Novara Media

Moya is anxious about her social life and wonders if there’s a better way to make friends – and keep them. Plus: advice for an international special one who feels directionless and disappointed. Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley.

You’ve probably heard of Boots Riley’s work – Sorry To Bother You starring LaKeith Stanfield was a surprise hit, and his series I’m A Virgo got picked up by Amazon Prime. But the Oakland-raised rapper-turned-director doesn’t just want you to leave the cinema having had a good time: he wants you to start a revolution. His new film I Love Boosters – starring the incredibly charming Keke Palmer – is...

Ever felt like an imposter? Jem, Nadia and Keir offer a weird-left analysis of confidence – from market dynamics and private school to the power of positive thinking – with ideas from Barbara Ehrenreich, Dale Carnegie and Foucault. 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 playlist on Spo...

Through the 1990s and the 2000s, the West told itself a story: let China get rich, and it’ll become like us. But then China got rich – and it become less and less like the West. Kaiser Kuo – host of the Sinica Podcast, former Baidu executive, and founding guitarist of China’s first heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty – thinks we need to reckon with this fact: that China has not only now caught up, but...

Ash has a big theory about our growing fear of cringe. How does the internalisation of secondhand embarrassment change our behaviour? Is it possible that to be cringe is to be free? Plus: advice for a listener who’s become scared of sex. Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley.

In Brighton, for a special recording of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Naomi Klein, and organiser, writer and co-founder of the Debt Collective, Astra Taylor. They gathered to discuss their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. An apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is gathering momentu...

No one is disputed like Mao. Was he a mass murderer, a Communist hero, a charlatan, or a great poet? The saviour of the peasants, or the man who extracted from them all that he could? Mao’s biography is a nest of contradictions. He led the largest revolution in world history, then presided over its largest famine – and even then, life expectancy rose 20 years over the course of his rule. He launch...

A weird interaction on the dancefloor gets Ash thinking about ambiguity. How do we balance the need for clear consent with the perks of mystery and uncertainty? Has growing up online increased our need for clarity? Plus: a friend who's been separated from her besties. Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley.

Three years ago, just weeks after the genocide began, writer Omar El Akkad posted a tweet, attached to some footage showing the extent of the ruin that Israel had already visited on Gaza. The compelling thought, crystallised in that viral tweet, would go on to become the name of his bestselling book: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.  Steven Methven, editor of Novara Live, step...

For a century, China underwent a series of invasions, revolutions and counter-revolutions. In China, it’s known as the Century of Humiliation. It was a time of immense upheavals: from the Opium Wars of 1839, through the Taiping Rebellion, the Xinhai Republican Revolution, a Civil War, an invasion by the Japanese which merged into the Second World War; the resumption of the Civil War and, eventuall...

After quitting Instagram, Moya wonders if the concept of ‘healthy competition’ is a myth, and Ash explains how to hate with artistry. Plus: Taylor Swift chat (for the first 8 minutes, be warned!) and advice for a couple in a longterm sex drought. Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley.

This week marked three years since the Hamas attack of October 7th, and the beginning of the Israeli state’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people. In that time, Western leaders from Joe Biden and Donald Trump to Keir Starmer and now Andy Burnham have refused to call the genocide what it is, despite the consensus of genocide scholars. One outlier among Western leaders during this peri...

Huawei makes the pipes and cables that power the Chinese internet. Its global reach has made China into a superpower. Huawei is often accused of spying for China. But how was the US so sure that Huawei’s technology could be used for spying? Because they had already hacked it and were using it to spy themselves. That’s not even the strangest episode in the company’s history. Its installations were...

Ash and Moya talk about porn, sex work, desire, 'duty sex' and more in a conversation sparked by a mystery question. Is AI-generated porn driving viewers to more extreme content? Has OnlyFans made it harder to be a woman on the internet? Plus: advice for a bisexual woman who’s got history with her new housemate. CN: This episode contains discussion of child sexual abuse at 18m and 23m. Watch Ash’s...

Are we in the era of trauma Top Trumps? ‘Lived Experience’ has become a byword for standpoint authority and progressive politics. It has allowed people from marginalised groups to speak and be heard, and forced us to confront how power plays out in interpersonal dynamics. But it has also become a way for people to brand themselves online, and excuse antisocial or even downright nasty behaviours. H...

Welcome to Series 2 of Do Your Own Research. Until the end of the year, I will be focusing on the most important and interesting country in the world: China. We're starting with Tianyu Fang, an editor of Chaoyang Trap, a newsletter all about the Chinese internet. We're starting with the internet because that's so much of what we see of China: fragments of life online. What's the reality behind the...

Moya and Ash get their nerd on with a conversation about the rise of convenience and the loss of enchantment. How can we access feelings of wonder in a world of quick fixes? (With reference to LOTR, Jaws and Tony Stark.) Plus: when a so-called friend can’t do the bare minimum. The book Moya mentions is Gabe Bullard's Against Convenience. Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Mat...

The effect of pornography on the people who consume it is often moralised about, generally due to its influence over the nascent sexuality of young men. But the business model, technological innovations and broader, parasexual, cultural effects go crucially underexamined. This week's guest, investigative reporter for the Financial Times, Patricia Nilsson, has written a new book unearthing exactly...

Following their recent Trip episode on Situationism, the gang offer a close reading of The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, first published in France in 1967. Nadia, Jem and Keir explore the layered references and subversions throughout Debord's extremely quotable aphorisms on alienation, representation and the spectacle. Find a PDF of the book at Libcom.org Sign up to the ACFM newsletter:...

What if we still haven’t processed what the pandemic did to us? Was Covid a permanent turning point for our social lives and mental health? Ash and Moya identify an ongoing yearning for connection amid the scare stories and the manic bounceback years. Plus: is it your fault you're still single? Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com Music by Matt Huxley.

Moya and Ash think about how money changes our priorities. Should rich friends should pay for their poor friends? And how do income gaps affect our romantic relationships? Plus: what to do when your partner reveals an addiction. Get tickets for Ash at the Southbank Centre on 26 September: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/ash-sarkar-the-future-of-relationships Send us your dilemmas: ifisp...

What did the Situationists actually achieve? Nadia, Jem and Keir look back on the antics and manifestos of the socialist revolutionaries who gathered under the banner of the Situationist International. With ideas from Debord and Vaneigem and music from the KLF and Negativland, the gang chart the SI’s influence on politics and media theory, from the central concept of the Spectacle to their lingeri...

Moya is worried about status – and so are increasing numbers of men in therapy, according to a recent report. So what does status look like in this economy? How are men adapting to not being guaranteed breadwinners? Can you be both downwardly mobile and satisfied with your life? Plus: what to do when you suspect your friend is in love with you. Read the article on men in therapy: https://www.thegu...

AI is set to take all of our jobs. It will irrevocably transform our relationships - and it might even kill us all. These are some of the big claims made about artificial intelligence today. And they are claims that on Novara, we take seriously. This week's Downstream guest thinks that giving weight to those grand concerns is a mistake. He believes that by talking up the possibility that AI could...

We live in a moment when the working class is fractured along a great many lines. Gone are the days of solidarity built around a shared experience of factory work that formed the bedrock of Karl Marx’s analysis of class struggle – and his vision of emancipation. Meanwhile in the halls of power, elites in our politics have failed for decades now to really grasp what people in Britain care about and...