In this Trip episode, Jem, Nadia and Keir debate the meaning of 'mainstream' – something none of them could ever possibly be, of course. 

Is 'woke' the new 'mainstream'? Can there be a mainstream if we don't all have access to the same culture? Is Tommy Robinson shifting the Overton Window? Why is nonconformity associated with coolness? And who engineers the 'typical girl'? The gang answer these questions and more, with ideas from Raymond Williams and Perry Anderson and songs from Pulp and The Slits.

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ACFM Trip 56: The Mainstream

Did you know that the standard of Google searches has actually gotten worse over recent years? Once you think about it, it makes sense. Highly effective search means fewer searches overall. And fewer searches means less ad revenue. The financial basis of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company, is, of course, digital advertising. Which means that undermining the quality of the company’s cornerstone product actually makes money. That’s how crazy the modern internet has become. There are, as the saying goes, many such cases.

Cory Doctorow, this week’s Downstream guest, has a word for this phenomenon: ‘Ensh*tification’. He’s written a book about it too. In front of a live audience at EartH Hackney, Aaron Bastani sat down with him to discuss it, and the implications of an internet that just gets worse.  

Ensh*tification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It explains the destruction of the internet by monopolistic, multi-trillion dollar forces. Silicon Valley, once a source for technologically-infused optimism, is now destroying the information space we all share. The internet still brings immeasurable value, of course, but the cost-benefit for society, and users, is increasingly up for debate. And things are only headed in one direction. 

Doctorow argues that the rise of conspiracism, surveillance, addiction, and fraud is no accident. Instead, he claims, all are inextricably linked as Big Tech, led by some of the world’s wealthiest people, seeks to extract maximum value by undermining our very sense of reality. 

So why does our online public square increasingly resemble a dumpster fire? How come, where I could once follow friends and loved ones, I’m now bombarded by AI slop? And is this deteriorating experience of the internet now bleeding into the physical world too?

Over 90 minutes Aaron and Cory discuss the book’s most eye-opening case studies, unpicking the insidious tactics employed by the tech giants, and revealing just how unscrupulous these companies are. Their end goal is, in many ways, at odds with a civilised, democratic society.

Downstream: The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse Forever w/ Cory Doctorow

NEW LIVE SHOW! Join us at Crossed Wires festival in Sheffield on 4th July 2026. Presale tickets available at 11AM on 10th December – go to crossedwires.live and use the code CW26EARLY.

After watching the Wicked sequel, Moya wonders if politeness is stopping us from seriously addressing women’s shrinking bodies and changing faces. Are we allowing extreme thinness to be normalised? Plus: can you mould your partner into someone better?

CN: From 15:30, eating disorders. From 50:00, rape.

Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com
Music by Matt Huxley.

92: Should we say something about women’s shrinking bodies?

Since Hamas launched its assault on October 7th, 2023, the group has become synonymous with evil in large parts of the Western media. Condemnation has come at the expense of critical engagement with the group’s actions, objectives, and history, leaving a vacuum that has been filled with racist assumptions and conspiracy theories.

Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian scholar whose doctoral thesis on Hamas was published in 2018 as a book, ‘Hamas Contained’. The book drew on interviews with the organisation’s leaders and their archives. Tareq’s goal when writing it was to ‘get out of the way’ and let the group speak for itself. Tareq’s newest book, ‘A Fire in Every Direction,’ is a memoir about growing up as a queer Palestinian man in Amman. The title is a reference to Tareq’s activist mother, who fought for Palestinian liberation from exile.

In conversation with Ash Sarkar, Tareq traces the group from its inception in the Muslim Brotherhood, to an armed resistance group, and then a democratically elected party. How did the group rise to power in Gaza? What were the conditions under which they adopted violence as a strategy? Did October 7 go as planned, or was there a miscalculation? And how is Tareq making sense of this moment in time, in the face of the ongoing genocide by Israel against the people of Palestine?

Downstream: The Truth About Hamas, October 7th & Israel’s Ongoing Genocide w/ Tareq Baconi

NEW: Join us at Crossed Wires festival in Sheffield on 4th July 2026. Tickets are available now from crossedwires.live!

Ash and Moya debate the pros and cons of feeling shame after Ash reveals that her own moral universe is governed by guilt. Plus: what to do about a best friend with a mean streak.

Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com
Music by Matt Huxley.

93: I’m addicted to guilt. What’s wrong with me?

Ash and Moya are joined by author, musician and podcaster Jordan Stephens to talk about changing attitudes to gender, dating and relationships. Are we regressing into essentialist ideas of gender? Is having a boyfriend embarrassing? Plus: advice for a disappointed wife – with help from our audience. 
Recorded live at EartH in East London on 16 December (apologies for the bass bleed from the other venue!).

Further reading: Sam Jennings – The Trouble with Men and Women; Chanté Joseph – Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?

Send us your dilemmas: ifispeak@novaramedia.com
Music by Matt Huxley.

94: Resentment, hostility, scarcity… is this modern dating? w/ Jordan Stephens

Following the recent Trip episode about the meaning of mainstream, this time gang go deeper into ‘Mainstream’ – that is, the new soft-left faction inside Labour. That’s right, a festive episode about the inner workings of a political party! Don’t say we don’t spoil you.

Jem, Nadia and Keir explain the emergence of Mainstream’s ‘radical realists’ – who include Andy Burnham and Clive Lewis – with a brief history of the political tendencies that have shaped and split the Labour Party since the second world war. 

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ACFM Microdose: The 'Radical Realists' of Mainstream, Labour's New Faction

Norman Finkelstein is one of the west’s leading anti-Zionist scholars. The son of Holocaust survivors, he has spent his life studying and critiquing Israel’s assault on Palestine, decades before it became socially acceptable to do so.

Yet despite having dedicated his career to it, by the day before Hamas’ attack in October 2023, Norman had all but given up on the cause of Palestinian liberation. His most recent book on the subject had sold 370 copies. When news of the attack arrived, Norman knew people would want to hear from him. He wrestled with what to say, eventually coming to the view that Hamas’ actions could be viewed through the lens of the slave rebellions in the early 1800s: heinous acts of violence borne out of desperate circumstances. Acts that he could not condemn.

​In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Norman tells the story of his parents’ lives before the war, and the life they built in the shadow of the Holocaust. Could they speak about what they had been through? How did their experience impact Norman’s work and his devotion to the truth? What was it like arguing with his mentor, Noam Chomsky? And what is Israel’s endgame?

Downstream: ‘Gaza Is Over, It’s Gone. There’s Nothing Left’ w/ Norman Finkelstein

Ash Sarkar and Aaron Bastani joined each other on 17th December for a special end-of-year Downstream, wrapping up the year in politics.

251229_Downstream_w_Ash_Sarkar_and_Aaron_Bastani

released November 27, 2018 
Written and performed by Slag Queens 

Recorded and mixed by Jordan Marson 
Mastered by Mikey Young 
Photo by Dan Kolencik 

Video by Sam Mountford & Tessa Campbell 
youtu.be/gQ1g1rSyECc 

Released by Rough Skies Records 2018 
www.roughskiesrecords.bandcamp.com 

Waterfall was written and recorded in lutruwita/Tasmania. Slag Queens acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community who are the Traditional Owners of the land. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty never ceded. 

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, and through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.