Novara Media

There are few ideas for addressing climate change more alluring than rewilding: the idea that nature, gently supported at first and then left more or less alone, might be able to heal itself and save us from our planetary woes at once.

But even in such verdant visions of the future, the old question of politics – who benefits – refuses to disappear. In the UK, rewilding has become more and more the preserve of the rich and powerful. And yet radical communitarian projects and visions remain.

In this episode, Richard Hames goes in search of the rewilding’s radical promise – of a nature restored to be more than just another form of exclusion.

This episode complements Aaron Bastani’s interview on Novara FM with Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese about their book Half-Earth Socialism.

For a Downstream family special, Ash Sarkar is joined by Moya Lothian-McLean and Michael Walker – both contributing editors at Novara Media – to discuss their lives as journalists, the combustion of media companies Vice and gal-dem, the scandal surrounding Nick Cohen, and why Novara is taking on the mainstream media in the UK.

We’re living through a rapid acceleration in AI capability, a development that feels as scary as it is stunning. At the end of 2020, James Butler was joined by writer and researcher Aaron Benanev, author of Automation and the Future of Work, to talk about the current wave of automation in the context of a long history of technological advances, which have reshaped the workplace over and over again.

In this episode, James and Aaron discuss the strange gap between labour-saving technology and increased productivity, visions of utopia beyond work, and why overwork and underemployment can coexist so easily.