Last year, Zack Polanski’s Green Party suggested changes could be made to Britain’s prohibitionist approach to drugs – and felt the full force of the mainstream media’s indignation. But all over the world, the War on Drugs is shifting shape. Drugs are being legalised and commercialised. America now has its first legal weed-selling billionaire, while others serve out huge prison sentences for possession. Ash Sarkar sat down with Professor Kojo Koram, to discuss his latest book The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs, which travels from a plantation-turned-prison in Louisiana to the psychedelic boom of Silicon Valley. So what does a drug policy fit for the 21st century actually look like?  

We need critical minerals for the green transition, the military and the AI boom. In barely a year, lithium and the rare earths have become some of the most fought-over objects on earth. But the scarcity is manufactured — by refineries, choke points and the states that control them. Richard talks to Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, about what these minerals really are, the gutted landscapes the green transition runs on, and the new geopolitics of extraction, from Trumpian state capitalism to Latin America to China.

Mariana Mazzucato is a towering figure in contemporary economics, best known for her work on the entrepreneurial state and mission-oriented economics. Her congregation is broad, ranging from an ascendant Andy Burnham, to the Pope, to Marco Rubio. Ash Sarkar sat down with her in front of a live audience at EartH Theatre in Hackney to test the ideas in her new book, The Common Good Economy.   Support

A weird-left look at the magical properties of resilience, from the colonial legacy of the stiff upper lip to contemporary narratives of trauma and victimhood. Nadia, Keir and Jem wonder whether humans and animals can flourish in the ruins of capitalism, and what a left politics of resilience could look like in an era of constant economic and climate shocks. No tunes in this show, but plenty of ideas from Catherine Liu, Sheryl Sandberg, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and more. Find the books mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Follow our ever-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching ‘ACFM’. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

Daniel Levy is a British-Israeli analyst, commentator, and former Israeli government negotiator whose biography reads like a map of the peace process’s rise and fall. Ash Sarkar sat down with him as a new Iran deal is announced, with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz set to reopen and the US-Iran ceasefire extended for 60 days. In this conversation, Daniel picks apart what these peace negotiations are really about. What does Israel really want? Who blinked first, the US or Iran? And how does a ceasefire announcement from the Oval Office differ fundamentally from long and lasting peace? Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

Secret backrooms where deals are done in private: the realm of conspiracy theories? Or an increasingly large part of capitalism? Since the financial crisis, some of the big winners have been private equity firms. They’ve snapped up bargains on everything from high street brands, to care homes and nurseries – and maybe even the house you own. Hettie O’Brien is a journalist for The Guardian and the author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself. She spoke to Richard Hames about private equity’s secret influence over the ways we are all born, work, and die – and what it all has to do with the rise of the far right.   See the full Do Your Own Research map here: https://novaramedia.com/category/video/do-your-own-research/ Music by Iglooghost.

The war on terror ended in 2021 with a catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the consequences of that conflict continue to play out both overseas and at home. Aaron Bastani sat down with investigative journalist Matt Kennard, founder of Declassified UK, to talk about the status of the American empire, Trump’s war-hungry administration, and how the US government has been captured by Netanyahu. Matt’s new book is Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members and Criminals. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

The so-called ceasefire in Gaza has not ended the genocide. The bombing runs may be quieter, but the bulldozers roar on. Israel is tearing up homes, orchards, schools and hospitals, then flattening the rubble to erase the memory that Palestinian life was ever there. To understand this architecture of death, Richard Hames spoke to Eyal Weizman, author of Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide and founder of Forensic Architecture. His team builds meticulous 3D reconstructions from the scattered traces of an event – phone footage, survivor testimony, documented shrapnel – to prove what really happened, even when states want it covered up. Their work is rigorous enough to have been submitted in South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ. Get the map here: https://novaramedia.com/category/video/do-your-own-research/ Music by Iglooghost.

It has been a year since Aaron Bastani first met with AI investigative journalist Karen Hao, to discuss her book Empire of AI.  A year is a long time, in the fastest growing sector on the planet. To bring us up to date, Aaron and Karen sat down again to discuss the major shifts in the empire – and their impacts on us all.  Billions of people now use, AI as it has become more integrated into our lives, from chatbots, Google searches, predictive text, and beyond. At the same time, there has been a groundswell of fear and even anger about the arrival of the most disruptive technology of the 21st century: its impact on jobs, its use of resources, and the reckless behaviour of its billionaire founders. What have been the changes at the top of the major AI companies: OpenAI, Google, xAI and Anthropic? As Elon Musk approaches trillionaire status, how is he making this much money? What impact is the rollout of AI at such speed and scale having on the economy? What forms of resistance to this form of AI are emerging?  And why are billionaires all choosing to build their bunkers in New Zealand?

The ACFM crew gather for a close reading of Walter Benjamin’s foundational contribution to 20th century cultural and media theory. Download the short text and follow along as Nadia, Keir and Jem consider The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, published in 1935. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support