Novara Media

Novara FM: The New Space Race Is an Arms Race w/ Daniel Deudney

In October 2024, SpaceX caught a rocket. An astonishing feat of engineering, it took humanity one giant leap closer to the era of everyday space travel – and possibly one small step closer to its own obliteration.

Downstream IRL: There’s No Such Thing As Green Capitalism w/ Andreas Malm

Global heating is a serious problem, but the question of just how urgently to fight it is a fraught one. Should 2C or 1.5C of warming be our limit? Or can we blow past these limits now, and come back down to them later,

ACFM Trip 47: Disruption

Disruption is a byword for success in the tech industry, but when it affects people’s daily routines – say, when JSO activists are slow-marching down a road – it becomes nothing short of criminal. On this Trip, Jem,

Novara FM: How MAGA Went Mainstream w/ Joshua Citarella

In 2016, the alt-right seemed to come from the internet and infest politics. In 2024, the internet and politics have become identical. Are we swimming in the world the alt-right built for us? Perhaps no one knows the world of online politics better t…

Downstream: What the Roman Empire Tells Us About the Collapse of the West W/ Peter Heather and John Rapley

Everyone knows that the Roman Empire rose, then fell. Historians don’t all agree on the reasons for the collapse, but their misunderstandings can shed plenty of light on the current state of the world, according to the authors of How Empires Fall: Ro…

Novara FM: What’s Next for AI Now It’s Ingested the Entire Internet? w/ Marek Poliks

The rise of artificial intelligence will bring about a planetary-scale shift in human life and politics – and, it seems, a lot of weird social media spam. But for all the grand pronouncements from techno-utopians and pessimists alike,

Downstream: Could Israel Become A Failed State? w/ Ilan Pappé

War is spreading throughout West Asia, a situation understood by many observers as an outgrowth of Israeli expansionism. In a return visit to Downstream, historian Ilan Pappé provides a century’s worth of context to the unfolding crisis.

Novara FM: How Do We Liberate People From Bad Ideas? w/ adrienne maree brown

In their new book Loving Corrections, adrienne maree brown poses a crucial conundrum for all progressive thinkers: how do we liberate people from bad ideas? One of America’s most energetic thinkers talks to Rivkah Brown about putting the pol back in …

Downstream: How War, Trade and Farming Changed the Planet Forever w/ Sunil Amrith

What if instead of talking about history from the perspective of humanity, we told it from the perspective of the resources that made human expansion possible? Sunil Amrith is a historian and author of The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of T…

Novara FM: The Age of Disaster Nationalism w/ Richard Seymour

Around the world, far-right movements are mobilising support by placing the blame for real catastrophes – Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, their own riots and insurrections – on entirely made-up enemies, among them Muslims, immigrants and feminists.