Late on June 21st, Trump joined Israel’s war on Iran. Just two days after warning Iran it had two weeks to make a deal, Trump unleashed the military might of 30,000-pound bunker busters delivered by B2 bombers on Fordo, while Tomahawks struck Natanz and Isfahan. With typical bombast, Trump bragged that Iran's nuclear sites were “totally obliterated." Iranian officials, however, claim the facilities had been emptied of nuclear materials months ago. Suzi spoke to Yassamine Mather just before Trump...
Jun 24, 2025•57 min
Mouin Rabbani explains the regional and global context of Israel's war on Iran and Joel Schalit describes the society and politics that have informed Israel's latest aggression. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Jun 24, 2025•53 min
Featuring Mouin Rabbani on Israel’s war on Iran, possible direct US intervention, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Chicago: come see The Dig live! secure.actblue.com/donate/thediglive Listen to Thawra and our five-part Iran series: thedigradio.com/series Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Read Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi in Sidecar newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/culmination Buy All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence at Haymarketbooks.com In These Times is ...
Jun 20, 2025•1 hr 33 min
The Left often invokes the media’s power of persuasion to explain why people accept their situation within capitalism. But what if instead the system remains stable by “the dull compulsions” of economic life? In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber discusses the difference between consent and coercion, the real role of the media, and the conditions for organized resistance. Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy , and...
Jun 18, 2025•38 min
Featuring Ryann Liebenthal, Chenjerai Kumanyika, and Mike Pierce on Ryann’s book Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis . Interview by guest host Astra Taylor. We are working on an episode analyzing Israel's war on Iran amid the ongoing Gaza genocide—it will be out soon. For now, check out our five-part series on the history of Iran and also Thawra , our 19-part series on the history of Arab politics (lots on Iran in the final episodes). Find both series here: thedigradio.co...
Jun 17, 2025•2 hr 29 min
Paolo Gerbaudo, author of recent articles for Phenomenal World, traces the rise of Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD. Andrew Hartman, who has written the book Karl Marx in America , discusses the bearded one’s reception in the US. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Jun 16, 2025•53 min
For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Emile Habibi, Leila Khaled, and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were still the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah, although the Left has lost much of its influence in the period since then. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring rad...
Jun 14, 2025•55 min
David Ost, professor of politics and Hobart and William Smith, joins Suzi to unpack Poland’s June 1 presidential election. The race was tight, but in the end, Karol Nawrocki, the far-right, hardline nationalist with MAGA-style politics and Trump’s backing, narrowly defeated Warsaw's liberal mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. After voters rejected Trumpist candidates in recent elections in Canada, Australia and Romania, Polish voters went the other way, swinging back to the hard right just two years after ...
Jun 11, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Laleh Khalili, author of a recent piece for the London Review of Books , analyzes the long relationship between the US military and industry. Kyle Chan, author of a New York Times opinion article , explains how China is surpassing the US. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Jun 10, 2025•53 min
Featuring Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Asha Ransby-Sporn on 2020's summer of mass protest and rebellion sparked by the police murder of George Floyd. As Keeanga puts it: "The pressing question is how we went from twenty-six million people on the streets to a fascist in the White House?” We must urgently build organizations and movements that meet the moment as both popular resistance and authoritarian repression intensify. To do that, we need to learn from the 2020 uprising. Support The Dig at Pa...
Jun 08, 2025•2 hr 9 min
John Cassidy, author of Capitalism and Its Critics , discusses just that. Sandeep Vaheesan, author of a recent article for Boston Review , looks at abundance — neoliberal vs. genuine. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Jun 05, 2025•53 min
The Cold War is often portrayed as a great power struggle between the forces of democracy and a spreading communist threat. But what if the conventional story gets it exactly backwards? In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek discuss the rise of the American empire and how the US used the Cold War to spread capitalism across the globe. Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy , and published by Jacob...
Jun 04, 2025•54 min
For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Emile Habibi, Leila Khaled, and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were still the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah, although the Left has lost much of its influence in the period since then. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring rad...
May 31, 2025•54 min
Featuring Derek Guy on the politics, history, economics, and style of Western menswear. Guest hosted by Dennis M. Hogan. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig In These Times is offering 78% off print subscriptions for Dig listeners at Inthesetimes.com/dig The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvir....
May 30, 2025•2 hr 43 min
Mouin Rabbani surveys Israeli politics, the fate of the Palestinians, and Trump’s fundraising tour of the Middle East. Meron Rapoport, co-author of a recent investigation for +972 Magazine , on Israel’s strategy of destruction in Gaza. Read the article here: https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-total-urban-destruction/ Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://...
May 27, 2025•53 min
Journalist and author John Dinges joins Suzi to discuss his new book, Chile in Their Hearts . The book reopens the case of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi — two young Americans who went to Chile to experience the radical democratic socialist experiment of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government — and were detained and executed in the days following the brutal military takeover of September 11, 1973. The story was immortalized in Costa-Gavras’ Oscar-winning film Missing , which depicted Horm...
May 24, 2025•59 min
Barry Eichengreen, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, talks about why the gyrations in the value of the US dollar matter. Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan, hosts of Always at War , a new show from the Quincy Institute, explain why the US is always buying more weapons and bombing people. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https:/...
May 22, 2025•53 min
The past fifty years have been the era of unchallenged market dominance in all areas of life. But with the global upheaval brought on by the Trump trade war, are we seeing the neoliberal order unraveling? In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek discuss the historic origins of neoliberalism, so-called “pro-worker” conservatism, and the prospects for deglobalization. Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Str...
May 21, 2025•40 min
Juan Cole joins Suzi to break down Donald Trump’s dramatic pivot in the Middle East: sidelining Israel, cozying up to Gulf monarchies, cutting billion-dollar deals, promising to lift sanctions on Syria, and exploring a new nuclear agreement with Iran. Trump vowed quick peace in Gaza and Ukraine, but neither materialized because the aggressors don’t want peace. Putin wants Ukraine without Ukrainians. Netanyahu wants Gaza without Palestinians. Now he's zigzagging between billion-dollar deals and b...
May 20, 2025•57 min
Featuring Quinn Slobodian on his book Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right . MAGA and its far-right populist siblings around the world aren’t just a backlash to neoliberalism. The far-right has also long been animated by extremist mutant neoliberal, anarcho-capitalist, and paleo-libertarian strains that in the 1980s and ’90s built a new New Fusionist politics of capitalist extremism — a politics that promoted IQ as the measure of individual and racial value; hard...
May 20, 2025•2 hr 34 min
For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Emile Habibi, Leila Khaled, and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were still the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah, although the Left has lost much of its influence in the period since then. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring rad...
May 17, 2025•37 min
Emil Draitser — Soviet satirist turned American memoirist — joins Suzi to talk about his new book, Laughing All the Way to Freedom: The Americanization of a Russian Émigré . It's a sharp, funny, and moving account of his journey from censorship and conformity in the USSR to the chaotic freedoms of the 1970s United States. We explore how satire served as both survival and resistance in the Soviet Union, and how his identity was reshaped — culturally, politically, and personally — through the mess...
May 15, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Jeet Heer surveys Canadian politics and the recent election. Natasha Piano, author of Democratic Elitism , discusses Italian “elite theory.” Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
May 12, 2025•53 min
Featuring Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing French party La France Insoumise. How the radical left confronts and then defeats the far right, in France and everywhere. Recorded before an audience at n+1 ’'s Brooklyn office. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Register for "Our Collective Is the Prize" at comrades.education Buy Reconsidering Reparations at haymarketbooks.com The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigr...
May 10, 2025•56 min
It’s often said that the working class drifted away from the Democratic Party in response to cultural backlash and globalization. But what if the truth is more damning? In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber speaks with Neal Meyer, author of “The Democrats Embrace Dealignment,” from the latest issue of Catalyst . They explore how Democratic leaders — from Clinton to Obama to Biden — consciously distanced the party from its working-class base, paving the way for today’s politic...
May 07, 2025•36 min
Vijay Prashad, executive director of Tricontinental , discusses the state of the US empire and the state of the global working class. Becca Rothfeld, author of All Things Are Too Small , speaks up for bigness. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
May 06, 2025•53 min
Featuring Aziz Rana on the making of the American project and its legitimation through popular worship of the US Constitution. This episode, the final in a four-part series, traces the great unraveling of the American empire from the 1970s to our present MAGA 2.0 moment. Would you like to know more? Aziz made a bibliography for you: thedigradio.com/newsletter102 Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Enemy Feminisms and I Didn't Come Here to Lie at Haymarketbooks.com The Dig goes deep into po...
May 04, 2025•2 hr 16 min
For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Emile Habibi, Leila Khaled, and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were still the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah, although the Left has lost much of its influence in the period since then. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring rad...
May 03, 2025•50 min
To celebrate International Workers’ Day, we’re offering solidarity digital subscriptions for $1 and print subscriptions for $10. Subscribers get four new issues a year and access to our entire back catalog. At Jacobin, we’re trying our best to reach millions with the argument that creating a better world requires challenging those who profit from the misery and exploitation of others. Over the past decade, we’ve put out over 15,000 articles, and, thanks to the support of subscribers like you, we...
May 01, 2025•51 sec
Aziz Rana , author of The Constitutional Bind , describes how the system crafted by the US Constitution led to Donald Trump and has constricted our ability fight him. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Apr 28, 2025•53 min
