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 […]
John Gray’s writing on political philosophy is not easily pigeonholed. Over the last 50 or so years, he has favoured ideas that span the political spectrum and pissed almost everybody off – his central thesis being that growth and progress are not inevitable. In his latest book The New Leviathans, his attention turns to the […]
From his early career following Nelson Mandela on the campaign trail to his stint as US Correspondent for The Guardian, Gary Younge has been one of the most thoughtful and compassionate voices on the UK left. Gary sits down with Ash to talk about his time in Soviet Russia, his problem with skiing and the […]
In his new book, ‘Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism’, Yanis Varoufakis explores how giant tech firms, both in the US and China are expanding their control over the planet. His analysis is that, whilst material resources certainly matter, the real battle ground is over digital real estate. Aaron sat down with Yanis to talk about how […]
In Doppelganger, Naomi Klein takes a journey into the uncanny world of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory and far right propaganda. As she goes through the looking glass, she discovers dark forces bent on warping our politics in their image. What starts as a story of mistaken identity with her namesake Naomi Wolf, soon becomes a parable […]
Nick Dearden has been an economic justice campaigner for over 20 years. His attention was focused on the pharmaceutical industry just as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe. But as the world started to sing the praises of ‘Big Pharma’, Nick saw an unprecedented PR coup. Giant corporations capitalised on the crisis, tightening their stranglehold […]
Most people know that the game is rigged. Those who set the rules – win the game. Grace Blakeley has made a career of studying the rules, exposing the exploitative ways in which powerful institutions govern our lives and figuring out ways in which we can beat the banker and resist the game itself. Grace […]
Who exactly are the ruling class? The conspicuous top hat and tailed Bullingdon Club still exert dominance, but their era is waning and new folks are in town. They can’t beat the obscene wealth of petrostate oligarchs, so they’ve joined them – ransacking the country. Ash is joined by Sam Bright, author of: ‘Bullingdon Club […]
The media and the public seem to be fixated on sex scandals this year, from household names in the headlines to salacious rumours spread on social media. But haven’t we always been intrigued by the private lives of those in power? Ash Sarkar is joined by Novara Live researcher Steven Methven to delve into the […]
With more strikes taking place and ever rising inequality, you’d think the left would be well-placed to talk about class with authority. But what if the movement had made a disastrous error when trying to understand the state of our nation? And what if we’re still missing a fundamental bit of understanding? Sociologist and trade […]
Since 2016 we’ve seen mainstream politics take a turn for the weird, epitomised by the surprise success of populist projects like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. And fringe views have continued to muscle into the middle ground, with conspiracy theories and far-right talking points trickling into political discourse. Julia Ebner has been charting […]
After the summer of 2020, the liberal consensus was that in order to tackle racism one had to look inwards. White people had to look inside themselves and ‘do the work’. In 2023 this ethic has spread from well-meaning allies on Twitter to the HR departments of corporate behemoths like BlackRock, all while institutions that […]
Most peoples lives are defined by the exchange of labour for a wage – but what if they weren’t? What if the state gave us a regular wage with zero strings attached, to spend as we wish? Proponents of this idea call it ‘Universal Basic Income’. Aaron is joined by Will Stronge, Director of Research […]
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