Novara Media

Yousef Alhelou has spent the four or so months since October 7th covering the Israeli assault on Gaza through his Instagram account. In that time, his audience has grown by hundreds of thousands. Aaron sat down with Yousef to talk about international law, the genocide in Gaza and Britain’s complicity in it.

As Israel extends its bombardment of Gaza into Rafah – a supposed safe zone where 1.7 million Palestinians are seeking refuge – the limits of the “laws” of war seem horribly apparent.

Following South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ last month, legal scholar Rob Knox joins Eleanor Penny to offer an urgent account of the logic and limitations of international law.

What makes war legal – or illegal? Why do powerful states bother with international law? How does the language of humanitarianism end up producing violence? And can international courts do anything to protect the people of Gaza?

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Certain historians and politicians like to claim that the British Empire was “on balance” a good thing. Slavery was evil, they admit, but abolition was good. Racism was wrong, but free markets are desirable.

In his new book Empireworld, journalist and historian Sathnam Sanghera rejects this “balance sheet” reading of history in order to wrestle with the contradictory legacies of imperialism. But does the obvious complexity of this history really make it impossible to make any moral claims about the empire overall?

Eleanor Penny finds out, asking Sathnam about our different interpretations of historical legacies, how Britain exported racism around the world, and the ecological impacts of empire, from national parks to quinine production.

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Should there be a cap on how much wealth one person can have? If we’re serious about tackling poverty, the answer can only be yes, says Ingrid Robeyns, author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.

Robeyns tells Ash Sarkar what a wealth cap could do for the world, how the global north is living off stolen money, and why she’s reluctant to call herself a communist.

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Should the left care about the existence of aliens? The ACFM gang explore the impact of UFOs on political thought in this Trip.

Keir, Jem and Nadia discuss the connections between UFO conspiracies and right-wing thought, why some communists think aliens will bring about world revolution, and whether Fermi’s paradox means we’re not alone, with music from Sun Ra, The Carpenters and true believers Blink 182.

Find our ever-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching “ACFM”.

Books: Mark Pilkington – Mirage Men / Susan Lepselter – The Resonance of Unseen Things / Carl Jung – Flying Saucers / Erich von Däniken – Chariot of the Gods / H. G. Wells – The War of the Worlds / A. M. Gittlitz – I Want to Believe / Kim Stanley Robinson – Aurora

Music:
 Blink 182 – Aliens Exist / Sheb Wooley – The Purple People Eater / Sun Ra – Interplanetary Music / The Carpenters – Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Space / Pink Floyd – Interstellar Overdrive / Flying Saucer Attack – The Season is Ours / Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien / The Byrds – Hey Mr. Space Man / Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS licence number: LE-0016481

Twenty years ago, it was taken for granted that on average, people globally were shrugging off the shackles of organised religion. The world was destined for secularism. But with demographics trends in many countries pointing towards a growing religious population and with secular liberal politics failing to offer solace from falling living standards, we should no longer take this for granted.

Ash Sarkar is joined by Aaron Bastani, Novara’s co-founder to discuss his faith, the socialist interpretation of the gospel and the big guy with the beard – that’s right – Karl Marx.

This episode was first released in November 2021.

In the bestselling book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, archaeologist David Wengrow and the late anthropologist David Graeber offer a radically different story of our social evolution.

Drawing on groundbreaking research gathered over a decade of collaboration, the book challenges just about everything we thought we knew about the origins of farming, property, slavery, democracy and civilisation.

Wengrow tells Eleanor Penny about the book’s 10-year gestation and what their heretical conclusions mean for our understanding of humankind.

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We are in a drastically different world from the one most of us grew up in. This has been proven by the rapid escalation in the events in the Middle East over the last six weeks.

No longer are we in a world where, essentially, the US run the show. And this has huge global implications, especially for Europe.

Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and podcaster who co-hosts the ‘Multipolarity’ podcast. He sat down with Aaron Bastani to talk about what we get wrong about China, cheap high quality weapons technology and what we can learn from the Treaty of Versailles.

Music has the uncanny power to stir up big feelings, which makes it an obvious vehicle for political statements of hope, anger, despair, or how to cast your vote. In this Microdose episode to accompany ACFM’s recent Trip on Protest, Jem takes us through 60 years of plugged-in protest music – no strumming folkies or broadside ballads this time.

From hip-hop campaign boosters to new wave takes on British imperialism, from anti-landlord lyrics to a requiem for the post-war dream, it’s a narrated playlist revealing the manifold methods of musical persuasion.

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Music: Marlena Shaw – Woman of the Ghetto (1969) / Iggy and the Stooges – Ballad of Hollis Brown (1973) / Max Romeo – Rent Crisis (1974) / Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster (1978) / Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Oliver’s Army (1979) / Pink Floyd – The Gunner’s Dream (1983) / Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy (1984) / Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel – Jesse (1984) / Midnight Oil – Beds Are Burning (1987) / Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy – Television, The Drug of the Nation (1991) / Asian Dub Foundation – Jericho (1995) / Le Tigre – My My Metrocard (1999) / Ms. Dynamite – It Takes More (2002) / Gina Birch – Feminist Song (2021) / The Coup – The Guillotine (2015)

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS licence number: LE-0016481