Downstream: We Are Witnessing the Return of Empires & the End of Nations w/ Rana Dasgupta
Novara Media
Novara Media
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 97 minutes
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Summary
Nearly all of us on Earth live within a ‘nation-state’. Nation-states are an invisible and seemingly inevitable and eternal part of the infrastructure that forms our society: the water we swim in. Rarely do we pause to consider how this global system of nation-states came into being, and what might replace it after its gone. But as the United States wages a war of aggression on Iran, in a move that will drive up oil prices and the cost of living for ordinary citizens all over the world, the question presents itself anew: who do nation-states serve; what are they for?
On Downstream this week is the author and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose latest book, After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order, tackles these questions head-on. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, they discuss: What is a nation-state? How did they come to replace the role of religion in the liberal era? Do states need their citizens to have rights? What are the most salient challenges to the nation-state today? And were the gains in workers’ rights of the last century a sign that progress and democracy will triumph in the end, or something more like a historical blip?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the shadow of power and one of the richest cities on earth. |
| 0:10.0 | A man dies, homeless and unseen. |
| 0:15.0 | Julia Remish died in an underpass in Westminster, just metres away from the building that govern Britain. Around him were empty |
| 0:23.1 | homes, dark, locked, untouched. How can someone lose everything in the heart of so much wealth? Follow |
| 0:31.8 | that question and it leads to a hidden world of money, secrecy and power, a system that decides who gets a home |
| 0:39.3 | and who doesn't. |
| 0:40.3 | This is the kind of place for that relationship between dirty money and the city and the kind |
| 0:45.3 | of dark money that goes into the political machine kind of mesh. |
| 0:49.3 | Where could this lead? Where does it end? What else can we become desensitized to? I'm Kojo Karam, writer and researcher. |
| 0:57.0 | And since 2018, this story has haunted me. |
| 1:01.0 | Death in Westminster is a four-part series from Navarra Media, produced by Planner B productions. |
| 1:07.0 | The World of You Are Countling death. Death in Westminster arrives on the 10th of March in the Navarra Media podcast feed. All of us, or almost all of us live in what are called nation states. We take it for granted. |
| 1:36.7 | We think it's always been that way. But in fact, it hasn't. Humans have been around for approximately |
| 1:42.3 | 300,000 years. Nation states, well, just a few centuries. |
| 1:46.0 | In fact, for most of the world, they weren't all that common until the 20th century. |
| 1:51.0 | So where did they come from? What are they? |
| 1:54.0 | And are we moving to a world beyond nation states? What would that mean? |
| 1:59.0 | And does that portend a crisis for those of us who live |
| 2:02.0 | in some of the world's oldest ones? All of those questions are highly relevant in our present |
| 2:07.8 | political moment, and Iranisgupta has just published an awesome book, I think, covering all of it. |
| 2:15.7 | I know it's just the start of the year, but honestly, this is |
| 2:19.2 | going to be one of my books of the year. I just know it. Absolutely brilliant reading. Riveting, |
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