Novara Media

Aaron Bastani sat down with Novara Media’s own Ash Sarkar, to celebrate the paperback release of her bestselling book, Minority Rule. ‘Minority rule’ is the term Ash used to describe the irrational fear that minorities are trying to overturn and oppress majority populations. She revealed how minority elites rule majorities by creating the culture wars that have taken over our politics, stoking fear and panic in our media landscape.

Together before a live audience at EartH Hackney, Ash and Aaron dug into the question of what has changed since the book was published. What can be learned from Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York? Does the left hate Britain? What do we need to do, in order to establish a ‘majority rule’? And is there such a thing as a middle-class dog?

The most powerful CEO in history is barely a person anymore. But it’s not just his X-addled brain that has transformed him. He has deeply integrated himself in the ‘cyborg collective’ – a world of electrons, brain implants, fantastical promises, financial systems, bots, and memes – he has made for himself.

Henry Ford gave his name to Fordism. According to Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, we’re entering a globe-spanning era of capitalism we might soon call ‘Muskism’.

Those two are the authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. It’s a whistle-stop tour of the world that made Musk, from the fortress futurism of Apartheid South Africa to the financial fabulations of the Bay Area. And, of course, the cyborg world that Musk is now making for us all.

They told me about what they see as Musk’s ongoing land grab in space, about what’s really going on with his plan for brain implants, how our supposed climate saviour became obsessed with prepping for the end of the world, and how Musk came to define an entirely new way of making technology – and not making it, but at least making it seem like you might.

Do Your Own Research is a new show about the systems that make modern life possible.

Music by Iglooghost.

Rising unemployment, increased military spending, and a decline in living standards for most people, including the middle class: the description fits both the 1930s and the 2020s. In the 1930s, it was a situation that morphed into the destruction and horror of the Second World War.

On Downstream with Aaron Bastani this week is Clara Mattei, professor of economics at the University of Tulsa, and author of ‘Escape From Capitalism: Economics Is Political and Other Liberating Truths’. Mattei’s PhD was on the relationship between austerity and fascism in inter-war Italy, and her book is a comparative study of Britain and Italy in that period.

What, they ask, is the relationship between austerity and fascism – both then and now? Is capitalism a ‘natural fact’, as its proponents would have you believe, or a contingent set of affairs designed and propped up by governments? And if capitalism is in fact a choice, how can we go about building an alternative?

Trillions of dollars of AI build-out. An economy poised on the edge of a giant crisis. Some say it’s a bubble. But what if it’s an entirely new kind of economics? One that has no need of humans at all?

Marek Poliks is the co-author with Roberto Alonso Trillo of Exocapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits. Together, they are the co-hosts of the Disintegrator podcast.

He speaks to Richard Hames about the head-spinning world of AI economics, what the left gets wrong about technofeudalism, and what will happen to all of us bags of meat when capitalism can simply run itself.

Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible.

Music by Iglooghost.

The final episode. Back in Westminster, Kojo confronts the human cost of hidden wealth – and asks if change is still possible.

Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.

Full credits and more information: https://novara.media/westminster

In episode three, the dark web of offshore finance connects Britain’s imperial past with its political present.

Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.

Full credits and more information: https://novara.media/westminster

In episode two, the trail leads offshore. From Westminster to the Cayman Islands, Kojo uncovers how tax havens are fuelling London’s housing crisis.

Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.

Full credits and information: https://novara.media/westminster

New four-part podcast. A homeless man dies in Westminster surrounded by vast wealth and empty homes. His death sparks a disturbing investigation into how secrecy and evasion have become normalised in the heart of British power.

Join Kojo Koram on 19th March at EartH in Hackney for a live event – Dark Money: How Billionaires Ruined Britain And How To Make Them Pay. Featuring Dalia Gebrial, Peter Geoghegan, Faiza Shaheen and Stephanie Brobbey. Tickets are available from Dice.

Full credits and information: https://novara.media/westminster

Nearly all of us on Earth live within a ‘nation-state’. Nation-states are an invisible and seemingly inevitable and eternal part of the infrastructure that forms our society: the water we swim in. Rarely do we pause to consider how this global system of nation-states came into being, and what might replace it after its gone. But as the United States wages a war of aggression on Iran, in a move that will drive up oil prices and the cost of living for ordinary citizens all over the world, the question presents itself anew: who do nation-states serve; what are they for?

On Downstream this week is the author and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose latest book, After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order, tackles these questions head-on. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, they discuss: What is a nation-state? How did they come to replace the role of religion in the liberal era? Do states need their citizens to have rights? What are the most salient challenges to the nation-state today? And were the gains in workers’ rights of the last century a sign that progress and democracy will triumph in the end, or something more like a historical blip?

[Audio error updated! Please refresh or re-download if correct episode isn’t playing.] Have the Greens got what it takes to become the main political vehicle of the radical left?

Following their Trip episode on Ecology, the ACFM crew take a closer look at Zack Polanski’s party as it nudges past Labour in the polls.

From the ’60s dream of ‘steady state economics’ to the anarcho-green convergence of ’90s rave culture, the Green tendency is mapped out by Nadia, Jem and Keir, with ideas from Playboy, Zack Goldsmith, David Icke and some sensible people too.

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Music by Matt Huxley.

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