his new book ‘It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism’, the speed of political change and whether what is happening in Gaza constitutes a genocide.

Yousef Alhelou has spent the four or so months since October 7th covering the Israeli assault on Gaza through his Instagram account. In that time, his audience has grown by hundreds of thousands. Aaron sat down with Yousef to talk about international law, the genocide in Gaza and Britain’s complicity in it.

Should there be a cap on how much wealth one person can have? If we’re serious about tackling poverty, the answer can only be yes, says Ingrid Robeyns, author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Robeyns tells Ash Sarkar what a wealth cap could do for the world, how the global north is living […]

Twenty years ago, it was taken for granted that on average, people globally were shrugging off the shackles of organised religion. The world was destined for secularism. But with demographics trends in many countries pointing towards a growing religious population and with secular liberal politics failing to offer solace from falling living standards, we should […]

We are in a drastically different world from the one most of us grew up in. This has been proven by the rapid escalation in the events in the Middle East over the last six weeks. No longer are we in a world where, essentially, the US run the show. And this has huge global […]

Discussion of climate change mainly focuses on mitigating rising temperatures, de-carbonising and getting to ‘net zero’. Author and broadcaster Gaia Vince argues that we also need to focus on how we’ll deal with with’s already happening and about to get much much worse: huge swathes of the planet becoming uninhabitable and 2 billion people needing […]

From his radical youth in 1970s Italy to his research as one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli is as comfortable talking politics as he is explaining quantum theory. He sat down with Aaron to talk about the future of Europe, his theory of white holes, and why we’re not actually living in […]

For this end-of-year edition of Downstream, the Novara Media team look back on the biggest stories of the year. Ash Sarkar is joined by Moya Lothian-McLean, Michael Walker and Owen Jones to talk about the Labour Party, the climate crisis, the rise of AI and the war on Gaza. From clouds brightening to prospects dimming, […]

Asset management companies like Blackrock, Vanguard and Macquarie have avoided real scrutiny for decades, but their secretive activities are starting to attract attention from political researchers and academics. What do these companies do, and what risk do they pose to society? Author and academic Brett Christophers sets out to answer this question in his new […]

Daniel Levy has had a front row seat at some of the most consequential peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine in the last two decades, as president of the U.S./Middle East Peace Project and as an adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. He sat down with Ash Sarkar to talk about the failure […]

Blindboy Boatclub is the Irish broadcaster, author and musician behind The Blindboy Podcast, a massively popular podcast mixing short fiction, comedy and interviews. His new short story collection, Topographia Hibernica, is inspired by the human, animal and emotional geography of Ireland. Blindboy sat down with Ash for a freewheeling discussion about everything from Eminem’s ’90s […]

To really understand what’s going in Israel, you need to get your history straight. Rashid Khalidi is one of the foremost historians of the Middle East and the author of several books on the region’s history, including The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine. On the day of the ceasefire in Gaza, he guides Ash through […]

Zarah Sultana is one of the youngest MPs in Parliament and has faced intense hostility from the right of the Labour Party since Keir Starmer’s ascent to leader. The MP for Coventry South sat down with Ash Sarkar to talk about the reality of being a Muslim woman in the Labour Party, her interactions with […]

We’re heading towards a cashless society. With the dominion of Visa and Mastercard showing no sign of shrinking, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to scrutinise what this shift towards virtual money really means. Brett Scott is an author and former banker who is deeply committed to evaluating the dangers of removing cash as a payment system. […]

Slavoj Žižek is perhaps the most famous living Marxist philosopher. This year he will publish three books on topics ranging from the nature of freedom to his deeply pessimistic view of the future. Slavoj sat down with Aaron for a typically provocative, freewheeling and humorous conversation spanning ideas from Stalinism to Zionism to Eurocentrism. He […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]