Downstream – Novara Media Podcasts

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

After the summer of 2020, the liberal consensus was that in order to tackle racism, white people would have to look inside themselves and ‘do the work’. In 2023, this idea has spread from well-meaning allies on Twitter to the HR departments of corporate behemoths – all while the institutions that consolidate and expand systemic […]

Most people’s lives are defined by the exchange of labour for a wage. But what if the state gave us all a regular wage, with zero strings attached, to spend as we wish? That’s the core idea behind universal basic income, or UBI. With England’s first UBI pilot programme now underway, Aaron talks to Will […]

Izzy Posen grew up in London’s Hasidic Jewish community in Stamford Hill, receiving the bare minimum of secular education in a school that still practiced corporal punishment. Even with the strictures of this insular community, he developed an acute curiosity about the world, resulting in him teaching himself English and eventually leaving the community to […]

The Green Party of England and Wales has made extraordinary gains in the last two decades, especially in the last round of local elections. As well as its one MP – Caroline Lucas – the Greens are also the biggest party on several councils and have a majority on Mid Suffolk District Council. Aaron is […]

History is not just one thing after another. Historians spend lifetimes figuring out how X event in medieval France impacted Y event in 20th century Polynesia, but none of them have truly ‘done the math’ like this week’s guest. Coming from a background in applied mathematics, Peter Turchin has gathered an unprecedented amount of historical […]

For a Downstream family special, Ash Sarkar is joined by Moya Lothian-McLean and Michael Walker – both contributing editors at Novara Media – to discuss their lives as journalists, the combustion of media companies Vice and gal-dem, the scandal surrounding Nick Cohen, and why Novara is taking on the mainstream media in the UK.

Many people would agree that corporations have undue influence over our democracies. But exactly how this influence is exerted is tricky to work out – and that is by design. Behind innocuous-sounding acronyms and worthy-sounding trade agreements are the real cogs that allow the global corporate machine to corrupt societies. Our guest this week Matt […]

Ian Hogarth has invested in more than 50 artificial intelligence companies and is co-author of the annual State of AI report. And he’s worried. Not only about the disruptive consequences of machine learning for human employment, but about the potential rise of an ‘AGI’: artificial general intelligence. For Hogarth, the prospect of a machine able […]

In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and the experiment of communist East Germany came to an end. Yet for a while it was a successful project, raising living standards against massive odds and providing stability for the first time in half a century. So is it time to reassess Europe’s most wealthy, and advanced […]

Palestinians don’t often get to tell their own stories, and on the rare occasion they do it’s on highly limited terms. Ash Sarkar speaks to writer and poet Mohammed el-Kurd, Palestine correspondent for The Nation, about growing up in occupied territory and why journalists fail to tell the truth about Israel.

Everyone rails against the elite, but who are they? The left would say it’s the billionaires, the media barons, the oil tycoons, and the 1% – those who control our economy, our housing, and basic necessities. However, the right increasingly insists on the existence of a “new elite” of woke corporations, “social justice warrior” celebrities, […]

In The UK, the last few decades have shown the steepest decline in trust in the media globally, second only to Egypt. How did we get here? Is it as simple as Rupert Murdoch wielding his malice more fervently here then elsewhere? Or are there insidious cultural factors that meant our newspapers, and increasingly our […]

Vicky Spratt is a London-based journalist and campaigner who writes on housing and the rental crisis. Her book Tenants is out now with Profile Books.

Britain is unique in the way that public schools (that’s private schools to anyone outside of Britain) have a stranglehold on the establishment. Alumni of these schools are massively overrepresented in the upper echelons of society – so is it any wonder that the media, the judicial system and the political class treat normal people […]

Roger Hallam was released from jail a few weeks before this interview. He was held on remand for 109 days after being charged with ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance’ – simply for giving a speech. He has been part of some of the most influential activist groups of the last few years including Extinction […]

Mehdi Hasan is one of the most prominent political journalists in the US. He talks to Aaron Bastani about the challenges facing the world today: authoritarianism, the role of media in shaping public opinion, and the need for a more equitable society. His new book, “Win Every Argument” is out now.

The media is awash with allegations of censorship. The works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming have been combed through to rid them of offensive tropes and language. Who is this seemingly gratuitous raft of cultural editing in service of? A lot of the media will have you believe that it’s the ‘snowflake’. The younger […]

The management consultancy industry is worth around a trillion dollars, yet few people on the street could tell you what all that money is for. Much of it is spent by governments, with the UK leading the charge. A huge range of services are contracted out to these huge, opaque companies. And in the long […]

Britain is in the grip of a generation-defining housing crisis. Private renters are being forced more and more into living in accommodation of a lower and lower standard – that’s if they can find somewhere to live in the first place. To discuss the problem, and how it can be fixed, Aaron Bastani is joined […]

From covering mass shootings as US Correspondent for The Guardian to investigating QAnon for a year for the podcast ‘Finding Q’, Nicky Woolf has been plumbing the grimmer depths of the American psyche for a long time. He joins Ash to discuss the mysterious ‘Havana Syndrome’, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Making Nazis Afraid Again. You […]

With Charles’ coronation approaching, it’s time to scrutinise not just the man himself but the monarchy as an idea. Joining Aaron to explore all things royal – from how they fund their luxurious lifestyles to the ways they secretly exert political influence – is Graham Smith, CEO of Republic, a pressure group driven by a […]

One of the most powerful justifications for racism in the 20th century was eugenics. Based on pseudo-scientific certainties cherry-picked from the messy world of genetics and behaviour, belief in eugenics led to some of the most profound horrors humans have ever experienced. So why are so many aspects of race science coming back alive today? […]

Dating might seem a trivial subject in an era of rising inequality and climate crisis. But finding romantic love – or learning how to live without it – is a big part of all of our lives, and how that happens, from the rise of dating apps to the liberalisation of divorce, has been transformed […]

Peter Hitchens is something of an iconoclast. Among his colleagues on the right, the Mail on Sunday columnist stands out as a heterodox thinker – yet he’s perhaps one of the few who could be described as a genuine conservative. Aaron Bastani meets him to discuss his previous life as a Trotskyist and a Moscow […]

Ash is joined by Novara’s own Aaron Bastani, Moya Lothian-McLean, Michael Walker and James Butler to talk about what was bugging them in the year 2022. From landlordism to normativity and a nasty turn in identity politics and from the declining fortunes of Europe to the absolute state of the discourse, the Novara team summarises […]

Throughout his 30-year career, Billy Bragg has never shied away from politics. From playing benefit gigs for miners in the 1980s to clashing with the BNP in his hometown of Barking, he has always used his influence to help those who need it. Ash recently sat down with Billy to discuss his 2006 book, The […]

What is it about Twitter that turns us into such objectionable creatures? What has social media done to the language we use and the way we interact with each other? Ash Sarkar talks to Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine, about the state of social media: tweets, memes, grief trolling, outrage porn, duckface, Spidermen […]

New research shows our distant ancestors enjoyed a far more complex – and creative – existence than we had ever imagined. If humans have always experimented with ways of being, why are we told all the problems of our world are the result of inevitable progress? David Wengrow is an archaeologist and the co-author, with […]

Imagine you had a few million ill-gotten pounds, dollars or rubles. Where would you stash it? You’d need to make sure no one knew it was yours, or where you’d nabbed it from. It turns out that the best place in the world for these money-stashing services is the UK. Oligarchs from all over the […]

We’re told by the Conservatives and their acolytes in the media that the Labour Party is — and always has been — soft on immigration. Little could be further from the truth. Ash Sarkar meets Dr Maya Goodfellow to talk about New Labour’s inhumane immigration policies, the problem with the term ‘economic migrant’ and how […]

Chris Packham is a national treasure. A naturalist, photographer and author, he’s best known for bringing nature into our living rooms as host of The Really Wild Show, Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch. He’s also an environmental campaigner and an anti-hunting advocate who has been targeted by threats and arson for his views. Aaron Bastani talks […]

Eating is supposed to be fun, so why does food culture – from our table manners to the promise of “clean eating” – trigger so much anxiety? Ash Sarkar meets Ruby Tandoh, former Great British Bake-Off contestant and author of Cook As You Are, to talk about the new wave of food writing and her […]

In 2011, while working as a City trader, Gary Stevenson joined the ranks of the ultra-rich with a single bonus cheque. Not long after, he was named one of Citibank’s highest-performing traders worldwide. Stevenson made millions for his employer by betting on one thing: that inequality would worsen and living standards would fall. It made […]

On 2nd October, Brazil will be faced with a stark choice. The incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro, has overseen economic calamity and nearly 700,000 Covid deaths in his first term. His challenger, Lula Da Silva, is hoping to regain the presidency – just three years since being freed from prison. To discuss the state of Brazilian […]

Two years after resigning as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn catches up with Aaron Bastani to dissect Corbynism and its aftermath. On the table: the Islington North MP’s suspension from the party, the fallout from the anti-semitism crisis, his previous interactions with new Tory leader Liz Truss, and what he thinks of the royal family.

Three months after being signed off sick following a “sustained campaign of misogynistic abuse” from both her ex-husband and her local Labour party, Apsana Begum is returning to politics. In an exclusive interview with Novara Media, Britain’s first hijabi MP tells Rivkah Brown about escaping an abusive marriage, her suspension from the Labour party, and […]

On the eve of the Queen’s funeral, Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar look around at a nation in mourning to analyse the emotional and political impact of the death of a monarch. How did Elizabeth’s 70-year reign help to neutralise Britain’s colonial legacy? What do the UK’s grieving royalists look like to foreign media? And […]

It’s one of the few things that the late anarchist anthropologist David Graeber and tech billionaire Peter Thiel agreed on: the sci-fi future we were promised has not materialised. Where are the flying cars? Where are the teleportation machines? And why, instead, do we just have 15 different ride-hailing apps to choose from? In this […]

In the middle of a grave cost of living crisis, bosses at Royal Mail, BT and across corporate Britain are imposing pay rises for workers way below inflation. On Downstream, Aaron Bastani speaks to CWU General Secretary Dave Ward about corporate greed, the shadowy world of CEOs, the return of the working class and how […]

Since Bernie Sanders’ failed attempt to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, there has been a reinvigoration of the left in the USA. This uptick has also been visible in the media, and nowhere more so than with the rise of Hasan Piker – arguably the most influential political voice on livestreaming service Twitch. Aaron […]

In the 2022 Tower Hamlets local elections, something unprecedented happened. The borough elected a mayor previously banned from taking part in politics. That’s not all. His party, Aspire, not only took the council from Labour but gained more seats than Labour across the whole of England. At the centre of all of this was Lutfur […]

Over the last few centuries, the global spread of a vast array of different drugs has reshaped how we work, experience pleasure, fight wars, and explore our inner worlds. And from Richard Nixon’s ‘War on Drugs’ to the opium wars to the scuppering of the hippie movement, those drugs have been entangled with politics and […]

Each generation must encounter the Communist Manifesto anew, deciphering Marx and Engels’ text for their own era. So what gives this short book its enduring power? In his new book A Spectre, Haunting: On The Communist Manifesto, China Miéville explains how its various facets – being part political treatise, part gothic literature, and part spell to […]

Since the 1990s, decarbonisation has been the primary goal for many environmentalists. But there is another threat to life on Earth, one that could be just as dangerous as runaway climate change: the farming of animals for human consumption. In his new book Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet, George Monbiot warns that […]

Lea Ypi’s life is awash with instances that question what it means to be free. From growing up in communist Albania to teaching at the London School of Economics, her story is a window onto the complex connections between freedom and sovereignty, and between the personal and the political. Aaron Bastani speaks to Ypi on […]

The election of Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party was met with euphoria across the mainstream media. But despite winning the leadership with a huge majority, Starmer had only been involved in politics for five years – having previously worked as a barrister, a pro bono lawyer and director of public prosecutions – […]

Known for his steadfast support of Jeremy Corbyn whilst heading up the biggest private sector union in the country, Len McLuskey has a unique and intimate knowledge of both Labour Party politics and the organised labour movement. Aaron Bastani speaks to the most important trade unionist of his era on the publication of his memoir, […]