In the middle of a grave cost of living crisis, bosses at Royal Mail, BT and elsewhere are imposing pay increases on workers way below inflation. On Downstream, Aaron Bastani speaks to CWU General Secretary Dave Ward about corporate greed, the shadowy world of CEOs, the return of the working class and how he plans to coordinate direct action beyond his union’s own disputes.

Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics

Downstream: The Moral Crisis in Corporate Britain w/ Dave Ward

On the day that Liz Truss wins the Tory leadership content and thus becomes Britain's next Prime Minister Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar discuss what a Truss premiership means.

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Novara Audio: Radio For A Different Politics

TyskySour: Liz Truss Is Now Britain’s PM

In 2011, while working as a City trader, Gary Stevenson joined the ranks of the ultra-rich with a single bonus cheque. Not long after, he was named one of Citibank’s highest-performing traders worldwide. Stevenson made millions for his employer by betting on one thing: that inequality would worsen and living standards would fall. It made him rich, but miserable. Stevenson left his job to campaign on inequality. In this interview with Aaron Bastani, he tells the story of his ascent to the peak of the financial world and reveals the plan to destroy the middle class.

Downstream: The Plan is to Make you Permanently Poorer w/ Gary Stevenson

ACFM reunite for spooky season with one thing on their minds: the horror, the horror!

Nadia, Jeremy and Keir embark on a historical, literary and cinematic exploration of scary stuff. Why do (some) humans love to be terrified? What can horror teach us about the nature of the universe? What do the latest crop of scary movies say about the fears plaguing our society?

From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Jordan Peele's 'Get Out', from H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror to Sigmund Freud's idea of the uncanny, the gang discuss books and ideas spanning several centuries – along with music from Bauhaus, Gravediggaz and Metallica.

An ever-expanding playlist of all the music discussed on the show can be found on Spotify – just search ACFM. Remember you can find the  version of this show on Novara Media's SoundCloud.


Books: Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness / Sigmund Freud – The Uncanny / Susan Hill – The Woman in Black / Stephen King – On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft / H.P. Lovecraft – Various / Paul Santilli – 'Culture, Evil, and Horror’ / Mary Shelley – Frankenstein / Bram Stoker – Dracula / Horace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto / H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds

Films: Everything Everywhere All At Once / Get Out / Halloween / Invasion of the Bodysnatchers / Night of the Living Dead / Poltergeist / Rosemary's Baby / White Zombie

Music: Dave Matthews Band - 'Halloween' / Bauhaus - 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' / Warren Zevon - 'Werewolves of London' / Jegsy Dodd - 'A Scouse Werewolf in London' / Metallica - 'Enter Sandman' / Ray Parker Jr - 'Ghostbusters' / Gravediggaz - 'Diary of a Madman' / Insane Clown Posse - 'Hocus Pocus' / Black Sabbath - 'Paranoid'

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS Licence Number: LE-0016481

ACFM Trip 28: Horror

As Sunak continues to defend Braverman's decisions over Marston, the Home Office is dumping asylum seekers in London without anywhere to stay. How low can this government go?

Plus: Netanyahu is back in power after general elections in Israel; and Matt Hancock's decision to go on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

With Dalia Gebrial and Ash Sarkar.

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TyskySour: Tories Defend Manston Conditions

Nancy Fraser joins PTO to talk about her new book, 'Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It'. In the book, Nancy argues that we need to move away from seeing capitalism solely in economic terms, and instead reckon with how capital is always reliant on cannibalising the non-economic, from the natural environment to providers of care and social reproduction, and from the political sphere to racialised populations subject to brutal expropriation outside of the wage system.

Why capitalism is not 'an economy' w/ Nancy Fraser

Welcome to Pro Revolution Soccer, a football podcast that doesn't leave politics at the turnstile. In the first episode of a five-part series, Keir Milburn and Tom Williams confront the most corrupt, rapacious and deadly World Cup in sporting history. 

Repulsed by football's hyper-capitalism but compromised by their desire to watch Wales v England, Keir and Tom bring together political and tactical analysis in an episode of two halves. 

They're joined this week by Novara Media's Ash Sarkar and writer and tactician Alex Stewart, formerly of Tifo Football, to talk sporting boycotts, World Cup players-to-watch and the missing England song.

Catch a new episode of PRS every Friday until the end of the World Cup. 

Music by Matt Huxley. Produced by Chal Ravens. Design by Pietro Garrone. Name by Tim Burrow.

Pro Revolution Soccer Ep 1: Should We Boycott the Qatar World Cup?

The Aids Coalition To Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP, is one of the most effective social movements in American history. New York City author and activist Sarah Schulman has returned many times to the lessons and provocations of this radically decentralised, unapologetically confrontational direct action group, which was founded in 1987 with one goal: to end the Aids crisis.

Yet through her work on ACT UP, Schulman has documented not just the legacy of Aids activism and alternative queer culture but their gradual erasure. And the process of forgetting, she says, is intimately connected to the processes of gentrification that have captured our cities and our minds in the last three decades.

In this episode, Schulman expands on ideas from her 2012 memoir The Gentrification of the Mind and her recent political history of ACT UP, Let The Record Show, to speak to Eleanor Penny about activism, queer culture, urbanity, global health and how cities produce revolutionary ideas. For more on the history of ACT UP, visit the oral history archive.

Novara FM: There Was No Theory, It Was All Action w/ Sarah Schulman

After the 2008 financial crisis, a vast number of people were booted from the formal labour market. Many of them ended up in the gig economy: Uber, Deliveroo, Fiverr. Their exploitation at the hands of these platforms is well known, but often overlooked are the processes of racialisation that contribute to this reorganisation of labour power.

In this episode, Eleanor Penny talks to TyskySour co-host Dalia Gebrial about her PhD research into what she terms 'racial platform capitalism'. Looking at Uber drivers and nannies in particular, Dalia explains how 'the racial fix' is used to justify the surveillance and punishment of a disposable workforce, and how Britain's imperial past has produced a lineage of exploitation stretching 'from plantation to platform'.

Dalia's paper, 'Racial platform capitalism: Empire, migration and the making of Uber in London', is available to read online at Sage Journals.

Novara FM: From Plantation to Platform w/ Dalia Gebrial

What is it about Twitter that turns us into such objectionable creatures? What has social media done to the language we use and the way we interact with each other? Ash Sarkar talks to Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine, about the state of social media: tweets, memes, grief trolling, outrage porn, duckface, Spidermen and Jorts the Cat. Could our urge to tweet be diverted towards a more politically useful kind of writing?

Downstream: Twitter's Toxic Downfall w/ Richard Seymour

Ghosts have already got their own festival: Halloween. So why do they spook us at Christmas too? Do they represent forces of goodness and charity, or some nameless demonic evil? And what gifts have they brought?

Jeremy Gilbert shields his eyes from the ghostly apparitions of Jacques Derrida, Lee 'Scratch' Perry and M.R. James as he explores the connections between festive cheer and spectral fear in this Microdose, which accompanies the recent Trip episode on Gifts.

An ever-expanding playlist of all the music discussed on the show can be found on Spotify – just search ACFM.

Books & articles: M.R. James - Collected Ghost Stories / Jacques Derrida - Specters of Marx / Plato - Phaedrus / Francis Fukuyama - The End of History and the Last Man / Mark Fisher - Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures / Raymond Williams - Border Country / Jeffrey Sconce - Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television / Steven Connor - 'Angels in the architecture: the economy of the supernatural' / David Toop - Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory / Derek Johnston - Haunted Seasons: Television Ghost Stories for Christmas and Horror for Halloween / Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol

Music: Pierre Schaeffer - 'Etude aux chemins de fer' / Brian Eno and David Byrne - 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' / Lee Perry (The Upsetters) - 'Black Board Jungle' / Burial - 'Archangel' / Rufige Kru - 'Ghosts of My Life' / The Sabres of Paradise - 'Haunted Dancehall'

Downstream: The Plan is to Make you Permanently Poorer w/ Gary Stevenson

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