Novara Media

Dolly Parton was right, as usual, when she revealed that “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap”. But who decided rhinestones were tacky in the first place? Style is a matter of taste, yet taste itself is a a matter of money, morality and identity, as the writer and critic Nathalie Olah reveals.

Olah’s new book, Bad Taste: The Politics of Ugliness, is an expose of the industries of taste-making in an image-obsessed world, as well as a critique of the impact that taste has on our sense of self-image and belonging.

In this episode she talks to Eleanor Penny about the allure of minimalism, why posh people don’t care about style, the evolving meaning of the hoodie and our right to eat supermarket pizza.

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We’re heading towards a cashless society. With the dominion of Visa and Mastercard showing no sign of shrinking, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to scrutinise what this shift towards virtual money really means.

Brett Scott is an author and former banker who is deeply committed to evaluating the dangers of removing cash as a payment system. He sat down with Aaron to talk about Bitcoin, gold and the central paradox at the heart of modern libertarianism. His new book, Cloudmoney: Why the War on Cash Endangers Our Freedom, is available from Penguin.

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Novara Media’s supporters keep us entirely free to access. We don’t have any ad partnerships or sponsored content. Become a supporter: https://novara.media/support

For 500 years, societies have been shaped by the authority and permanence of the printed word. What do we have to lose – or gain – when the internet renders print culture obsolete?

Jeff Jarvis thinks we should look to the early print era, when Johannes Gutenberg’s invention caused a moral panic across Europe, for clues to our current predicament. A media journalist and associate professor at the City University of New York, Jarvis recently published The Gutenberg Parenthesis, an inquiry into the spread of print in the 1500s and the bureaucracy, censorship and mass politics that followed.

He talks to Aaron about the connection between the early print era and the ’90s dotcom bubble, whether the book was the first commodity, how journalism fails in its mission to inform society, and what civil war will mean in the age of digital media.

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We’re up against huge power and influence, but Novara Media’s supporters keep us entirely free to access. We don’t have any ad partnerships or sponsored content. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

Slavoj Žižek is perhaps the most famous living Marxist philosopher. This year he will publish three books on topics ranging from the nature of freedom to his deeply pessimistic view of the future.

Slavoj sat down with Aaron for a typically provocative, freewheeling and humorous conversation spanning ideas from Stalinism to Zionism to Eurocentrism. He explains why he’s a “law and order leftist”, why popular movements like the Arab Spring don’t excite him, and what he thinks of the deepening stalemate between Russia and Ukraine.

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Ever feel like there’s too much change these days? Don’t worry, you’re not (necessarily) becoming more conservative. On this Trip, Nadia, Jem and Keir think about the ebb and flow of political currents, social movements and our inner lives.

What’s the difference between being still and being stuck? When does a campaign turn into a movement? Why do we talk about feminism coming in waves? How can you tell you’re approaching a tipping point? The gang turn such abstract questions into concrete history, with examples from punk to Corbyn, and from Daoism to degrowth.

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

Books: David Easton – A Systems Analysis of Political Life / The Free Association – Moments of Excess / Aristide Zolberg – Moments of Madness / Gilles Deleuze – Difference and Repetition / Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari – Anti-Oedipus; A Thousand Plateaus / Naomi Klein – The Shock Doctrine

Music: Curtis Mayfield – Move on Up / Hiroshi Yoshimura – Urban Snow / Gang of Four – At Home He’s A Tourist / Moor Mother – Meditation Rag / Björk – It’s Oh So Quiet / Tony Scott – Za Zen / The Raincoats – The Dance of Hopping Mad

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

In the second half of the 20th century, revolutionaries across Africa were striving towards a decolonised future that never fully materialised. Folding together Marxism and Black radicalism, the global project of Third Worldism envisaged complete liberation, not only from colonial powers but from every kind of oppression.

Kevin Okoth, a political theorist who grew up between Kenya and Germany, believes it’s time to reacquaint ourselves with the revolutionary politics of ‘Red Africa’ – the title of his first book. Rivkah Brown talks to him about the unfinished business of writers and activists like Amílcar Cabral, Walter Rodney and Andrée Blouin, and asks if the nation-state can still be a vehicle for a liberation.

They also explore the legacy of decolonial studies on Black America, whether Beyoncé is a vehicle for Afropessimism, and what historical parallels might be found in the concept of ‘Judeopessimism’.

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The 2010s were a time of mass protest, from the Arab Spring uprisings to Occupy Wall Street, Euromaidan and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Many of these movements shared a ‘horizontalist’ or leaderless approach, and most of them ended in failure. Why?

American journalist Vincent Bevins talks to Ash about the pitfalls of protest and what lessons we can learn from these movements, several of which he experienced up close while working as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and the Financial Times. Vincent’s new book If We Burn is the follow-up to The Jakarta Method, a political history of America’s role in Indonesia’s mass killings.

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Just Stop Oil is a group focused on climate change. So what were they doing blocking the path of a coachload of migrants last week? It all has to do with the effects of a warming world and predictions about the displacement of millions of people.

In this episode, Richard Hames follows JSO activists as they prepare for direct action on the road to the Bibby Stockholm barge. Talking to protestors, climate researchers and activists from other campaigns, he finds out about the complexity of ‘climate migration’, the possibilities and limitations of non-violence, and the kind of mental preparation required to commit to a campaign that could last a lifetime.

On Wednesday, 25 October at 7pm BST, Just Stop Oil will host an online migrant solidarity panel discussing the ties that bind climate justice with migrant justice. Find more details on the episode showpage.

Written and produced by Richard Hames. Music by Matt Huxley.

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John Gray’s writing on political philosophy is not easily pigeonholed. Over the last half century he has explored ideas that span the whole political spectrum, and pissed off just about everybody with his central thesis that growth and progress are not inevitable.

In his latest book, The New Leviathans, his attention turns to the changing fate of the west and the revival of feudalism, religious orthodoxy and ultra-nationalism. Aaron sat down with John to discuss the nonsense of centrism, the opioid epidemic and why Dune is the greatest work of science fiction.

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After 9/11, the writer and essayist Pankaj Mishra found himself losing faith in journalism’s ability to convey the complexity and nuance of the situation. Much of what he knew of the world, he realised, from history to political psychology, had originally been gleaned from fiction.

Since then, Mishra has published several novels – including last year’s Run And Hide – as well as numerous powerful essays and non-fiction works exploring empire, globalisation, populism and the life of the Buddha.

He joins John Merrick on Novara FM to talk about his latest return to fiction and why novels are indispensable for anyone hoping to make sense of their time. They also discuss the culture of Hindu nationalism, the promise of socialist fiction, and why class is so often ignored by contemporary novelists and critics.

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