Novara Media

Through the 1990s and the 2000s, the West told itself a story: let China get rich, and it’ll become like us. But then China got rich – and it become less and less like the West.

Kaiser Kuo – host of the Sinica Podcast, former Baidu executive, and founding guitarist of China’s first heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty – thinks we need to reckon with this fact: that China has not only now caught up, but is making its own path in modernity.

China has replaced liberal democracy with a strange alloy of Confucianism, Leninism, technocracy, state capita...

In Brighton, for a special recording of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Naomi Klein, and organiser, writer and co-founder of the Debt Collective, Astra Taylor. They gathered to discuss their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World.

An apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is gathering momentum. They aren’t just exploiting collapse, they’re provoking and accelerating it, whilst protecting themselves from the fallout. The world’s fate is increasingly in the hands of men who are ambivalent about its survival and betting money...

No one is disputed like Mao. Was he a mass murderer, a Communist hero, a charlatan, or a great poet? The saviour of the peasants, or the man who extracted from them all that he could?

Mao’s biography is a nest of contradictions. He led the largest revolution in world history, then presided over its largest famine – and even then, life expectancy rose 20 years over the course of his rule. He launched rebellions – against a government he already controlled. He purged his enemies and friends alike.

Some 50 years after his death, he remains a central...

Three years ago, just weeks after the genocide began, writer Omar El Akkad posted a tweet, attached to some footage showing the extent of the ruin that Israel had already visited on Gaza. The compelling thought, crystallised in that viral tweet, would go on to become the name of his bestselling book: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. 

Steven Methven, editor of Novara Live, steps in for Aaron Bastani while he is on parental leave. He sat down with Omar to try to make sense of three years of horror. 

Why did Om...

For a century, China underwent a series of invasions, revolutions and counter-revolutions. In China, it’s known as the Century of Humiliation.

It was a time of immense upheavals: from the Opium Wars of 1839, through the Taiping Rebellion, the Xinhai Republican Revolution, a Civil War, an invasion by the Japanese which merged into the Second World War; the resumption of the Civil War and, eventually coming to an end with the Communist Revolution of 1949.

Each one transformed the country more comprehensively than seemed possible beforehand.

Rebecca Karl is the author of China’s Revo...

This week marked three years since the Hamas attack of October 7th, and the beginning of the Israeli state’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people. In that time, Western leaders from Joe Biden and Donald Trump to Keir Starmer and now Andy Burnham have refused to call the genocide what it is, despite the consensus of genocide scholars. One outlier among Western leaders during this period has been Humza Yousaf.

The former first minister of Scotland, and first Muslim leader of a Western nation, has written a book about his time in government, ‘Under Fire: My Fami...

Huawei makes the pipes and cables that power the Chinese internet. Its global reach has made China into a superpower.

Huawei is often accused of spying for China. But how was the US so sure that Huawei’s technology could be used for spying? Because the US had already hacked Huawei’s technology and were using it to spy themselves.

That’s not even the strangest episode in the company’s history. Its installations in Iraq were bombed by the UK and US before 9/11. In 2018, its infrastructure allegedly pinged back the secrets of the Africa Union to...

Are we in the era of trauma Top Trumps? ‘Lived Experience’ has become a byword for standpoint authority and progressive politics. It has allowed people from marginalised groups to speak and be heard, and forced us to confront how power plays out in interpersonal dynamics. But it has also become a way for people to brand themselves online, and excuse antisocial or even downright nasty behaviours. Has ‘lived experience’ helped the left, or turned us into self-obsessed therapy-speakers, incapable of communicating with the majority of people?

At the latest Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Catherine Liu – cu...

Welcome to Series 2 of Do Your Own Research. Until the end of the year, I will be focusing on the most important and interesting country in the world: China.

We’re starting with Tianyu Fang, an editor of Chaoyang Trap, a newsletter all about the Chinese internet.

We’re starting with the internet because that’s so much of what we see of China: fragments of life online. What’s the reality behind them, and how do we square these beguiling, details with the vast story of China’s rise?

What is happening online in...

The effect of pornography on the people who consume it is often moralised about, generally due to its influence over the nascent sexuality of young men. But the business model, technological innovations and broader, parasexual, cultural effects go crucially underexamined.

This week’s guest, investigative reporter for the Financial Times, Patricia Nilsson, has written a new book unearthing exactly the ways in which these underexamined forces emerged and how they continue to exert influence on society.

She spoke to Ash about pioneering camgirl entrepreneurs, the sado-masochistic-inflected rise of Andrew Tate, and how algorithms have entered th...

Following their recent Trip episode on Situationism, the gang offer a close reading of The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, first published in France in 1967. Nadia, Jem and Keir explore the layered references and subversions throughout Debord’s extremely quotable aphorisms, focusing on the first three chapters of the book.

Find a PDF of the book at Libcom.org

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When and why did liberal democracy stop working for the many? On Downstream this week is Daron Acemoglu, joint recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, whose 2012 book Why Nations Fail has sold over a million copies.

He talks to Aaron Bastani about his data-packed new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy?, which seeks to diagnose and remedy democracy before it’s too late. They talk about the transition to a post-industrial economy, the loss of community, how progressive politics became overrun by middle-class interests, and how AI further threatens our capacity to self-govern and lead fl...

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 suscep...

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.

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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...

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...

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 a...

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!, w...

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.

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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 dis...

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.

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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 medi...

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...

Andy Burnham has said he is “on a mission” to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs), but has stopped short of pledging a concrete target.

Plus: The number of millionaires in Britain is falling, Reform UK appears to be having a complete meltdown, 

With Aaron Bastani & Michael Walker.

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 o...

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 posi...

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 Pe...

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 Ga...

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.

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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...

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 Louisi...

* Last call for our show at Crossed Wires in Sheffield this Saturday, 4th July! Final tickets: https://crossedwires.live *

A brush with an old enemy brings up big questions about letting go and moving on. What does forgiveness really mean in a secular society? Is punishment ever the answer? Plus: advice for a special one who fears they’ve outgrown their 15-year relationship.

Send us your dilemmas: [email protected]
Music by Matt Huxley.

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.

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.

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A weird-left look at the magical properties of resilience, from the colonial legacy of the stiff upper lip to contemporary narratives of trauma and victimhood.

Nadia, Keir and Jem wonder whether humans and animals can flourish in the ruins of capitalism, and what a left politics of resilience could look like in an era of constant economic and climate shocks.

No tunes in this show, but plenty of ideas from Catherine Liu, Sheryl Sandberg, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and more.

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Daniel Levy is a British-Israeli analyst, commentator, and former Israeli government negotiator whose biography reads like a map of the peace process’s rise and fall.

Ash Sarkar sat down with him as a new Iran deal is announced, with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz set to reopen and the US-Iran ceasefire extended for 60 days.

In this conversation, Daniel picks apart what these peace negotiations are really about. What does Israel really want? Who blinked first, the US or Iran? And how does a ceasefire announcement from the Oval Office differ fundamentally from long an...

Secret backrooms where deals are done in private: the realm of conspiracy theories? Or an increasingly large part of capitalism?

Since the financial crisis, some of the big winners have been private equity firms. They’ve snapped up bargains on everything from high street brands, to care homes and nurseries – and maybe even the house you own.

Hettie O’Brien is a journalist for The Guardian and the author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself.

She spoke to Richard Hames about private equity’s secret influence over the ways we a...

The war on terror ended in 2021 with a catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the consequences of that conflict continue to play out both overseas and at home.

Aaron Bastani sat down with investigative journalist Matt Kennard, founder of Declassified UK, to talk about the status of the American empire, Trump’s war-hungry administration, and how the US government has been captured by Netanyahu.

Matt’s new book is Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members and Criminals.

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The so-called ceasefire in Gaza has not ended the genocide.

The bombing runs may be quieter, but the bulldozers roar on. Israel is tearing up homes, orchards, schools and hospitals, then flattening the rubble to erase the memory that Palestinian life was ever there.

To understand this architecture of death, Richard Hames spoke to Eyal Weizman, author of Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide and founder of Forensic Architecture. His team builds meticulous 3D reconstructions from the scattered traces of an event – phone footage, survivor testimony, documented shrapnel – to prove what really happened, even when states want it...

It has been a year since Aaron Bastani first met with AI investigative journalist Karen Hao, to discuss her book Empire of AI.  A year is a long time, in the fastest growing sector on the planet. To bring us up to date, Aaron and Karen sat down again to discuss the major shifts in the empire – and their impacts on us all. 

Billions of people now use, AI as it has become more integrated into our lives, from chatbots, Google searches, predictive text, and beyond. At the same time, there has been a groundswell of fear and...