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?

After a Trip episode about the meaning of mainstream, this time the gang go deeper into ‘Mainstream’ – that is, the new soft-left faction inside Labour. Yes, a festive episode about the inner workings of a political party! Don’t say we don’t spoil you.

Jem, Nadia and Keir explain the emergence of Mainstream’s ‘radical realists’ – who include Andy Burnham and Clive Lewis – by exploring the lesser-known history of political tendencies that have shaped and split the Labour Party since the second world war.

Further reading: Jem’s recent piece in Tribune.

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Since Hamas launched its assault on October 7th, 2023, the group has become synonymous with evil in large parts of the Western media. Condemnation has come at the expense of critical engagement with the group’s actions, objectives, and history, leaving a vacuum that has been filled with racist assumptions and conspiracy theories.

Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian scholar whose doctoral thesis on Hamas was published in 2018 as a book, ‘Hamas Contained’. The book drew on interviews with the organisation’s leaders and their archives. Tareq’s goal when writing it was to ‘get out of the way’ and let the group speak for itself. Tareq’s newest book, ‘A Fire in Every Direction,’ is a memoir about growing up as a queer Palestinian man in Amman. The title is a reference to Tareq’s activist mother, who fought for Palestinian liberation from exile.

In conversation with Ash Sarkar, Tareq traces the group from its inception in the Muslim Brotherhood, to an armed resistance group, and then a democratically elected party. How did the group rise to power in Gaza? What were the conditions under which they adopted violence as a strategy? Did October 7 go as planned, or was there a miscalculation? And how is Tareq making sense of this moment in time, in the face of the ongoing genocide by Israel against the people of Palestine?

NEW LIVE SHOW! Join us at Crossed Wires festival in Sheffield on 4th July 2026. Presale tickets available at 11AM on 10th December – go to crossedwires.live and use the code CW26EARLY.

After watching the Wicked sequel, Moya wonders if politeness is stopping us from seriously addressing women’s shrinking bodies and changing faces. Are we allowing extreme thinness to be normalised? Plus: can you mould your partner into someone better?

CN: From 15:30, eating disorders. From 50:00, rape.

Send us your dilemmas: [email protected]

Did you know that the standard of Google searches has actually gotten worse over recent years? Once you think about it, it makes sense. Highly effective search means fewer searches overall. And fewer searches means less ad revenue. The financial basis of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company, is, of course, digital advertising. Which means that undermining the quality of the company’s cornerstone product actually makes money. That’s how crazy the modern internet has become. There are, as the saying goes, many such cases.

Cory Doctorow, this week’s Downstream guest, has a word for this phenomenon: ‘Ensh*tification’. He’s written a book about it too. In front of a live audience at EartH Hackney, Aaron Bastani sat down with him to discuss it, and the implications of an internet that just gets worse.  

Ensh*tification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It explains the destruction of the internet by monopolistic, multi-trillion dollar forces. Silicon Valley, once a source for technologically-infused optimism, is now destroying the information space we all share. The internet still brings immeasurable value, of course, but the cost-benefit for society, and users, is increasingly up for debate. And things are only headed in one direction. 

Doctorow argues that the rise of conspiracism, surveillance, addiction, and fraud is no accident. Instead, he claims, all are inextricably linked as Big Tech, led by some of the world’s wealthiest people, seeks to extract maximum value by undermining our very sense of reality. 

So why does our online public square increasingly resemble a dumpster fire? How come, where I could once follow friends and loved ones, I’m now bombarded by AI slop? And is this deteriorating experience of the internet now bleeding into the physical world too?

Over 90 minutes Aaron and Cory discuss the book’s most eye-opening case studies, unpicking the insidious tactics employed by the tech giants, and revealing just how unscrupulous these companies are. Their end goal is, in many ways, at odds with a civilised, democratic society.

Jem, Nadia and Keir debate the meaning of ‘mainstream’ – something none of them could ever possibly be, of course.

Is ‘woke’ the new mainstream? Can there be a mainstream if we don’t all have access to the same culture? Is Tommy Robinson shifting the Overton Window? Why is nonconformity associated with coolness? And who engineers the ‘typical girl’? The gang answer these questions and more, with ideas from Raymond Williams and Perry Anderson, and music from Pulp and The Slits.

Find the books and music mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm

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Whether you love or loathe his tactics, it’s hard to deny the disruptive impact that Roger Hallam has had on British politics via the activist organisations he has led, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.

He joins Ash Sarkar fresh from his latest stint in prison, where he wrote a treatise for Your Party that sets out his vision for an emancipated future, and strategies for how to get there. But does Your Party still have potential? Does he still believe in sending activists to prison? And will Zoom calls be part of the revolution?

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Support for the Green party in Britain has been steadily rising for the past few decades. However, few predicted that when Zack Polanski took office as Green party leader in September, membership would surge from 70,000 to 150,000 members in a matter of months. According to the latest polling, the party’s share of the vote has soared too: growing from 10 to 17 per cent.

In front of a live audience at EartH Hackney, Zack tells the story of his first few months in office, and how the party’s plans from two months ago are already outdated. What are the core values, red lines and top priorities for the Greens in this new era? How broad a church will the Green party be? Is it a socialist party, or a party with socialists in it? And what exactly is their strategy to take on the floundering Labour party, as well as the looming threat of Reform?

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At Novara, we focus on the trends that are remaking the world and affecting our lives: technological development and automation, multipolarity, the demise of an American-led world order and the rise of China. On Downstream this week is a man whose work draws together all of these themes: former World Bank macroeconomist and leading expert on global inequality, Professor Branko Milanovic.

In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Branko answers all of Aaron’s burning questions about modern economic history and where things are heading. How significant is the rise of Asia today, compared to the seismic historic shift of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century? What was the cause of World War I, and why don’t mainstream accounts understand the real roots of it? Who are the new elite, and why is it so hard to break their hold on wealth? And how likely is a conflict between China & the USA?