The Indian election will be one of the largest the world has ever seen, with almost 1 billion people eligible to vote. It’s often said that India is the world’s biggest democracy. But what if that isn’t quite true? What if Narendra Modi, India’s likely future prime minister, has undermined the very building blocks of […]

The involuntary celibate community (aka ‘incels’) are often thought to be rightwing, white supremacist, and prone to violence. But how much of that is true? Ash Sarkar is joined by William Costello – a researcher whose work focuses on the psychology of incels – to discuss what we get wrong about incels, what incels get […]

Common sense tells us that free-market economies maximise freedom and that planned economies, typically found under socialist governments, curtail it. But what if this is completely the wrong way around? On this episode of Downstream Aaron is joined by economist and author Grace Blakeley to discuss Henry Ford, Boeing and the nature of democracy You […]

Teresa Thornhill is an author and former child protection lawyer. Throughout her long career, working for both local authorities and advocating on behalf of parents, she has been a first hand witness to how the system fails parents, social workers and, most importantly, children.    Teresa sat down with Aaron to talk about the untrained […]

It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove. For years, Forensic Architecture has exposed state crimes against civilians, nature, and humanity. This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar meets FA’s director Eyal Weizman, to discuss Israel’s settler colonial project, the police killing of Mark Duggan, and how the testimony of blindfolded torture victims helped […]

Abby Martin is an advocate, journalist, and host of the Empire Files. She joins Ash Sarkar to talk about being politicised by the war on terror, working at Russia Today, and how Israelis really talk about Palestinians.

For a special edition of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar is joined by philosopher, author, and one of the world’s most cited academics, Judith Butler. Their new book, ‘Who’s Afraid of Gender’ charts how a transphobic moral panic morphed into an all-our war on so-called ‘gender ideology’. Together, Ash and Judith explore how Britain became TERF […]

With hindsight, the wars waged by the US and Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq look like terrible failures, both strategically and politically: the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, and living standards are worse in Iraq than they were before Saddam Hussein. In his book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and […]

Peter Hitchens is an author and journalist whose contrarian takes on drug policy, education and foreign policy have found him occupy a singular place in the British media – with his brand of conservatism often angering audiences who would consider themselves staunchly conservative. He sat down with Aaron to discuss grammar schools, Gaza and Britain’s […]

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 […]