Novara Media

Novara Media

New Media for Different Politics

  • 55 minutes 38 seconds
    Novara FM: How Forensic Architecture Mapped the Gaza Genocide w/ Samaneh Moafi

    Forensic Architecture is a research agency that investigates state violence and environmental destruction.

    It reconstructs events that states worldwide wants obscured, from Israel to the UK and from the Mediterranean to Ukraine.

    In doing so, they have invented a whole new discipline of investigation.

    On Novara FM, FA’s Assistant Director of Research, Samaneh Moafi, tells Eleanor Penny about their new report A Cartography of Genocide on the ongoing Gaza Genocide.

    3 April 2025, 12:16 pm
  • 1 hour 37 minutes
    Downstream: This Much We Agree On: Britain Is In Decline w/ Peter Hitchens

    In 2024 the Conservative party suffered their worst defeat in two centuries. But while Labour struggles in office, the Tories are going nowhere fast. Meanwhile Britain shambles on without an economic model, or a wider vision for the future. How long can national decline continue? And when will things come to a head?

    Aaron Bastani speaks to author, and Mail on Sunday columnist, Peter Hitchens. They discuss – from different perspectives – a country in crisis, the legacy of Thatcherism, and the elite obsession with Britain remaining ‘important’. If only they gave up such illusions, Hitchens argues, then they could focus on the country’s happiness and prosperity.

    31 March 2025, 9:07 am
  • 1 hour 37 minutes
    ACFM Trip 50: Fifty Shades of Acid

    The gang present a milestone 50th Trip all about acid: a drug, a genre, a political concept, a mental tool and a thought corrosive. Looking back on six years of the podcast, Nadia, Keir and Jem decide if ‘acid’ is still a useful way of thinking about left-wing politics.

    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

    30 March 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 16 minutes
    Novara FM: Geoengineering is Coming Whether We Like it Or Not w/ Laurie Laybourn

    We’ve entered a new climate reality. The pace of the energy transition has picked up – and so have the impacts of climate change.

    But has there ever actually been an energy transition? Or do we just use more and more and more of everything?

    As climate change accelerates, feedback loops in the climate system will start to speed it up even further.

    All this is to say: we’re approaching the point when geoengineering will start to seem awfully tempting.

    Richard Hames spoke to Laurie Laybourn, executive director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, about what we do when that temptation arises.

    27 March 2025, 5:59 pm
  • 2 hours 25 minutes
    Downstream: The British Military is Actively Involved in the Gaza Genocide w/ Matt Kennard

    Investigative journalist Matt Kennard joins Aaron Bastani to discuss Britain’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians, following a series revelations published in Declassified UK.

    In an extensive conversation about the shifting sands of global security, the author of The Racket also discusses the elimination of USAID, America’s U-turn on Russia, and the rearmament of Europe.

    Downstream IRL: Israeli historian Ilan Pappé will join Aaron Bastani for a LIVE conversation at EartH in East London on 22 April. Tickets are available now on Dice.

    Help us build people-powered media and set up a donation for as little as £1 a month: novara.media/support

    24 March 2025, 11:08 am
  • 1 hour 6 minutes
    Novara FM: Is This What Neofeudalism Looks Like? w/ Jodi Dean

    After capitalism comes communism, according to Marxist doctrine. But in the meantime, what should we call our increasingly unequal system? Political theorist Jodi Dean posits ‘neofeudalism’ as the best way to describe our growing society of serfs and servants in her new book, Capital’s Grave.

    She talks to Eleanor Penny about a vision of class struggle led by the ‘servant vanguard’.

    Comments, corrections, suggestions? fm@novaramedia.com

    20 March 2025, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 33 minutes
    Downstream: We Have to Break Up With The USA w/ Angus Hanton

    The ‘special relationship’ is central to how Britain conducts its foreign policy and perceives itself as a country. The argument goes: proximity to Washington allows London to maintain a semblance of its former prestige and power. The media and political class can’t get enough of it.

    But what if Britain’s relationship to the United States was, in fact, deeply damaging to its interests – and the living standards of its citizens? What if, rather than a partner, Britain was instead a vassal of the American empire? What if – despite the herd thinking of the establishment – Britain got remarkably little in return?

    These arguments aren’t new, indeed they’ve been around since the Second World War, but as the Trump presidency explicitly embraces a different kind of geopolitics – centred around calculation and interest, rather than appealing to values – it’s worth asking: what precisely does the United Kingdom get from its relationship with the world’s greatest power? And is it time to try something different?

    And if Britain is losing out in its relationship with America what does that look like? Is it purely economic, or has it compromised our political system too? Does Britain even have a military capable of acting without the consent of the White House?

    On this episode of Downstream, Aaron Bastani is joined for the second time by Angus Hanton, businessman and author of ‘Vassal State: How America Runs Britain’.

    17 March 2025, 10:38 am
  • 1 hour 14 minutes
    Novara FM: Rojava After Assad: Where Next for the Kurdish Struggle? w/ Elif Sarican

    In the wake of Assad’s regime collapse and the call for the Kurdish Worker’s Party to disband, Elif Sarican talks to Richard Hames about how to make sense of this new world, and whether or not the Kurdish revolution in Rojava can survive.

    Comments, corrections, suggestions? fm@novaramedia.com

    13 March 2025, 6:09 pm
  • 1 hour 17 minutes
    Novara FM: The Absurdity of Rearmament w/ Khem Rogaly

    The US is no longer supporting Ukraine, and in response, the UK and Europe are rearming. Germany is taking off its hallowed ‘debt brake’ to allow it, while Keir Starmer is talking tough about the capabilities of the British armed forces.

    In a world still dominated by the American military, what does it matter? And what could we do instead?

    Khem Rogaly, a senior research fellow at Common Wealth, has proposed a ‘Lucas Plan for the 21st Century’ that would put the fight against climate change, and not war, at the centre of European economic growth.

    Comments, corrections, suggestions? fm@novaramedia.com

    11 March 2025, 12:42 pm
  • 1 hour 29 minutes
    Downstream: Why Don’t We Have Any Hope? w/ Jonathan White

    When we talk about politics – whether it’s the climate, the economy or constitutional reform – the thing that’s at stake is an idea of ‘the future’. These days, the idea of imminent societal or ecological breakdown necessarily means adopting the framing of the present as being a ‘state of emergency’. This is an obvious way for political actors to attempt to generate consensus – but does this ostensibly well-intentioned way of viewing the future actually narrow political discourse in favour of far-right and authoritarian politicians?

    To discuss this, Aaron is joined by Jonathan White, Deputy Head of the European Institute and Professor in Politics at the LSE and author of In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea.

    11 March 2025, 11:31 am
  • 1 hour 10 minutes
    ACFM Microdose: Making Art in a World on Fire w/ Amber Massie-Blomfield
    What’s the point of the arts when the world is on fire? To follow the pipeline from creativity to activism and back again, Nadia Idle is joined by Amber Massie-Blomfield, former chief of theatre company Complicité and the author of Acts of Resistance: The Power of Art to Create Better World. They discuss Dan Edelstyn […]
    9 March 2025, 8:00 am
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