Novara Media

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Downstream: The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse Forever w/ Cory Doctorow Dec 08, 2025

Show notes

Did you know that the standard of Google searches has actually gotten worse over recent years? Once you think about it, it makes sense. Highly effective search means fewer searches overall. And fewer searches means less ad revenue. The financial basis of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company, is, of course, digital advertising. Which means that undermining the quality of the company’s cornerstone product actually makes money. That’s how crazy the modern internet has become. There are, as the saying goes, many such cases.

Cory Doctorow, this week’s Downstream guest, has a word for this phenomenon: ‘Ensh*tification’. He’s written a book about it too. In front of a live audience at EartH Hackney, Aaron Bastani sat down with him to discuss it, and the implications of an internet that just gets worse.

Ensh*tification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It explains the destruction of the internet by monopolistic, multi-trillion dollar forces. Silicon Valley, once a source for technologically-infused optimism, is now destroying the information space we all share. The internet still brings immeasurable value, of course, but the cost-benefit for society, and users, is increasingly up for debate. And things are only headed in one direction.

Doctorow argues that the rise of conspiracism, surveillance, addiction, and fraud is no accident. Instead, he claims, all are inextricably linked as Big Tech, led by some of the world’s wealthiest people, seeks to extract maximum value by undermining our very sense of reality.

So why does our online public square increasingly resemble a dumpster fire? How come, where I could once follow friends and loved ones, I’m now bombarded by AI slop? And is this deteriorating experience of the internet now bleeding into the physical world too?

Over 90 minutes Aaron and Cory discuss the book’s most eye-opening case studies, unpicking the insidious tactics employed by the tech giants, and revealing just how unscrupulous these companies are. Their end goal is, in many ways, at odds with a civilised, democratic society.

ACFM Trip 56: The Mainstream Dec 07, 2025

Show notes

Jem, Nadia and Keir debate the meaning of ‘mainstream’ – something none of them could ever possibly be, of course.

Is ‘woke’ the new mainstream? Can there be a mainstream if we don’t all have access to the same culture? Is Tommy Robinson shifting the Overton Window? Why is nonconformity associated with coolness? And who engineers the ‘typical girl’? The gang answer these questions and more, with ideas from Raymond Williams and Perry Anderson, and music from Pulp and The Slits.

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Downstream: How to Create A Revolution w/ Roger Hallam Dec 01, 2025

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Whether you love or loathe his tactics, it’s hard to deny the disruptive impact that Roger Hallam has had on British politics via the activist organisations he has led, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.

He joins Ash Sarkar fresh from his latest stint in prison, where he wrote a treatise for Your Party that sets out his vision for an emancipated future, and strategies for how to get there. But does Your Party still have potential? Does he still believe in sending activists to prison? And will Zoom calls be part of the revolution?

Downstream: Zack Polanski Is Coming for Starmer and Farage Nov 24, 2025

Show notes

Support for the Green party in Britain has been steadily rising for the past few decades. However, few predicted that when Zack Polanski took office as Green party leader in September, membership would surge from 70,000 to 150,000 members in a matter of months. According to the latest polling, the party’s share of the vote has soared too: growing from 10 to 17 per cent.

In front of a live audience at EartH Hackney, Zack tells the story of his first few months in office, and how the party’s plans from two months ago are already outdated. What are the core values, red lines and top priorities for the Greens in this new era? How broad a church will the Green party be? Is it a socialist party, or a party with socialists in it? And what exactly is their strategy to take on the floundering Labour party, as well as the looming threat of Reform?

Downstream: Ex-World Bank Insider on Western Decline & the Chinese World Order w/ Branko Milanovic Nov 17, 2025

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At Novara, we focus on the trends that are remaking the world and affecting our lives: technological development and automation, multipolarity, the demise of an American-led world order and the rise of China. On Downstream this week is a man whose work draws together all of these themes: former World Bank macroeconomist and leading expert on global inequality, Professor Branko Milanovic.

In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Branko answers all of Aaron’s burning questions about modern economic history and where things are heading. How significant is the rise of Asia today, compared to the seismic historic shift of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century? What was the cause of World War I, and why don’t mainstream accounts understand the real roots of it? Who are the new elite, and why is it so hard to break their hold on wealth? And how likely is a conflict between China & the USA?

Downstream: The Dark Truth About Starmer’s Rise to Power w/ Paul Holden Nov 11, 2025

Show notes

Investigative journalist Paul Holden has spent the last four years digging into the political machinations that brought Keir Starmer’s Labour Party into office – findings that propel his powerful 2025 book, The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Labour Together and the Crisis of British Democracy.

He tells Ash Sarkar about the cache of leaked emails that revealed the secret dealings of Morgan McSweeney – an adviser who’s risen through the ranks to become perhaps the most powerful man in the Labour party – and explains how McSweeney’s faction, Labour Together, sabotaged the Corbyn project.

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Downstream: Putin’s War in Ukraine Has Ancient Roots w/ Serhii Plokhy Nov 03, 2025

Show notes

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, then a very young political scientist, declared that history was over. He wrote a book with the same title just a couple of years later. The Cold War had finished, the USSR had collapsed, liberal democracy and market capitalism reigned supreme, and it wasn’t going to change. And yet in the last few years, the script has moved quite significantly. History has returned. Emblematic of that has been the conflict between Russia and Ukraine which began in 2022, although of course, you can date that back to 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.

On Downstream this week is Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University. He offers a deep history of Russia and Ukraine, the conflict, where it comes from, and where it sits within the broader sweep of collapsing empires. He’s also got a new book out, about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy: The Nuclear Age. They discuss what is driving Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, almost four years after it began. What does Putin’s stated aim of ‘de-Nazification’ really mean? What role does Russia’s nuclear arsenal play in determining the shape of the conflict? And, in an increasingly multipolar world where history has indeed come back, is nuclear proliferation within the next ten years likely?

ACFM Microdose: What’s Going On With Your Party? Nov 02, 2025

Show notes

After last week’s episode on Parties, this time ACFM exposes the predicament facing Your Party, the new leftwing faction led by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn.

What expectations do leftwing voters have for Your Party? Does the Corbyn faction distrust the membership? Is Zarah a politician or a poster? And does ‘Yorp’ stand a chance of overtaking the ascendant Greens? Nadia, Jem and Keir analyse a turbulent few months in British left politics.

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Downstream: The West Misunderstands Iran w/ Vali Nasr Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

Iran has been in the news a lot in 2025. Over recent decades, it has been a variable in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. But during the Twelve Day War with Israel in June of this year, Iran very much took centre stage. People started asking questions, chief among them being: What does Iran really want?

On Downstream this week is Vali Nasr, professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, and author of a new book, Iran’s Grand Strategy. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Nasr traces the roots of Iran’s foreign and domestic policy, from western imperialism through the revolution, and into the present day. What have been Iran’s failures and successes, domestically and beyond its borders, in the years since the revolution? Why does a country with no real military or economic base find itself enmeshed in so many conflicts overseas? Does Iran sincerely support the cause of Palestinian liberation? Why would it want nuclear capability? And as the revolutionary guard grows old, what will Iran do next?

Downstream: Kidnapped at Sea by the Israeli Military. The Full Story w/ Kieran Andrieu Oct 22, 2025

Show notes

The Gaza Strip, home to 2.2 million people, is a tiny land mass about the same size as the Isle of Wight. Yet in terms of munitions by weight, Gaza has been subjected to more than all of the bombs dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined, over the whole of World War II. Another even more terrifying statistic: in Ukraine, after two years of conflict, there were around 30 cases of child amputees. In Gaza, there were a thousand cases of child amputation in two months.

This October marked two years since the high-intensity genocidal assault on the people of Gaza began, though the attempt to erase Palestine and ethnically cleanse its people began a century before. To mark the occasion, we hosted a live event at EartH Hackney to raise awareness and raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Kieran Andrieu is a political economist, journalist, and activist with six siblings living under Zionist occupation in the West Bank. Earlier this year, he joined the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of over 40 boats and 500 activists, taking humanitarian aid to Gaza in an attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade of the strip. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Kieran tells the whole story for the first time. What was it like being kidnapped at sea by amphetamine-using IDF soldiers? How were tactics of sleep deprivation used against them? How did the activists maintain morale in such circumstances? And what were the political victories of the mission?

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