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Latest Episodes:

Downstream: British Politics Is About to Collapse w/ James Meadway May 04, 2026

Show notes

The two-party system has defined British politics for centuries, but the status quo is under attack from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and an insurgent Green party – both looking to clean up in the local elections on 7 May.

This week Aaron Bastani speaks to economist James Meadway about the disruptive new progressive party on the block. Meadway was an economic advisor to John McDonnell during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour, and is now chief economist of Verdant, a new think tank set up to craft the Green party’s strategy for 2029.

But who are the Greens? What is their vision for Britain? How can they build a broad coalition of voters, big enough to win elections? And what mistakes can Zack Polanski learn from the Corbyn era?

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Do Your Own Research: How The Far Right Captured British Politics w/ Daniel Trilling May 02, 2026

Show notes

A decade and a half ago, the British far right was a fringe concern. But since then, the ruling party – whether it be The Conservatives or Labour – has played into their hands over and over again. Whether through appeasement or ineptitude, more than a decade of rightward drift has put Reform within reach of Downing Street.

Can anyone stop them? Is anyone actually in control? Or are the emotional forces that the far right have unleashed in the UK now too powerful for them to rein in?

Daniel Trilling is the author of If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. He argues that to understand the ever-worsening political state of Britain, we have to look not just to the far right themselves, but to the systems of establishment power that have enabled them.

Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible.

Music by Iglooghost.

Downstream: The Truth About Smartphones’ Dirty Supply Chain w/ Nicholas Niarchos Apr 27, 2026

Show notes

The 21st century runs on batteries: from phones and laptops to electric vehicles, drones and clean energy. Embedded in these batteries are rare earth minerals, drawn from a brutal supply chain that begins in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The race to electrify the global energy system is underway, but most people know almost nothing about how the necessary batteries are made – even those of us with green politics.

Aaron Bastani finds out more with Nicholas Niarchos, author of The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth.

Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

Do Your Own Research: You Can’t Have Billionaires and Democracy. Ancient Collapse Proves It. w/ Luke Kemp Apr 25, 2026

Show notes

It’s the question that will come to define our lives: is our society going to collapse? But the field of collapse research is fragmented, chaotic, and often plain deranged. Who can you trust?

Luke Kemp is the author of Goliath’s Curse and a research affiliate at the Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He’s also a political radical.

He told Richard Hames about how close we are to the same tipping point that brought down every other empire in history, why states are criminal gangs in disguise, and why Rome was the Isis of its day.

Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible.

Music by Iglooghost.

Downstream: Europe’s Ancient Myths, Current Crises & Future Possibilities w/ Roderick Beaton Apr 20, 2026

Show notes

As the American empire teeters, China gains dominance, and war spreads across Eastern Europe and West Asia, questions arise as to Europe’s place in this rapidly changing world order. On Downstream this week, Ash Sarkar speaks to Roderick Beaton, former Koraes Professor of History at King’s College London, about his latest book Europe: A New History.

How did the boundaries between Europe and Asia come to be drawn in the first place? How were immigration and borders managed by the ancients in Greece and Rome? How do the stories we tell about our collective history in Europe shape contemporary political thought? And in an age of mass migration, who gets to be European today – and why?

Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

The Human Cost of Britain’s Dark Money Industry w/ Peter Geoghegan & Stephanie Brobbey Apr 14, 2026

Show notes

To accompany our podcast series, Death in Westminster, hosts Kojo Koram and Dalia Gebrial met with investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan and former private wealth lawyer Stephanie Brobbey at EartH in Hackney last month.

Digging into the dark money that flows through Westminster, Kojo and Dalia find out what made Stephanie quit her job hiding rich people’s assets, why Peter couldn’t find anyone to publish his story about Labour corruption, and what normal people can do to challenge the global system of wealth extraction.

Listen to Death in Westminster, hosted by Dalia and Kojo Koram, in the Novara Media podcast feed. Follow Peter’s work through the Democracy For Sale newsletter.

Downstream: The Secrets of the Chinese Internet w/ Yi-Ling Liu Apr 13, 2026

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In China in the 1990s, the arrival of the internet was swiftly met with the ‘great firewall’: a complex matrix of censorship, surveillance and state control. Since then there have been two internets: the World Wide Web, and the Chinese internet.

Aaron Bastani talks to China analyst Yi-Ling Liu about the cultures and innovations that have evolved in this separate digital ecosphere. How have feminist and LGBTQ+ movements manifested through the Chinese internet? How has the Chinese Communist Party negotiated the promise and threat of the internet, and now AI? And why is the West suddenly so obsessed with China?

Yi-Ling Liu’s book is The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet.

ACFM Trip 59: Hobbies Apr 12, 2026

Show notes

After mulling over the problem of boredom in the last Trip episode, the ACFM gang return with a solution: hobbies.

In this episode Nadia, Jem and Keir wonder why hobbies tend to mutate into jobs, which hobbies are appropriate for commoners, whether men and women approach their hobbies differently, and why having a hobby is often framed as uncool.

It’s a weird-left spin on private pastimes with ideas from Engels and Gary Cross and music from Television Personalities and Shonen Knife.

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’.

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Do Your Own Research: The Iran War Will Collapse the American Empire w/ Alfred McCoy Apr 11, 2026

Show notes

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For fifty years, Alfred McCoy has exposed covert operations. In 1972 he uncovered the CIA and French intelligence’s complicity with the heroin trade during the Vietnam War – research that the CIA tried to suppress.

He’s the author of many books, most recently Cold War on Five Continents, which gives a comprehensive account of late 20th century geopolitics, decolonisation, and covert operations.

But now he’s warning of a New Cold War. Is it over for the US empire?

He talked to Richard Hames about the strange parallels between the 1956 Suez Crisis – a turning point in global British influence – and the 2026 war on Iran and the new Chinese World Order.

Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make life possible.

Music by Iglooghost.

Downstream: Is Liberalism Finally Waking Up to the Crises it has Caused? w/ Adrian Wooldridge Apr 06, 2026

Show notes

Liberalism, in one form or another, has been the pervading political ideology of the past 200 years. It has become so pervasive, as an ideology, that it lays claim to the middle ground and common sense itself. But liberalism is a set of dogmas and doctrines like any other political ideology, and unfathomable horrors as well as huge advances have been made in its name.

Today on Downstream, the ideas we call liberal or centrist are up for scrutiny, as Aaron Bastani interviews Adrian Wooldridge. Wooldridge is a liberal insider, having been a journalist at the Economist magazine for thirty years. His new book, Centrists of the World Unite! The Lost Genius of Liberalism is an account of his own sense that liberalism in 2026 is in a state of crisis. It must reinvent itself, he argues, or die.

So what exactly is liberalism, where did it come from, and how can we characterise it today? What was the historical relationship between liberalism and slavery? Why are liberals always so reluctant to acknowledge this aspect of their history? In times of crisis, do liberals always defect to the fascist far-right? And what must centrists do today, if they want their ideas to organise the 21st century?

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