Downstream – Novara Media Podcasts

From his radical youth in 1970s Italy to his research as one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli is as comfortable talking politics as he is explaining quantum theory. He sat down with Aaron to talk about the future of Europe, his theory of white holes, and why we’re not actually living in a simulation. His book White Holes: Inside The Horizon is available from...

For this end-of-year edition of Downstream, the Novara Media team look back on the biggest stories of the year. Ash Sarkar is joined by Moya Lothian-McLean, Michael Walker and Owen Jones to talk about the Labour Party, the climate crisis, the rise of AI and the war on Gaza. From clouds brightening to prospects dimming, it’s a conversation with a surprisingly high level of off-brand festive c...

Asset management companies like Blackrock, Vanguard and Macquarie have avoided real scrutiny for decades, but their secretive activities are starting to attract attention from political researchers and academics. What do these companies do, and what risk do they pose to society? Author and academic Brett Christophers sets out to answer this question in his new book, Our Lives in Their Portfolios:...

Daniel Levy has had a front row seat at some of the most consequential peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine in the last two decades, as president of the U.S./Middle East Peace Project and as an adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. He sat down with Ash Sarkar to talk about the failure of the Oslo Accords, the central role of Gulf monarchies in negotiations, and how Israel...

Blindboy Boatclub is the Irish broadcaster, author and musician behind The Blindboy Podcast, a massively popular podcast mixing short fiction, comedy and interviews. His new short story collection, Topographia Hibernica, is inspired by the human, animal and emotional geography of Ireland. Blindboy sat down with Ash for a freewheeling discussion about everything from Eminem’s ’90s style...

To really understand what’s going in Israel, you need to get your history straight. Rashid Khalidi is one of the foremost historians of the Middle East and the author of several books on the region’s history, including The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine. On the day of the ceasefire in Gaza, he guides Ash through the history of the Zionist project that created Israel and the basi...

Zarah Sultana is one of the youngest MPs in Parliament and has faced intense hostility from the right of the Labour Party since Keir Starmer’s ascent to leader. The MP for Coventry South sat down with Ash Sarkar to talk about the reality of being a Muslim woman in the Labour Party, her interactions with Starmer’s office, the Islamophobia she faces in the public sphere, and why the majority o...

We’re heading towards a cashless society. With the dominion of Visa and Mastercard showing no sign of shrinking, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to scrutinise what this shift towards virtual money really means. Brett Scott is an author and former banker who is deeply committed to evaluating the dangers of removing cash as a payment system. He sat down with Aaron to talk about Bitcoin, g...

Slavoj Žižek is perhaps the most famous living Marxist philosopher. This year he will publish three books on topics ranging from the nature of freedom to his deeply pessimistic view of the future. Slavoj sat down with Aaron for a typically provocative, freewheeling and humorous conversation spanning ideas from Stalinism to Zionism to Eurocentrism. He explains why he’s a “law and order...

The 2010s were a time of mass protest, from the Arab Spring uprisings to Occupy Wall Street, Euromaidan and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Many of these movements shared a ‘horizontalist’ or leaderless approach, and most of them ended in failure. Why? American journalist Vincent Bevins talks to Ash about the pitfalls of protest and what lessons we can learn from these movements, severa...

John Gray’s writing on political philosophy is not easily pigeonholed. Over the last half century he has explored ideas that span the whole political spectrum, and pissed off just about everybody with his central thesis that growth and progress are not inevitable. In his latest book, The New Leviathans, his attention turns to the changing fate of the west and the revival of feudalism, religious or...

From his early career following Nelson Mandela on the campaign trail to his stint as US correspondent for the Guardian, Gary Younge has long been one of the most thoughtful and compassionate voices on the British left. He joins Ash Sarkar to discuss his eventful career in journalism, his experiences of reporting in Soviet Russia, the current crisis facing the Labour Party and the time he spent 13...

In his new book, ‘Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism’, Yanis Varoufakis explores how giant tech firms, both in the US and China are expanding their control over the planet. His analysis is that, whilst material resources certainly matter, the real battle ground is over digital real estate. Aaron sat down with Yanis to talk about how Europe’s power has faded, Elon Musk’s wet dreams and why the...

When we were in lockdown, conspiracy theorists went on the march. The emergence of anti-vaccine scaremongering coupled with virulent antisemitism was disconcerting for all of us. But it was even more nuts for renowned journalist and author Naomi Klein, who noticed that she was being constantly getting mixed up with another author: Naomi Wolf. Klein found herself drawn into a strange mirror world a...

Nick Dearden has been an economic justice campaigner for over 20 years, and his attention was on the pharmaceutical industry when Covid-19 hit. But as the world began to sing the praises of pharmaceutical companies, Nick saw an unprecedented PR coup. Giant corporations capitalised on the crisis, tightening their stranglehold over the health of the poor. Nick sat down with Aaron Bastani to explain...

Rory Stewart has led a colourful life: diplomat in Indonesia, governor in post-invasion Iraq, founder of an NGO and a Member of Parliament. He’s also run for London Mayor and leader of the Conservative Party. But his latest occupation is podcaster, hosting ‘The Rest is Politics’ with Alastair Campbell. Rory sat down with Ash Sarkar to discuss his admiration for Jeremy Corbyn, why Tony Blair was wr...

Most people know that the game is rigged. Those who set the rules – win the game. Grace Blakeley has made a career of studying the rules, exposing the exploitative ways in which powerful institutions govern our lives and figuring out ways in which we can beat the banker and resist the game itself. Grace is an economist, writer and media commentator. Her work can be found in Tribune Magazine, Jacob...

Who exactly is the ruling class? The conspicuous top hat and tailed Bullingdon Club still exert dominance, but their era is waning. There are new folks in town. They can’t beat the obscene wealth of petrostate oligarchs, so they’ve joined them in ransacking the country. Ash is joined by Sam Bright, author of Bullingdon Club Britain: The Ransacking of a Nation .

The media and the public seem to be fixated on sex scandals this year, from household names in the headlines to salacious rumours spread on social media. But haven’t we always been intrigued by the private lives of those in power? Ash Sarkar is joined by Novara Live researcher Steven Methven to delve into the long history of sex scandals, from antiquity to the internet. Help us build people-...

Has the left misunderstood the state of our nation? Sociologist and trade unionist Dan Evans thinks so. He talks to Aaron about the unexpected power of the petty bourgeoisie – the insecure class between the working class and the bourgeoisie – and how its Thatcherite values of home ownership and entrepreneurialism have reshaped British politics in the last few decades. They also discuss the politic...

Since 2016 we’ve seen mainstream politics take a turn for the weird, epitomised by the surprise success of populist projects like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Since then, fringe views have continued to muscle into the middle ground, with conspiracy theories and far-right talking points trickling into political discourse. Julia Ebner has been charting this shift through her underc...

After the summer of 2020, the liberal consensus was that in order to tackle racism, white people would have to look inside themselves and ‘do the work’. In 2023, this idea has spread from well-meaning allies on Twitter to the HR departments of corporate behemoths – all while the institutions that consolidate and expand systemic racism go largely unchecked. It’s almost as if the l...

Most people’s lives are defined by the exchange of labour for a wage. But what if the state gave us all a regular wage, with zero strings attached, to spend as we wish? That’s the core idea behind universal basic income, or UBI. With England’s first UBI pilot programme now underway, Aaron talks to Will Stronge, director of research at the Autonomy think tank, about what UBI could...

Izzy Posen grew up in London’s Hasidic Jewish community in Stamford Hill, receiving the bare minimum of secular education in a school that still practiced corporal punishment. Even with the strictures of this insular community, he developed an acute curiosity about the world, resulting in him teaching himself English and eventually leaving the community to study physics and philosophy. Ash t...

The Green Party of England and Wales has made extraordinary gains in the last two decades, especially in the last round of local elections. As well as its one MP – Caroline Lucas – the Greens are also the biggest party on several councils and have a majority on Mid Suffolk District Council. Aaron is joined by deputy leader Zack Polanski to hear why the Greens are the only true opposition to centri...