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Downstream: Ex-Accountant Whistleblower: The System Is About to Break w/ Richard Murphy Nov 08, 2026

Show notes

In 2007, Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant of 42 years, accurately foresaw the global financial crisis. Today, in 2026, he believes we are heading for an even greater crash. And if the AI bubble bursting coincides with escalating war in West Asia, and the impacts of climate change turbocharged by El Niño, he warns the results could be ‘cataclysmic’.

On Downstream this week, Aaron Bastani sits down with the rogue accountant, tax justice campaigner, university professor and financial whistleblower, to discuss the coming polycrisis.

Will the AI bubble bursting be more like the dot com bubble or the 2008 crash? Why are governments including Britain’s telling us to stock up on water and food supplies? And are the Treasury’s claims that there are limits to spending based in truth, or just an excuse for cowardly leadership?

Tickets for the next Downstream IRL at EartH Hackney with Ash Sarkar and Owen Jones on November 16th are available here: https://dice.fm/event/g5v25a-novara-medias-downstream-irl-the-fall-of-the-west-16th-nov-earth-london-tickets?lng=en-US

Do Your Own Research: Inside China’s Biotech Revolution w/ Ruby Wang Nov 07, 2026

Show notes

In the Mao era, ‘barefoot doctors’ got just a few months of training before being sent out to straighten broken bones and administer vaccines.

Now China’s researchers make world-class cancer drugs, cheap surgical robots and cutting edge brain-computer interfaces. Its doctors make AI-powered avatars of themselves to deal with ever more patients.

But China is growing old before it grows rich. Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular problems are ballooning. And its aging crisis is coming on faster because of the legacy of its one-child policy. How will China adapt?

Ruby Wang worked on the NHS Covid frontline before becoming Head of Health at the British Embassy in Beijing. And now she’s written The China Cure: The Rise of Biotech, AI Medicine and a Global Health Superpower.

She tells Richard Hames how China got from barefoot doctors to high-tech hospitals, what it learned from Covid, and what the NHS could learn from China.

Explore the map.

0:00 Intro
02:48 China’s Medical Transformation
9:31 China’s Zero-Covid Response and the Barefoot Doctors
22:32 Bone Glue, Artemisinin and Traditional Chinese Medicine
34:42 Covid QR Codes vs UK Track and Trace, and AI in Chinese Healthcare
45:16 NHS vs China: Digital Health Records and Drug Development
55:40 Chinese Surgical Robots and Brain-Computer Interfaces
1:06:50 China’s Ageing Population, Falling Birth Rate and Who Pays for Healthcare

Downstream: See My Movies Then Go On Strike w/ Boots Riley Nov 01, 2026

Show notes

You’ve probably heard of Boots Riley’s work – Sorry To Bother You starring LaKeith Stanfield was a surprise hit, and his series I’m A Virgo got picked up by Amazon Prime. But the Oakland-raised rapper-turned-director doesn’t just want you to leave the cinema having had a good time: he wants you to start a revolution. His new film I Love Boosters – starring the incredibly charming Keke Palmer – is about three women who shoplift from high end boutiques, and sell the clothes at a cut price in the hood. But it wouldn’t be a Boots Riley film if it stopped there. What starts as a paean to shoplifters turns into a story of working class shop floor organisation – and international communist action. Is all art propaganda? Is shoplifting a revolutionary act? What role does style play in the revolution? And what’s it like being the most high profile communist in Hollywood, in Trump’s America? Spoilers Warning: Information about the plot is disclosed at 17:50 – 19:20, 26:40 – 27:50, and 54:10 – 54:50. 00:00 Introduction 00:53 What’s It Like Being a Communist in Hollywood? 02:24 The Contradictions of Having Radical Politics Under Capitalism 03:23 “Suits for Rage”: The Contradictions We All Embody 08:27 How Boots Riley Became Communist 09:03 Exposing Injustice Isn’t Enough: Action is Needed 11:24 What Actually Makes People Join Movements? 13:08 Hollywood’s Problem With Radical Politics 20:10 On Craft, Creativity and Alienation 23:08 Boots Riley’s Superhero Origin Story 31:00 General Strike Now! 35:02 Every Film Is Political 42:28 Is the Right Better at Propaganda? 48:05 How the Cops Manufactured a Shoplifting Panic 53:08 It’s All Propaganda Support our work Buy Novara Media merch

ACFM Trip 64: Confidence Nov 01, 2026

Show notes

Ever felt like an imposter? Jem, Nadia and Keir offer a weird-left analysis of confidence – from market dynamics and private school to the power of positive thinking – with ideas from Barbara Ehrenreich, Dale Carnegie and Foucault.

For the musical version of this episode – featuring Wiley, Dolly Parton and Gloria Gaynor – head to our SoundCloud:

Find the books mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm
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Become a Novara Media supporter: https://novara.media/support

Do Your Own Research: How China Defied The End of History w/ Kaiser Kuo Oct 31, 2026

Show notes

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 capitalism and markets – and that combination is outperforming the West. What liberals assumed was the triumphant end of history might turn out to have been a historical cul-de-sac.

Kaiser and Richard Hames talk Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington, Wang Huning and the late Qing Dynasty, solar panels and performance legitimacy, and discuss what happens when the future stops looking Western.

Explore the map of everything in the world that has ever mattered.

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00:00 Intro
03:35 Is Chinese Tech The Best?
10:42 The Great Reckoning: Why the West Must Rethink China
21:56 Confucianism, Leninism and Technocracy
31:03 Confucianism and Modern China
41:44 Can China’s State Control Capitalism?
52:04 Many Kinds of Modernity: China as a Model and China Shock 2.0
1:02:53 Green Energy, Industrial Policy and US-China Convergence
1:16:20 Fukuyama, Huntington and Wang Huning: Visions of the Future

Downstream: The New Right Is Obsessed With AI, Israel & the Apocalypse w/ Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

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 on the end.

Already, anger at the building of data centres is cutting across left and right, in a way that climate politics rarely has – but how do we make sure that anger is heard? How do we separate necessary alarm from fatalism? And what can we prepare for the impending AI crash?

End Times Fascism (2026) by Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor: https://shop.novaramedia.com/products/end-times-fascism

Do Your Own Research: The Mao Era – Catastrophe or Necessity? w/ Rebecca Karl Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

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 figure in Chinese politics. The Communist Party of China posthumously declared him to be 70% right and 30% wrong, but his face still hangs over Tiananmen Square.

In this second episode on China’s history, Rebecca Karl – author of China’s Revolutions in the Modern World – returns to tell Richard Hames about the Mao era, with all its promises, contradictions and catastrophes.

Watch the previous episode with Rebecca, on China’s century of revolutions.

Explore the map we’re making throughout this series of DYOR, of all the people, events and ideas of the Mao era.

00:00 Intro
4:00 Who Was Mao?
10:52 The 1950s: Land Reform & Early Socialism
24:27 Gender, Class Divides & Welfare
38:37 The Hundred Flowers Campaign Explained
50:15 Famine & The Great Leap Forward
1:03:09 Was the Famine the End of Socialism? Cold War & the Third Front
1:15:02 The Cultural Revolution Explained
1:28:57 How the Cultural Revolution Ended
1:37:30 Jiang Qing, the Gang of Four & Deng Xiaoping’s Return
1:47:49 Mao’s Legacy: Is China Socialist Today?

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Downstream: Gaza Has Exposed the Hypocrisy of the West w/ Omar El Akkad Oct 18, 2026

Show notes

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 Omar write his book focusing on the West’s role in the violence, rather than centring Palestine? What would meaningful accountability and justice for Palestinians look like? How does he think Hamas will be remembered? And has he found any source of hope amid the events he describes?

Do Your Own Research: 150 Years of Constant Revolution w/ Rebecca Karl Oct 17, 2026

Show notes

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 Revolutions in the Modern World, which tells us not only what happened, but how its participants tried to make sense of it all, and why that still matters for understanding China now – after all, the Chinese Communist Party haven’t forgotten any of it.

She joined Richard Hames to discuss the century that destroyed imperial China and set the stage for the largest revolution in history.

There is much more to explore on the map we’re making for this series, which shows all the people, ideas and event that define China’s history, present, and future. Get it here.

Support our work: novaramedia.com/support

0:00 Intro

4:37 Opium Wars

12:58 The Man Who Claimed to Be Jesus’s Brother

21:30 The Taiping Rebellion

30:16 1911 Revolution

42:47 The May Fourth Movement

52:10 How the Chinese Communist Party Began

1:01:38 Shanghai Massacre, Mao and the Long March

1:13:22 Japanese Invasion and World War II in China

1:24:30 Chinese Civil War and the 1949 Revolution

Downstream: Former Scottish Leader: How My Family Escaped Gaza & Why I Can’t Forgive Starmer w/ Humza Yousaf Oct 11, 2026

Show notes

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 Family’s Escape from Gaza and the Cost of Leadership’. On Downstream this week, Aaron Bastani sat down with him to hear first-hand what it was like governing Scotland, while his family were trapped in Gaza.

How did he and his family manage the first few days and weeks of the genocide, while balancing his responsibilities as Scotland’s leader? What kind of pressures did he face internally, and externally, to support Israel? How did he make decisions in government, and how did he take the decision to stand down? What does good leadership require? And what does he think about the fate of the union, and the direction of travel in Britain today?

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