Novara Media

A lot of people are saying that fascism is on the rise. But what are we pointing to when we call a system, or a person, fascist? On this Trip, Nadia, Keir and Jem map out a complicated ideology, from its roots in 19th century industrialisation to its resurgence in ethnonationalism and eco-apartheid.

Exploring how different political traditions try to explain fascism, they look for signs of the f-word in contemporary politics and play music from Woody Guthrie, Heaven 17 and Black Sabbath.

ACFM will be recording a live episode at How The Light Gets In, the philosophy and music festival at Hay-On-Wye in Wales, on 27 May. Listeners can get 20% off festival passes over at the How The Light Gets In website by applying the discount code NOVARA20.

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

*

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

London is a foodie metropolis: undoubtedly one of the best places to eat in the world.

But eating in London is also, like everything else in the city, shaped by its history as the capital of a globe-spanning empire.

How did the contraction of this formal empire change infamously terrible British cuisine? How did multiculturalism become an excuse for underpaid racialised labour? And how did landlords ruin Chinatown?

The essay collection London Feeds Itself, now in its expanded second edition, is one of the most ambitious attempts to ask all of these questions.

Eleanor Penny sat down with its editor Jonathan Nunn, also editor of Vittles, and contributor Amardeep Singh Dhillon to tuck into the history and present of food in the capital.

Novara FM now has its own inbox – email your comments, criticism and suggestions to [email protected]

Centuries of colonial capitalism have reordered life on the planet and inside our bodies, from industrial farming and the uneven advances of modern medicine, to night shifts, chronic stress and inflammation. Has the system made us sick?

That’s the concern of Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, who join Eleanor Penny to talk about the history of medical injustice and environmental toxicity, and what can be done start the healing process. Their book, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, is available from Penguin.

This episode first aired in August 2022.

Novara FM now has its own inbox. Send your comments, criticisms, corrections and provocations to [email protected]

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

Abby Martin is an American journalist and activist, host of the interview series The Empire Files, and a co-founder of the citizen journalism website Media Roots. She joins Ash Sarkar to discuss her political journey after 9/11, working for the state broadcaster Russia Today, how Israelis really talk about Palestinians, and why she believes the west doesn’t care about Ukraine.

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

Why is it so expensive to rent in the UK? In a divisive new book, barrister Nick Bano places the blame squarely on price-gouging landlords, rejecting the conventional wisdom that calls for more new housing as a solution to the crisis.

He goes head to head with Novara Live’s Michael Walker to explain the thinking behind Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis, out on Verso Books.

This episode was produced in a collaboration with the Crash Course With Michael Walker podcast.

*

Novara FM now has its own inbox. Send your comments, criticisms, corrections and provocations to [email protected]

For a special edition of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar is joined by philosopher, author, and one of the world’s most cited academics, Judith Butler. Their new book, ‘Who’s Afraid of Gender’ charts how a transphobic moral panic morphed into an all-our war on so-called ‘gender ideology’. Together, Ash and Judith explore how Britain became TERF island, the limits of self-identification, and what really defines a woman.

With hindsight, the wars waged by the US and Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq look like terrible failures, both strategically and politically: the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, and living standards are worse in Iraq than they were before Saddam Hussein.

In his new book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003, veteran American journalist Steve Coll looks at British and American foreign policy through the lens of one man: Saddam Hussein. He sat down with Aaron to explain why it’s a mistake to avoid talking to your enemies.

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

We’re living in a world of hurry and shortcuts, of intimacy on tap and just-in-time production. Immediacy, according to Anna Kornbluh, is the link between flow-states and Fleabag, between food delivery apps and a mistrust of political systems.

She joins Richard Hames to explain the thinking behind her new book – Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism – and what the effects of immediacy both reveal and conceal about our world.

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

Peter Hitchens is an author and journalist whose contrarian takes on drug policy, education and foreign policy have found him occupying a singular place in the British media – with his brand of conservatism often angering audiences who would consider themselves staunchly conservative. He sat down with Aaron to discuss grammar schools, Gaza and Britain’s profoundly inhumane actions at the end of the second world war.