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Death in Westminster: 1. The Station Mar 10, 2026

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New four-part podcast. A homeless man dies in Westminster surrounded by vast wealth and empty homes. His death sparks a disturbing investigation into how secrecy and evasion have become normalised in the heart of British power.

Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.

Full credits and information: https://novara.media/westminster
Produced by Planet B Productions and distributed by Novara Media.

Downstream: We Are Witnessing the Return of Empires & the End of Nations w/ Rana Dasgupta Mar 09, 2026

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Nearly all of us on Earth live within a ‘nation-state’. Nation-states are an invisible and seemingly inevitable and eternal part of the infrastructure that forms our society: the water we swim in. Rarely do we pause to consider how this global system of nation-states came into being, and what might replace it after its gone. But as the United States wages a war of aggression on Iran, in a move that will drive up oil prices and the cost of living for ordinary citizens all over the world, the question presents itself anew: who do nation-states serve; what are they for?

On Downstream this week is the author and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose latest book, After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order, tackles these questions head-on. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, they discuss: What is a nation-state? How did they come to replace the role of religion in the liberal era? Do states need their citizens to have rights? What are the most salient challenges to the nation-state today? And were the gains in workers’ rights of the last century a sign that progress and democracy will triumph in the end, or something more like a historical blip?

ACFM Microdose: The Green Party Mar 08, 2026

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[Audio error updated! Please refresh or re-download if correct episode isn’t playing.] Have the Greens got what it takes to become the main political vehicle of the radical left?

Following their Trip episode on Ecology, the ACFM crew take a closer look at Zack Polanski’s party as it nudges past Labour in the polls.

From the ’60s dream of ‘steady state economics’ to the anarcho-green convergence of ’90s rave culture, the Green tendency is mapped out by Nadia, Jem and Keir, with ideas from Playboy, Zack Goldsmith, David Icke and some sensible people too.

Follow our Spotify playlist of all the music discussed on ACFM and subscribe to the ACFM mailing list to get weirder and leftier.

Music by Matt Huxley.

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Do Your Own Research: The Israel-ification of the US Military w/ Susannah Glickman Mar 07, 2026

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The US military is changing shape: it’s increasingly high-tech, intelligence led, and focused on assassinations. In short, the Israeli model.

And the changing shape of war means changing flows of money and power. The primes, which have dominated the military industrial for decades, now face competition from Silicon Valley companies like Palantir and Anduril.

But does their tech actually work? Or does it just drag the US into wars it doesn’t even know why it’s fighting?

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

Music by Iglooghost.

Downstream: The Next Shocks Will Hit Wealthy Countries Hardest. Here’s Why w/ John Rapley Mar 02, 2026

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The notion that the Global South is affected ‘first and worst’ by global shocks they didn’t cause, namely climate change, is one of the cornerstones of leftist thought. But what if it’s not entirely true? What if, contrary to this tenet, it’s wealthy Western nations who have over-developed and lost their resilience in the process?

This is the argument made by John Rapley in his latest book ‘Icarus Economics’.

In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Rapley discusses how the West’s growth has reached certain limits, most notably those imposed by the natural world in which we are all embedded. Has a focus on the wrong kind of growth in the West reduced resilience to shocks from the natural world? Are the majority of us already in a recession, despite what GDP figures tell us? And what can the Global North learn from the Global South?

Do Your Own Research: Seed Oils, the CIA, and the Metabolic Shitshow w/ Jason Moore Feb 28, 2026

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Cheap food holds capitalism together. But to get it, we’ve had to cheapen almost everything on the planet: the work of women, nature and colonies.

We’ve made strange new ecologies all over the world, and now we’re living in the metabolic sh*tshow.

How will the ruling class keep control?

On this week’s Do Your Own Research, Jason Moore tells Richard Hames why the end of cheap nature means the rise of the security state.

Music by Iglooghost

Downstream: How the Democrats Abandoned Working People w/ Eric Schlosser Feb 23, 2026

Show notes

In 2001, Eric Schlosser published Fast Food Nation: an investigation into the toxic depths of America’s food industry. Twenty five years later, the book remains an urgent intervention, as much for what it says about workers’ rights as for our agricultural systems and dietary health.

On Downstream this week, Ash Sarkar talks to Eric Schlosser about what’s changed since 2001, and what remains unreformed. How have we developed one food system for the rich and another for everyone else? Could the food industry operate – and America eat – without migrant workers? And did Eric foresee that marijuana edibles would become the new fast food?

ACFM Trip 57: Ecology Feb 22, 2026

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Are humans distinct from nature? Are there natural limits to inequality? Can you have action without effort? Do bacteria have agency?

Jem, Nadia and Keir find themselves dwarfed by the concept of ecology in this planetary-scale episode, which touches on cybernetics, systems thinking, ecofeminism and actor-network theory. Their ACFM guide to ecological thinking includes ideas from Rachel Carson, Peter Kropotkin and Donna Haraway, plus music from Joni Mitchell, Brian Eno and Marvin Gaye.

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

Do Your Own Research: Megafarms and Megafamines: Secrets of the Global Food System w/ Charles C. Mann Feb 16, 2026

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There’s nothing in the world more important than the food system. The twentieth century was scarred by enormous famines – and, like the one in Gaza, they are still deliberately engineered. But since the 1970s, the absolute number of deaths from famine have dropped by over 90%.

On a global scale, we now make so much food that farmers will sometimes destroy it just to keep the prices high.

How is there so much food? And, amid all these calories, how are so many people still malnourished? Why is it suddenly all so expensive? And is it all about to come crashing down?

Charles C. Mann tells Richard Hames about the historical power of bird shit, the strange reason Indian scientists put wheat in a nuclear reactor, and how the genius who made modern farming possible also invented the gas that was used to murder millions in the Holocaust.

Music by Iglooghost

Downstream: Mandelson & the Perverted Fantasies of New Labour Liberalism w/ Maurice Glasman Feb 16, 2026

Show notes

Just a week ago, the architect of Starmer’s rise to power, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over his connections to Peter Mandelson, after further proof of Mandelson’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein emerged in the newest batch of files released by the US Department of Justice.

According to this week’s guest, this scandal isn’t an anomaly, but an inevitable outgrowth of the New Labour politics that have shaped Britain since Tony Blair took office in 1994.

Maurice Glasman is a Labour peer and founder of Blue Labour, a campaign group that unites culturally conservative values with left-wing economic policies. He sat down with Ash to talk about meeting Steve Bannon, Tottenham Hotspur, and what Marx got wrong.

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