Novara Media Podcasts

Labour have held Holborn & St Pancras, was the Greens’ campaign lacklustre?

Plus: Anthropic has banned cruel behaviour towards its chatbots, Abdul Al-Sayed gives a masterclass & Jacob Rees-Mogg has a history lesson for Tucker Carlson.

With Michael Walker & Barry Malone.

Burnham is on his first official visit to the EU as Prime Minister, is he taking us all back with him?

Plus: We speak to the author of a new report on the profligacy of the arms industry, Mamdani is heckled by pro-Palestine supporters at an October 7th memorial and the right are in a spat over ethnonationalism. 

With NoJusticeMTG, Dalia Gebrial & Khem Rogaly.

Central London is the battleground on which UK progressive politics will hinge tomorrow. We preview the runners & riders ahead of our live coverage. 

Plus: The Tories pledge to scrap inheritance tax.

With Aaron Bastani, Michael Walker, Phil Davies, Paul Holden & Steven Methven.

Read Steven Methven’s report here: https://novaramedia.com/2026/10/07/how-labour-put-big-property-above-camdens-local-residents/

Protests over funding and conditions in French schools continue to grow, as more fires are lit and riot police deploy tear gas.

Plus: Pedro Sanchez’s leadership is on the line as Spain heads into a snap election, and Britain has threatened to expel diplomats in response to Israel’s decision to close a UK consulate.

With Michael Walker, Harrison Stetler & Paolo Gerbaudo.

Ash and Moya talk about porn, sex work, desire, ‘duty sex’ and more in a conversation sparked by a mystery question. Is AI-generated porn driving viewers to more extreme content? Has OnlyFans made it harder to be a woman on the internet? Plus: advice for a bisexual woman who’s got history with her new housemate.

CN: This episode contains mentions of child sexual abuse at 18m and 23m.

Watch Ash’s interview with Patricia Nilsson, author of Guilty Pleasure: https://novara.media/patricia

Send us your dilemmas: [email protected]

The Green Party conference has backed a controversial motion that classifies Zionism as a form of racism, revealing some stark divisions within the party.

Plus: Spain’s socialist Prime Minister has called for a surprise snap election, right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro takes a slender lead into Brazil’s electoral run-off & Prince Andrew is suing the police.

With Steven Methven, Ash Sarkar, Andrew Feinstein & Aldo Sauda Cordeiro.

Are we in the era of trauma Top Trumps? ‘Lived Experience’ has become a byword for standpoint authority and progressive politics. It has allowed people from marginalised groups to speak and be heard, and forced us to confront how power plays out in interpersonal dynamics. But it has also become a way for people to brand themselves online, and excuse antisocial or even downright nasty behaviours. Has ‘lived experience’ helped the left, or turned us into self-obsessed therapy-speakers, incapable of communicating with the majority of people?

At the latest Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Catherine Liu – cultural theorist, professor and author of Virtue Hoarders – to discuss her new book, Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering. Liu argues that as class politics has declined, the language of psychology has stepped in to explain problems rooted in capitalism. But what happens when trauma becomes content and politics gives way to what Liu calls the ‘gentrification of pain’? Is ‘lived experience’ a prerequisite for legitimate political analysis? Why do movements so often end up policing each other rather than confronting power? And if politics becomes about who’s hurting most, who benefits?

Welcome to Series 2 of Do Your Own Research. Until the end of the year, I will be focusing on the most important and interesting country in the world: China.

We’re starting with Tianyu Fang, an editor of Chaoyang Trap, a newsletter all about the Chinese internet.

We’re starting with the internet because that’s so much of what we see of China: fragments of life online. What’s the reality behind them, and how do we square these beguiling, details with the vast story of China’s rise?

What is happening online in China is often reduced to a few memes or movements. We see the dazzling skyline and we stop thinking, and start gawping: that’s what I call the gawp-zone. How do we get out of it?

In this conversation, we go deep into the circuits and technology of the Chinese internet, from its earliest utopian moments to the hemisphere-spanning computing stack we see today.

And we’ll be making our map of everything that has ever mattered and ever will: this new edition focused on China, available here: novaramedia.com/dyor

Zack Polanski has called for a 3-year cap on private rents. Elsewhere at Green Party conference, tensions are running high over a motion to declare that Zionism equates to racism.

Plus: Fires have broken out in French schools as students across the country protest funding and conditions, and Suella Braverman’s argument that only white people can be English goes down like a lead balloon with the Question Time audience.

With Michael Walker, Clare Hymer, Molly Harris & Cole Stangler.

Read Clare Hymer’s report here:

Who Does the Green Party’s ‘Zionism Is Racism’ Motion Really Serve?

Andy Burnham’s announcement of a triple lock shakeup has plunged Britain’s competing parties into chaos.

Plus: Another botched execution in the US reopens the death penalty discourse, and Andy Burnham’s wild decision to back Manchester City amid one of the biggest football controversies of all time.

With NoJusticeMTG, Dalia Gebrial, Maya Foa & Jan Zglinski.