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Downstream: This Much We Agree On: Britain Is In Decline w/ Peter Hitchens Mar 31, 2025

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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.

ACFM Trip 50: Fifty Shades of Acid Mar 30, 2025

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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.

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Novara FM: Geoengineering is Coming Whether We Like it Or Not w/ Laurie Laybourn Mar 27, 2025

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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.

Downstream: The British Military is Actively Involved in the Gaza Genocide w/ Matt Kennard Mar 24, 2025

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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.

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Novara FM: Is This What Neofeudalism Looks Like? w/ Jodi Dean Mar 20, 2025

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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

Downstream: We Have to Break Up With The USA w/ Angus Hanton Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

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’.

Novara FM: Rojava After Assad: Where Next for the Kurdish Struggle? w/ Elif Sarican Mar 13, 2025

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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

Novara FM: The Absurdity of Rearmament w/ Khem Rogaly Mar 11, 2025

Show notes

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

Downstream: Why Don’t We Have Any Hope? w/ Jonathan White Mar 11, 2025

Show notes

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.

ACFM Microdose: Making Art in a World on Fire w/ Amber Massie-Blomfield Mar 09, 2025

Show notes

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 and Hilary Powell’s Power Station, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, the Gaza Free Circus, Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, Blood of the Condor (1969), the writer Edouard Louis, Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ and the artist-activist Jay Jordan.

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