Advertise on podcast: Novara Media

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, steps in for Aaron Bastani while he is on parental leave. He sat down with Omar to try to make sense of three years of horror.  Why did Omar write his book focusing on the West’s role in the violence, rather than centring Palestine? What would meaningful accountability and justice for Palestinians look like? How does he think Hamas will be remembered? And has he found any source of hope amid the events he describes?

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, eventually coming to an end with the Communist Revolution of 1949. Each one transformed the country more comprehensively than seemed possible beforehand. Rebecca Karl is the author of China’s Revolutions in the Modern World, which tells us not only what happened, but how its participants tried to make sense of it all, and why that still matters for understanding China now – after all, the Chinese Communist Party haven’t forgotten any of it. She joined Richard Hames to discuss the century that destroyed imperial China and set the stage for the largest revolution in history. There is much more to explore on the map we’re making for this series, which shows all the people, ideas and event that define China’s history, present, and future. Get it here. Support our work: novaramedia.com/support   0:00 Intro 4:37 Opium Wars 12:58 The Man Who Claimed to Be Jesus’s Brother 21:30 The Taiping Rebellion 30:16 1911 Revolution 42:47 The May Fourth Movement 52:10 How the Chinese Communist Party Began 1:01:38 Shanghai Massacre, Mao and the Long March 1:13:22 Japanese Invasion and World War II in China 1:24:30 Chinese Civil War and the 1949 Revolution

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 period has been Humza Yousaf. The former first minister of Scotland, and first Muslim leader of a Western nation, has written a book about his time in government, ‘Under Fire: My Family’s Escape from Gaza and the Cost of Leadership’. On Downstream this week, Aaron Bastani sat down with him to hear first-hand what it was like governing Scotland, while his family were trapped in Gaza. How did he and his family manage the first few days and weeks of the genocide, while balancing his responsibilities as Scotland’s leader? What kind of pressures did he face internally, and externally, to support Israel? How did he make decisions in government, and how did he take the decision to stand down? What does good leadership require? And what does he think about the fate of the union, and the direction of travel in Britain today?

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 the US had already hacked Huawei’s technology and were using it to spy themselves. That’s not even the strangest episode in the company’s history. Its installations in Iraq were bombed by the UK and US before 9/11. In 2018, its infrastructure allegedly pinged back the secrets of the Africa Union to China overnight. And it now stands accused of doing business in Iran. Eva Dou is the author of the deeply researched House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company. She spoke to Richard Hames about the geopolitics of telecommunications, how Huawei made China into a global superpower, and whether or not Huawei is, in fact, a wing of the Chinese state. And we’ll be making our map of everything that has ever mattered and ever will: this new edition focused on China, available here: novaramedia.com/dyor 0:00 Intro 3:57 Huawei’s Current Legal Battle 14:14 Huawei & Espionage 24:34 Huawei in Africa and Iraq 33:07 The Great Firewall and Tech Rivalry 46:40 The Mysterious CEO: Ren Zhengfei and Shenzhen 55:04 Who Owns Huawei? 1:03:09 How Tiananmen Square Changed Chinese Tech 1:11:19 AI and Microchips 1:19:46 Sanctions, the UK and Huawei’s future Support our work: https://novaramedia.com/support

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. Has ‘lived experience’ helped the left, or turned us into self-obsessed therapy-speakers, incapable of communicating with the majority of people? At the latest Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Catherine Liu – cultural theorist, professor and author of Virtue Hoarders – to discuss her new book, Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering. Liu argues that as class politics has declined, the language of psychology has stepped in to explain problems rooted in capitalism. But what happens when trauma becomes content and politics gives way to what Liu calls the ‘gentrification of pain’? Is ‘lived experience’ a prerequisite for legitimate political analysis? Why do movements so often end up policing each other rather than confronting power? And if politics becomes about who’s hurting most, who benefits?

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 them, and how do we square these beguiling, details with the vast story of China’s rise? What is happening online in China is often reduced to a few memes or movements. We see the dazzling skyline and we stop thinking, and start gawping: that’s what I call the gawp-zone. How do we get out of it? In this conversation, we go deep into the circuits and technology of the Chinese internet, from its earliest utopian moments to the hemisphere-spanning computing stack we see today. And we’ll be making our map of everything that has ever mattered and ever will: this new edition focused on China, available here: novaramedia.com/dyor

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 the ways in which these underexamined forces emerged and how they continue to exert influence on society. She spoke to Ash about pioneering camgirl entrepreneurs, the sado-masochistic-inflected rise of Andrew Tate, and how algorithms have entered the bedroom. Support our work: https://novara.media/support

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, focusing on the first three chapters of the book. Find a PDF of the book at Libcom.org Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

When and why did liberal democracy stop working for the many? On Downstream this week is Daron Acemoglu, joint recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, whose 2012 book Why Nations Fail has sold over a million copies. He talks to Aaron Bastani about his data-packed new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy?, which seeks to diagnose and remedy democracy before it’s too late. They talk about the transition to a post-industrial economy, the loss of community, how progressive politics became overrun by middle-class interests, and how AI further threatens our capacity to self-govern and lead flourishing lives. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

This summer’s extreme heat, wildfires and thousands of excess deaths have shown that the climate is destabilising faster than predicted. In the face of this undeniable crisis, what should be done? Tessa Khan is the founder of Uplift, an organisation working to decarbonise our energy system before it’s too late. The former human rights lawyer realised a decade ago that none of the other social questions matter if we don’t address the climate crisis. Tessa talks to Aaron Bastani about the calls to keep drilling in the North Sea, whether renewables are susceptible to economic shocks, and how an ageing population impacts climate politics. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

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 Khayati 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 lingering influence on pop music, psychogeography and political organising. Find the music and books mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Follow our playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

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 replace significant amounts of labour – or develop an agency of its own – only serves to exaggerate the capacity of AI – and therefore just helps tech CEOs drive more investors to buy their already overpriced stocks. Cory Doctorow is a writer and activist – who’s written 36 books – spanning non-fiction and science fiction. He famously coined the term “ensh*ttification” to describe the modern trajectory of the internet. And he has a new book on AI – it’s called the “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI”. As Aaron Bastani takes time off on paternity leave, Michael Walker, host of Novara Live, sat down with Cory to ask one of the world’s leading tech writers his burning questions about AI. Is Cory surprised at the speed of AI’s so-called “evolution”? What does the latest AI “Hugging Face” tell us about AI? Does the AI presented to us in 2026 present a threat to life on Earth, or is that just hype? Is it really intelligent, or just a simulacrum of intelligence? Does it matter?

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 need – resorting to lame stand-ins such as ‘Mondeo man’ and ‘Stevenage woman’, Farage’s new favourite: ‘alarm clock Britain’. What are they missing? Lived experience, apart from anything else. On Downstream this week, Ash Sarkar sat down with campaigner and author Jonas Patrick Marvin to discuss his new book ‘The Breaking of the English Working Class’. Weaving autobiographical detail with political theory, Marvin tackles head-on the class forces that have shaped his own life. Why can’t people born in London afford to stay and build lives there? Who gets to define themselves as working class, and on what grounds? How should the left respond to rising anti-immigration politics? Why has the working class become so fragmented, and what can be done to repair it?

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2026 is roughly the same as when, in the very, very distant past, the Earth was between 6 and 8 degrees warmer. If the Earth were to reach those temperatures again, the majority of mammals would go extinct. While we’re not at those temperatures now, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could cause the climate to accelerate towards planetary conditions that pre-date the dinosaurs. This is the stark warning of this week’s guest, Bill McGuire. A geologist and volcanologist by training, he has spent time as an expert and government advisor on extreme weather events, before becoming an author. According to him, there is no plan for the extreme climactic upheaval that is to come.

The genocide of Palestinians, carried out by the Israeli army with backing from the US and the British state, has lead to an almighty breakdown in public trust in the West. Now more than ever, citizens are turning away from establishment media sources in search of journalism that more closely resembles the world as we see it.  This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar sits down with Amy Goodman, veteran journalist and founder of Democracy Now!, one of the leading independent media organisations in the US. Goodman is the subject of a new film, Steal This Story, Please!, which documents her storied career covering some of the most consequential moments in American living history. She has confronted sitting presidents, bore firsthand witness to 9/11, survived a firing squad in East Timor and exposed major corporate crime in the Niger Delta. What drives Amy to do the work she does – shining light on humanity’s darkness, decade after decade? How did her Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn inform her work? What does good journalism look like to her? Why does she believe we all need to re-learn the lost art of disagreement? And does she think American democracy can survive?