Novara Media

In Richard Curtis’ Love Actually, a selection of mainly white and middle-class Londoners seem to be living in a parallel universe – one in which the war on terror never happened and the ’90s never ended. What kinds of love are really on offer in this misty-eyed vision of modern Britain?

Following Novara FM’s investigation into Die Hard, Eleanor Penny tackles another festive Alan Rickman vehicle with Nathalie Olah, author of Bad Taste and Steal As Much As You Can.

Comments, questions, corrections? [email protected]

Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media.com/support

On 10 December, Ash Sarkar, Michael Walker and Aaron Bastani discussed an epoch-defining year and its implications for the future. Is Starmer screwed? Are expansionist wars back? Has ‘woke’ died? Find out in our end-of-year Downstream special.

Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

Die Hard is a perennial of festive TV, but is it really a Christmas movie? James Butler and Eleanor Penny explore what the 1988 action comedy reveals about corporate power, class antagonism, mid-century terrorism and women in the workplace. Who is Bruce Willis’ shoeless cowboy cop out to rescue? And what is going on with Hans Gruber’s accent?

Comments, questions, corrections? [email protected]

Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

Just two months before a general election, Germany finds itself in a precarious position. The European project is fragile, the country’s manufacturing innovation has stalled, and Germany’s dependence on Russian resources has become, quite obviously, disastrous.

So what will happen to this once deeply consequential world power, and what does its story tell us about the future of Europe and the upending of global power in the 21st century?

Wolfgang Münchau has a thorough understanding of this story. A writer for the FT on European and German matters for over 20 years, his new book Kaput tells us an awful lot about why Germany is in the state it currently is.

Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

In the 2010s, we found out that we were all being watched. A series of leaks, from Wikileaks and others, revealed that our governments were conducting mass surveillance operations on their own populations. But what were the longer term consequences of those leaks? And why hasn’t something of equivalent size stepped in to replace Wikileaks since?

Stefania Maurizi is a journalist who worked with Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald on the Edward Snowden revelations. She’s also the author of Secret Power: Wikileaks and Its Enemies.

She sat down with Richard Hames to explain how Wikileaks achieved so much, how the state tried to destroy them, and how they fought back and won.

Comments, questions, corrections? [email protected]

Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

When the Taliban retook all of Afghanistan in 2021, it came as a shock to much of the West. The day after the last American soldier left, journalist and filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at flew into Kabul to spend a year filming with the Taliban’s senior military leadership. What he found was a regime drunk on power, in control of far more territory and with better weaponry than ever – courtesy of the Americans, who left it all behind.

Ibrahim joins Ash to talk about the making of Hollywoodgate, which is currently available to watch in the UK on BBC iPlayer as part of the Storyville series.

*

People-powered media needs people to power it. Please consider supporting Novara Media by donating an hour’s wage per month, or whatever you can afford. Head to https://novaramedia.com/support

Which side are you on? Keir, Nadia and Jem consider the ebb and flow of political commitment with ideas and music from Jodi Dean, Gramsci, John Coltrane and the Raincoats.

Is cultural production the same as political action? What’s the difference between an ally and a comrade? And why do some communists end up as right-wing turncoats?

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

In 1891, the French drew the borders of what became Mali. Like many colonial borders, they were arbitrary, absurd to the many nomads who supposedly lived within them.

Now climate change is ravaging the Sahel region, and many of those nomads are being forced to settle down. And Russia and China have arrived to replace the long tail of French colonial domination. As has Al-Qaeda.

So what does this all have to do with the far-right anti-imperialism of Steve Bannon?

James Pogue is a journalist with an extraordinary range. He has reported from Mauritania and the Central African Republic, from the private gatherings of JD Vance and the militias of Oregon.

In this episode, he tells Richard Hames about how violence, money, racism weave together at the end of an empire – and perhaps the beginning of another.

Humanity has long pursued an elixir of youth and dreamed of eternal life. For the Abrahamic faiths, physical immortality was lost in the Garden of Eden, with only the soul remaining of permanence. More recently, futurists and thinkers have speculated about the possibilities of radical life extension.

For neuroscientist Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston there is another alternative, however. He believes that the human brain could be fully mapped and digitally reproduced – with the first part of that process possible within a century. He talks to Aaron Bastani about living forever.

*

People-powered media needs people to power it. Please consider supporting Novara Media by donating an hour’s wage per month, or whatever you can afford. Head to https://novaramedia.com/support

Imagine a person arrested for keeping a brothel. Who are they? An abusive pimp? Such people exist, no doubt, but the law isn’t set up just to catch abusers: it also targets sex workers working together to stay safe.

With Labour in power, big changes could be afoot, but legalising sex work could harm sex workers as well.

That’s the view of the English Collective of Prostitutes, one of the leading sex worker right organisations in the UK. Their new report ‘Proceed Without Caution’ shows how the law keeps women in sex work, and keeps punishing them for being there.

Their spokeswoman Laura Watson joined Eleanor Penny to discuss poverty, power, whether sex work can ever be abolished, and the case for decriminalisation.