There’s nothing in the world more important than the food system. The twentieth century was scarred by enormous famines – and, like the one in Gaza, they are still deliberately engineered. But since the 1970s, the absolute number of deaths from famine have dropped by over 90%.

On a global scale, we now make so much food that farmers will sometimes destroy it just to keep the prices high.

How is there so much food? And, amid all these calories, how are so many people still malnourished? Why is it suddenly all so expensive? And is it all about to come crashing down?

Charles C. Mann tells Richard Hames about the historical power of bird shit, the strange reason Indian scientists put wheat in a nuclear reactor, and how the genius who made modern farming possible also invented the gas that was used to murder millions in the Holocaust.

Just a week ago, the architect of Starmer’s rise to power, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over his connections to Peter Mandelson, after further proof of Mandelson’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein emerged in the newest batch of files released by the US Department of Justice.

According to this week’s guest, this scandal isn’t an anomaly, but an inevitable outgrowth of the New Labour politics that have shaped Britain since Tony Blair took office in 1994.

Maurice Glasman is a Labour peer and founder of Blue Labour, a campaign group that unites culturally conservative values with left-wing economic policies. He sat down with Ash to talk about meeting Steve Bannon, Tottenham Hotspur, and what Marx got wrong.

When it comes to the relationship between capitalism and crime, those on the left generally think of exploitation. People often turn to crime, so the thinking goes, because they can’t make ends meet by legitimate means. Whatever your views on that framing, there is also another – far less discussed – connection between capitalism and crime, namely the relationship between elites, the shadow economy and money laundering. ​

On Downstream this week, Aaron Bastani talks to Oliver Bullough about his latest book: Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won. Bullough explains how money laundering, as a global phenomenon, is estimated to be worth trillions of dollars a year. What makes such industrial-scale crime even possible is, ironically, the basic infrastructure that permits globalised trade in the first place: a basket of important currencies, centring on the American dollar.

So while the White House talks about the war on drugs, or the war on crime, the currency being issued by the Federal Reserve – America’s bank – is what makes much of that crime profitable at all. It turns out, according to Bullough, that while elected officials talk tough, they generally fail to take necessary steps to curb the global flow of dirty money.

While completely eliminating laundering may never be possible, making a start is easier than you think. What is money laundering, and why should you care about it? How does it look different in places like China and Russia when compared to the United States or Europe? Is it really like the TV shows? What do vape shops, NFTs and luxury watches all have in common? And is rampant criminal activity much more common, and closer to home, than we are led to believe?

Over the past three years, the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people has become a flash point for freedom of speech in the West. Expressing solidarity with Palestinians has given Western governments an excuse to crack down on dissenters. There has been intimidation and job insecurity at one end of the scale, through to brutal policing, arrests, and extraditions at the other.

Our guest on Downstream this week knows a thing or two about censorship. Artist Ai Weiwei holds the unusual position of having been censored in both China and Europe. In conversation with Ash Sarkar, they discuss how a rising authoritarianism in many Western nations represents a fragility at the heart of the liberal political project. What was it like being interrogated over 50 times by Chinese authorities, and what kind of relationship did Ai Weiwei develop with his captors? Why did he choose to be an artist, rather than a journalist? And what is his art in service of?

This week, Donald Trump continued his streak of threatening tariffs against any country that opposes him, increasing the odds of an escalating trade war and further destabilising the global economic system. But according to this week’s guest, the system is in desperate need of reform. Indeed, she thinks without a complete structural overhaul, it will soon ‘blow itself up.’

On Downstream this week is Keynesian economist, Ann Pettifor, to discuss her latest book, ‘The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and the Planet.’ In conversation with Ash Sarkar, they discuss the state of the global economy, and the ‘shadow’ banking system that holds $217 trillion in financial assets – beyond the control of any taxman. How did Ann predict, with precision and foresight, the global financial crisis of 2008? Will the AI bubble burst, triggering the next economic crisis? And is the Green New Deal – which Ann helped to create – dead in the water, or a transformative plan B that we can turn to when the next crisis invariably comes?

Our guest this week was born in 1943, in what was then British India – modern day Pakistan. Unlike most, who have learned history through books and second-hand sources, he has witnessed first-hand a great deal of the 20th and 21st centuries. Tariq Ali founded Verso Books, the leading left-wing publishing house in Britain, as well as the New Left Review. He met Malcolm X, was friends with John Lennon and Hugo Chavez, and spearheaded the anti-Vietnam War movement.

In conversation with Aaron Bastani, this week on Downstream we are talking about the ways we remember – and misremember – the 20th century, and how these events have a long tail that shape our present and future. How significant was the cultural revolution in China, in sparking anti-colonial struggles across Asia? How do the dynamics of the Cold War still dominate the mainstream media? And who are the substantial political figures and ideologies set to dominate the next decades of the 21st century?

It has been a bellicose start to 2026, with the US army kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and threatening to annex Greenland, putting many more nations, including Mexico and Colombia, on high alert.

On Downstream this week is investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who’s best known for helping Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the NSA’s global surveillance program come to light, as well as investigations that led to Brazilian president Lula’s release from prison.

He sat down in his Rio De Janeiro studio to speak to Aaron Bastani about the differences in Trump 2.0’s foreign policy, how the last year has seen unprecedented corporate consolidation of media and whether the US empire is flexing a novel expansionist ambition or if the lashing out of the last week is a sign of decline.

After ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ on October 7th, a specific narrative quickly emerged and pervaded the entire Western mainstream media. Namely, that unprecedented horrors were committed against the state of Israel and that whatever way it responded was justified. Any deviation from this narrative was quickly shut down.

In the intervening years, the British state has aided Israel in its response, a response that organisations including Amnesty & B’tselem have called a genocide in Gaza.

Peter Oborne is a journalist and author whose new book, ‘Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza’, provides a forensic account and set of references defying anyone denying Britain’s fuelling of genocide in Gaza.

Ash Sarkar and Aaron Bastani joined each other on 17th December for a special end-of-year Downstream, wrapping up the year in politics.

Norman Finkelstein is one of the west’s leading anti-Zionist scholars. The son of Holocaust survivors, he has spent his life studying and critiquing Israel’s assault on Palestine, decades before it became socially acceptable to do so.

Yet despite having dedicated his career to it, by the day before Hamas’ attack in October 2023, Norman had all but given up on the cause of Palestinian liberation. His most recent book on the subject had sold 370 copies. When news of the attack arrived, Norman knew people would want to hear from him. He wrestled with what to say, eventually coming to the view that Hamas’ actions could be viewed through the lens of the slave rebellions in the early 1800s: heinous acts of violence borne out of desperate circumstances: acts that he could not condemn.

​In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Norman tells the story of his parents’ lives before the war, and the life they built in the shadow of the Holocaust. Could they speak about what they had been through? How did their experience impact Norman’s work and his devotion to the truth? What was it like arguing with his mentor, Noam Chomsky? And what is Israel’s endgame?