Novara Media

Downstream: The Right Is Winning. Here’s How We Change That w/ Ash Sarkar

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?

Do Your Own Research: How Musk’s Paranoid Empire Really Works w/ Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff

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.

Downstream: The Middle Class Is Collapsing. Fascism Could Be Next w/ Clara Mattei

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?

Do Your Own Research: Welcome to the Slavery-Driven Slop Economy w/ Marek Poliks

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.

Death in Westminster: 4. The Tunnel

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 [https://dice.fm/event/oevl5r-dark-money-how-billionaires-destroyed-britain-and-how-to-make-them-pay-19th-mar-earth-london-tickets]. Full credits and more information: https://novara.media/westminster Produced by Planet B Productions and distributed by Novara Media.