Novara Media

Ash presents a big theory about disposability and social shame prompted by a wardrobe clearout, and Moya responds to a dilemma about dating while living with parents. Plus: spot remedies. Come and see If I Speak live at the London Podcast Festival on 15 September! Tickets available from kingsplace.co.uk now. Got a problem? Tell us: ifispeak@novaramedia.com *Gossip, elevated.* Music by Matt Huxley

Moya and Ash talk to Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies, about why we crave external validation yet hate to be perceived. Plus: advice for a listener who got engaged while drunk. Come and see If I Speak live at the London Podcast Festival on 15 September! Tickets available from kingsplace.co.uk now. Got a problem? Tell us: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley

Ash and Moya talk to Evenings And Weekends author Oisín McKenna about living authentically, intense female friendships, and how financial precarity limits our self-exploration. Plus: compulsory heterosexuality and suspicious new boyfriends. Got a problem? Tell us: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley

Does the body keep the score? Ash and Moya explore the border between grief and trauma and how to embrace being emotionally messy when disaster strikes. Plus: an “accidental incel” writes in. Got a problem? Tell us: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley

Moya and Ash talk to Chimene Suleyman, author of The Chain, about uncovering her ex-boyfriend's secrets and why society lets abusive men get away with it again and again. Plus: a listener needs help with their sexless relationship. Come and see If I Speak live at the London Podcast Festival on 15 September! Tickets available from kingsplace.co.uk now. Got a problem? Tell us: ifispeak@novaramedia.c...

What's it like to be left-wing in an aspiring ethnostate? Israel has swung hard to the right in the last few decades, with self-described fascists now in government. But a left remains, calling not just for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza, but for the end to the apartheid regime as a whole. What power do they have? Comedian and activist Noam Shuster-Eliassi and +972 Magazine journalist Haggai Matar...

Novara Media's football podcast returns for another crack at the silverware! Every Wednesday until the Euro 2024 final, Juliet Jacques and Tom Williams provide political and tactical analysis of the tournament in an episode of two halves. This week: the strange spectacle of politicians pretending to like football, the changing status of women and LGBT+ players and fans, what Starmer will do for th...

What exactly is cool? Well, if it was that easy to describe, it obviously wouldn't be cool. In this Trip, Keir, Jem and Nadia wonder if cool can ever be politically useful, and what happens when cool is used as a disciplining force. With ideas from Pierre Bourdieu, Norman Mailer and Paul Gilroy, and music from OutKast, Gwen Stefani and Miles Davis, the gang adopt a blank expression to explore the...

The right have ditched climate denial and found something worse. They're doubling down on the exhaustion of people and planet alike, making us run ever-faster just to stay in place. Can we turn our collective exhaustion into a climate politics of rest and recuperation? That's the urgent question Ajay Singh Chaudhary asks in The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. On Novara FM, he...

What exactly is cool? Well, if it was that easy to describe, it wouldn't be cool at all. In this Trip, Keir, Jem and Nadia wonder if cool comes from within, if cool can ever be politically useful, and what happens when cool is used as a disciplining force. With ideas from Pierre Bourdieu, Norman Mailer and Paul Gilroy, and music from OutKast, Gwen Stefani and Miles Davis, the gang adopt a blank ex...

The difference between sex and gender is fundamental to how we talk about trans people. But what if it actually obscures the richness of life outside of gender norms? There is so much more to gender non-conforming people than this academic, middle-class, distinction. So says Jules Gill-Peterson, author of A Short History of Trans Misogyny. A historian at Johns Hopkins University, she reaches back...

12: How to be a good friend by Novara Media

13: I'm the problem, it's me by Novara Media

07: What do straight men know about dating? by Novara Media

01: Should I give my mum an allowance? by Novara Media

02: Is my long-distance relationship doomed? by Novara Media

04: Can you teach an adult to have empathy? by Novara Media

03: The dating trap by Novara Media

05: Are we trapped in a fantasy? by Novara Media

06: Do you owe your parents anything? by Novara Media

08: How to cultivate optimism by Novara Media

09: Should you ever shag a Tory? by Novara Media

10: Do I have to be nice to my friend's partner? by Novara Media

11: Help! My partner's too posh by Novara Media

No country has ever changed so fast as China. From the west, we see only the dazzling headline figures – 15% growth in some years. But it's on the ground, in the huge shifts in the patterns of daily life, where the story comes alive. Journalist Yuan Yang's first book Private Revolutions provides just that insight, revealing the individual lives behind the increasing lines on the graphs. Born in Ch...