Major General Charlie Herbert has stood out in recent months for his vociferous condemnation of Israel’s war on Palestinians. His media appearances have proven vital in synthesising a moral and strategic critique of war in which civilians are treated in a manner he characterises as unprecedented. He sat down with Ash to talk about serving […]
Gary Stevenson went from being Citibank’s most profitable trader to one of the world’s most incisive critics of the financial system. Gary sat down with Aaron to discuss the lightbulb moment that led him away from trading, why economists can’t predict anything and why the UK middle class is doomed.
Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and author who served as Greek Finance Minister in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash. Since then, he has become one of the most sought after public speakers on the left. He joined Aaron for a IRL edition of Downstream at EartH in Hackney, North-East London to talk […]
Yousef Alhelou has spent the four or so months since October 7th covering the Israeli assault on Gaza through his Instagram account. In that time his audience has grown by hundreds of thousands. Aaron sat down with Yousef to talk about international law, the genocide in Gaza and Britain’s complicity in it.
If you’re serious about alleviating poverty, as most liberals claim to be, should there be a cap on how wealthy one person can be? To discuss this, Ash sat down with Ingrid Robeyns – author of ‘Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth’ – to talk about why she’s reluctant to call herself a communist, a […]
Twenty years ago, it was taken for granted that on average, globally, people were shrugging off the shackles of organised religion. The world was destined for secularism. But with demographics trends in many countries pointing towards a growing religious population and with secular liberal politics failing to offer solace from falling living standards, we no […]
We are in a drastically different world from the one most of us grew up in. This has been proven by the rapid escalation in the events in the middle east over the last six weeks. No longer are we in a world where, essentially, the US run the show – and this has huge […]
The framing of the discussion around climate change mainly focuses on mitigating rising temperatures, de-carbonising and getting to ‘net zero’. Author and broadcaster Gaia Vince argues that, whilst these things are important, we need to focus on how we’ll deal with what is already happening and will, in all likelihood, get much much worse: huge […]
From his radical youth in 1970s Italy to his research as one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli is as comfortable talking politics as he is explaining quantum theory. He sat down with Aaron to talk about the future of Europe, white holes and why simulation theory is “bullsh*t”. Rovelli’s book White Holes […]
For our end-of-year edition of Downstream, the Novara Media team look back on the biggest stories of the year. Ash Sarkar is joined by Moya Lothian-McLean, Michael Walker and Owen Jones to talk about the Labour Party, the climate crisis, the rise of AI and the war on Gaza. This conversation was recorded live in […]
Asset management companies like Blackrock, Vanguard and Macquarie have avoided real scrutiny for decades, but their secretive activities are starting to attract attention from political researchers and academics. What do these companies do, and what risk do they pose to society? Author and academic Brett Christophers sets out to answer this question in his new […]
From advising former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to heading up the U.S. / Middle East Peace Project, Daniel Levy has had a front row seat at some of the most consequential peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine in the last two decades. He sat down with Ash to talk about genocide, the central role […]
Blindboy Boatclub is the Irish broadcaster, author and musician behind The Blindboy Podcast, a massively popular show mixing short fiction, comedy and interviews. His new short story collection, Topographia Hibernica, is inspired by the human, animal and emotional geography of Ireland. Blindboy sat down with Ash for a freewheeling discussion about everything from Eminem’s ’90s […]
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books focussing on the Middle East including The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine. He explains some of the basic facts of the struggle for Palestinian independence and the history of the creation of the Zionist project […]
Zarah Sultana is one of the youngest MPs in Parliament and has faced intense hostility from the right of her party since Keir Starmer’s ascent to leader. The MP for Coventry South sat down with Ash Sarkar to talk about the grim reality of being a Muslim woman in the Labour Party.
Many people around the world are already living in a cashless society. With the dominion of Visa and Mastercard showing no sign of shrinking, it’s vital to scrutinise exactly what this shift means. Brett Scott is an author and former banker, who is deeply committed to evaluating the grave dangers surrounding the removal of cash […]
Slavoj Žižek is perhaps the most famous living Marxist philosopher. In 2023, he has written 3 books with topics ranging from the nature of freedom to his intensely pessimistic view of the future. He sat down with Aaron to talk about Israel and Palestine, Deep Fakes and the legacy of Stalin.
The 2010s saw a new era of mass protest, from Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, to Occupy Wall Street, EuroMaidan and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Many of these movements shared a “horizontalist” or leaderless approach and most of them ended in failure. Vincent Bevins experienced some of these movements up close. In […]
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