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In the Mao era, ‘barefoot doctors’ got just a few months of training before being sent out to straighten broken bones and administer vaccines.

Now China’s researchers make world-class cancer drugs, cheap surgical robots and cutting edge brain-computer interfaces. Its doctors make AI-powered avatars of themselves to deal with ever more patients.

But China is growing old before it grows rich. Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular problems are ballooning. And its aging crisis is coming on faster because of the legacy of its one-child policy. How will China adapt?

Ruby Wang worked on the NHS Covid frontline before becoming Head of Health at the British Embassy in Beijing. And now she’s written The China Cure: The Rise of Biotech, AI Medicine and a Global Health Superpower.

She tells Richard Hames how China got from barefoot doctors to high-tech hospitals, what it learned from Covid, and what the NHS could learn from China.

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0:00 Intro02:48 China’s Medical Transformation9:31 China’s Zero-Covid Response and the Barefoot Doctors22:32 Bone Glue, Artemisinin and Traditional Chinese Medicine34:42 Covid QR Codes vs UK Track and Trace, and AI in Chinese Healthcare45:16 NHS vs China: Digital Health Records and Drug Development55:40 Chinese Surgical Robots and Brain-Computer Interfaces1:06:50 China’s Ageing Population, Falling Birth Rate and Who Pays for Healthcare

You’ve probably heard of Boots Riley’s work – Sorry To Bother You starring LaKeith Stanfield was a surprise hit, and his series I’m A Virgo got picked up by Amazon Prime. But the Oakland-raised rapper-turned-director doesn’t just want you to leave the cinema having had a good time: he wants you to start a revolution.

His new film I Love Boosters – starring the incredibly charming Keke Palmer – is about three women who shoplift from high end boutiques, and sell the clothes at a cut price in the hood. But it wouldn’t be a Boots Riley film if it stopped there. What starts as a paean to shoplifters turns into a story of working class shop floor organisation – and international communist action.

Is all art propaganda? Is shoplifting a revolutionary act? What role does style play in the revolution? And what’s it like being the most high profile communist in Hollywood, in Trump’s America?

Spoilers Warning: Information about the plot is disclosed at 17:50 – 19:20, 26:40 – 27:50, and 54:10 – 54:50.

00:00 Introduction

00:53 What’s It Like Being a Communist in Hollywood?

02:24 The Contradictions of Having Radical Politics Under Capitalism

03:23 “Suits for Rage”: The Contradictions We All Embody

08:27 How Boots Riley Became Communist

09:03 Exposing Injustice Isn’t Enough: Action is Needed

11:24 What Actually Makes People Join Movements?

13:08 Hollywood’s Problem With Radical Politics

20:10 On Craft, Creativity and Alienation

23:08 Boots Riley’s Superhero Origin Story

31:00 General Strike Now!

35:02 Every Film Is Political

42:28 Is the Right Better at Propaganda?

48:05 How the Cops Manufactured a Shoplifting Panic

53:08 It’s All Propaganda

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Ever felt like an imposter? Jem, Nadia and Keir offer a weird-left analysis of confidence – from market dynamics and private school to the power of positive thinking – with ideas from Barbara Ehrenreich, Dale Carnegie and Foucault.

For the musical version of this episode – featuring Wiley, Dolly Parton and Gloria Gaynor – head to our SoundCloud:

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Through the 1990s and the 2000s, the West told itself a story: let China get rich, and it’ll become like us. But then China got rich – and it become less and less like the West.

Kaiser Kuo – host of the Sinica Podcast, former Baidu executive, and founding guitarist of China’s first heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty – thinks we need to reckon with this fact: that China has not only now caught up, but is making its own path in modernity.

China has replaced liberal democracy with a strange alloy of Confucianism, Leninism, technocracy, state capitalism and markets – and that combination is outperforming the West. What liberals assumed was the triumphant end of history might turn out to have been a historical cul-de-sac.

Kaiser and Richard Hames talk Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington, Wang Huning and the late Qing Dynasty, solar panels and performance legitimacy, and discuss what happens when the future stops looking Western.

Explore the map of everything in the world that has ever mattered.

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00:00 Intro

03:35 Is Chinese Tech The Best?

10:42 The Great Reckoning: Why the West Must Rethink China

21:56 Confucianism, Leninism and Technocracy

31:03 Confucianism and Modern China

41:44 Can China’s State Control Capitalism?

52:04 Many Kinds of Modernity: China as a Model and China Shock 2.0

1:02:53 Green Energy, Industrial Policy and US-China Convergence

1:16:20 Fukuyama, Huntington and Wang Huning: Visions of the Future

In Brighton, for a special recording of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Naomi Klein, and organiser, writer and co-founder of the Debt Collective, Astra Taylor. They gathered to discuss their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World.

An apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is gathering momentum. They aren’t just exploiting collapse, they’re provoking and accelerating it, whilst protecting themselves from the fallout. The world’s fate is increasingly in the hands of men who are ambivalent about its survival and betting money on the end.

Already, anger at the building of data centres is cutting across left and right, in a way that climate politics rarely has – but how do we make sure that anger is heard? How do we separate necessary alarm from fatalism? And what can we prepare for the impending AI crash? 

End Times Fascism (2026) by Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor: https://shop.novaramedia.com/products/end-times-fascism