Nick Dearden has been an economic justice campaigner for over 20 years, and his attention was on the pharmaceutical industry when Covid-19 hit. But as the world began to sing the praises of pharmaceutical companies, Nick saw an unprecedented PR coup. Giant corporations capitalised on the crisis, tightening their stranglehold over the health of the […]

The politics of ‘deep adaptation’ is as intriguing as it is controversial. Jem Bendell, a former professor of sustainability leadership, launched the Deep Adaptation movement in 2018 by claiming that social collapse is not just a plausible outcome of climate change, but an extremely likely one. He sat down with Richard Hames in Berlin to […]

Rory Stewart has led a colourful life: diplomat in Indonesia, governor in post-invasion Iraq, founder of an NGO and a Member of Parliament. He’s also run for London Mayor and leader of the Conservative Party. But his latest occupation is podcaster, hosting ‘The Rest is Politics’ with Alastair Campbell. Rory sat down with Ash Sarkar […]

We’re going back to basics on Novara FM this autumn with a series about the big one: class. What does it mean to look at the world through the lens of class in the 2020s, an era of precarious work, rising inequality and elusive social mobility? Three classy thinkers join FM to investigate: political researcher […]

Most people know that the game is rigged. Those who set the rules – win the game. Grace Blakeley has made a career of studying the rules, exposing the exploitative ways in which powerful institutions govern our lives and figuring out ways in which we can beat the banker and resist the game itself. Grace […]

Who exactly is the ruling class? The conspicuous top hat and tailed Bullingdon Club still exert dominance, but their era is waning. There are new folks in town. They can’t beat the obscene wealth of petrostate oligarchs, so they’ve joined them in ransacking the country. Ash is joined by Sam Bright, author of Bullingdon Club […]

Festivals. The perfect embodiment of the ACFM aesthetic, and even social politics… or are they? As the season comes to a close, Nadia, Jem and Keir ask themselves what festivals are really about. Is it music? Camping? The breakdown of everyday hierachies? Or is it just 20,000 people standing in a field? With help from […]

Mental illness is endemic to life under capitalism, yet it’s still largely talked about as a personal and medical issue. But what if we ditched the campaigns to “raise awareness” and instead turned our attention to criticising the systems that make us mad? Micha Frazer-Carroll is a journalist and the author of Mad World: The […]

We live in exciting times for ufology. We’re also coming to realise that many of the modern-day myths around visiting spacecraft were in fact planted by our own intelligence services. But how to tell fact from fiction? Trevor Paglen is an American artist known for investigating the invisible through the visible. His practice has taken […]

“Democratic media is the oxygen of democracy.” That’s the maxim that motivates Amy Goodman, award-winning American journalist and longtime host of Democracy Now!, the daily news show that has blazed a trail for alternative media in its nearly three decades on air. Whether reporting on East Timor’s independence movement or following the pipeline protests at […]