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Once upon a time we dreamed of a world free from household drudgery, helped by robot butlers, self-cleaning appliances and "smart" homes that saved energy and tidied after themselves. Yet despite decades of high-tech innovation in the home, we've barely reduced our workload – and still no one's managed to automate the folding of laundry.

So why is household labour stuck in the past? If technology won't save us, what kind of political fix will? And why does the list of chores just keep getting longer? These are some of the questions explored by Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek in their new book, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time.

Eleanor Penny visited Helen and Nick at home in Surrey to discuss the impact of automation on our domestic lives, the neoliberal fixation on the nuclear family, the possibility of public luxury, and how raising their own family has informed their thinking on the promise of the post-work society.

Novara Audio: Radio For A Different Politics

Novara FM: We Were Promised Robot Butlers w/ Helen Hester & Nick Srnicek

January is historically the busiest month of the year for holiday bookings. But if you've ever felt uncomfortable with the idea of being a tourist, you're not the first. Back in 1976, anthropologist Dean MacCannell theorised both our drive to see the world and its manipulation by capitalism in his book The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. 

Travel has changed almost beyond recognition since then: staged authenticity is the norm, and the places you're most likely to visit are sourced from Trip Advisor and Instagram. Plus, tourism is now shrouded in environmental guilt – what the Swedish call 'flygskam'.

Fifty years after The Tourist, Novara Media contributing editor Moya Lothian-McLean speaks to MacCannell about disaster tourism, how sightseeing became sacred and our destructive search for authenticity.

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Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics

Novara FM: Escaping the Tourism Trap w/ Dean MacCannell

James Butler is joined by Richard Seymour to discuss his book 'The Twittering Machine'. Are we all digital narcissists now? What has the rise of the social industry done to our politics? And can we break free of its emotional lures? http://novaramedia.com/?p=15280

Novara Media Podcast

#NovaraFM: Screen Capitalism: the Twittering Machine

James Butler is joined by Anna Minton, author of Ground Control and Big Capital. Drawing from her work encompassing the decline of council housing, the rise of capital-led 'regeneration' and growing precarity and homelessness, they ask: could this be a housing election? http://novaramedia.com/?p=15640

#NovaraFM: Where Will We Live?

James Butler is joined by Ann Pettifor, author of The Case for the Green New Deal, to discuss the relationship between ecology and economics, to explore Keynes's proto-localism, and discuss what the latest batch of economic figures tell us about the UK. https://novaramedia.com/?p=15811

#NovaraFM: Paying for the Planet? Ann Pettifor on the Green New Deal

James Butler is joined by Maya Goodfellow, author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, to discuss the history and politics of migration in the UK, what Windrush tells us about the migrations system, and whether migration will play a key role in this election. https://novaramedia.com/?p=15964