Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor returns to The Dig to discuss her new book How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective . Forty years ago, a group of black feminists coined the term “identity politics” in the Combahee River Collective Statement. For them, it was a way to identify the various ways that capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and homophobia created a set of interlocking oppressions. And the point of identifying how those systems operated together was not to create an itemized...
Dec 20, 2017•1 hr 29 min
Journalists Robert Scheer, and Marc Cooper join Suzi Weissman in a wide-ranging discussion on "Media and Democracy: From the Vietnam War to the Consolidation of Alternative Facts in the Digital Era," that was recently held at the REDCAT theater in Los Angeles. Suzi Weissman looks at what was behind the social conflicts of the 1960s and the present. Robert Scheer, renowned journalist and former editor of Ramparts , tells the story of Ramparts and provides an inside look at how the war was conduct...
Dec 18, 2017•1 hr 11 min
A lengthy interview with historian Barbara Fields and sociologist Karen Fields on their seminal essay collection Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life . Dan talks to the sister scholars about the book; how Ta-Nehisi Coates’s primordialist view of white racism spells defeat; how racism serves the interest of capitalist class war, how endless debates over Rachel Dolezal distract us from that fact; and a whole ton more. This is over two hours, so you might want to bite it off on a few ...
Dec 13, 2017•2 hr 7 min
Journalist Ryan Cooper talks about the new paper he wrote with Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a new left-wing think tank. "Foreclosed: Destruction of Black Wealth During the Obama Presidency" details how the Wall Street-induced foreclosure epidemic wiped out huge swaths of black wealth — and how Obama could have taken multiple actions to save most homes but did not. Check out the report and this article about it. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Radical H...
Dec 09, 2017•56 min
The prospect of nuclear war with North Korea sits near the top of the list of things that have been unthinkably bad about Donald Trump’s presidency. But the conflict with North Korea didn’t begin with Trump. It’s critical that we understand the Koreas and their historical context right now. Journalist Tim Shorrock breaks it all down — North Korea, South Korea, the role of the US, and others — from World War II to the present. And he argues that peace is possible, but it can only achieved through...
Dec 06, 2017•1 hr 22 min
Author and economist Dr. Jack Rasmus dissects the Trump/Ryan/McConnell Tax (Cut) Plan, that he says will only increase financial instability and economic fragility. It is neoliberalism on steroids. Then, Professor Victor Pickard discusses FCC Chair Ajit Pai's intention to repeal net neutrality protections that will threaten public access to information by limiting content and speed. He's hopeful that massive resistance can push back against this radical corporate agenda.
Dec 04, 2017•39 min
Corey Robin, whose The Reactionary Mind has just been issued in an updated edition, on the Right from Burke to Trump. While most people on the Left fear and demonize the Right, they aren't interested in its ideas. Robin, however, takes them very seriously and analyzes their ideas for us.
Dec 04, 2017•52 min
Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary, explains one of Clintonism’s most dreadful results: President Trump. The new film Saving Capitalism , available on Netflix, is Reich’s quasi-autobiographical documentary about the origins of contemporary political-economic inequality. The premise that capitalism ought to be saved notwithstanding, Reich offers firsthand insight into Clinton’s rightward rush into the arms of Corporate America. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Radical Ha...
Dec 01, 2017•39 min
The drug war is a cause of, not solution to, the overdose crisis. Law and public health scholar @LeoBeletsky explains the origins of the opioid overdose crisis and how drug prohibition, policing, interdiction and incarceration are at its root — and continue to help make opioid use so deadly. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot versobooks.com/books/2571-out-of-the-wreckage Support us with your $ at Patreon.c...
Nov 29, 2017•1 hr 40 min
We’ve got a bonus episode for you today, which is audio from a debate between Alex Vitale — a recent guest on this show, sociologist and author of The End of Policing — and Heather Mac Donald, one of the leading intellectual champions of urban neoconservativism, over-policing, and mass incarceration at the Manhattan Institute. In a short intro, Dan explains why he’s rooting for one of these two individuals and why that person decisively wins. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. We work really...
Nov 28, 2017•1 hr 18 min
Ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee returns to the show to discuss Red Hangover , her new book on the traumas of post-Communist life in Eastern Europe. Unique for an academic text, the book is a series of essays with fictional sketches that evoke the complexities of life under Communism and the poverty and displacement that came with its demise.
Nov 27, 2017•52 min
The GOP tax plan is a monstrous giveaway to corporate America but it might not pass thanks to the same contradictions within the Republican coalition that repeatedly sunk efforts to repeal Obamacare, as journalist @ArthurDelaneyHP explains. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change by Ashley Dawson versobooks.com/books/2558-extreme-cities Support us with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig...
Nov 24, 2017•32 min
Trump's demagogic rhetoric on MS-13 is designed to obscure the truth about the reality and origins of mass Central American migration: the roots of migration from Central America lie in significant part in the violence unleashed by US-backed dirty wars and deportations of alleged gang members. The demonization of Central American gangs functions to distract the public from US complicity and legitimate a cruel deportation machine. Dan's guest, political scientist Noelle Brigden, has spent years r...
Nov 22, 2017•1 hr 5 min
Norman Solomon on the findings of a recently released report he co-authored, "Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis." It examines the continuing crises within the Democratic Party with the aim of stimulating a nationwide discussion and a stimulus for action of the kind that challenges the nature of the party. Then, Guardian columnist Alissa Quart on her recent article , "What's the common denominator among sexual harassers? Too often, it's money," which looks at sexual harassment's roots in in...
Nov 20, 2017•54 min
Last week was a bad week for Republicans and a good week for Democrats — and for democratic socialists. It’s now pretty clear that Republicans will pay a price for the fact that large numbers of Americans detest our dotard-in-chief. But last week’s election once again fails to offer any sort of definitive answer to the long-running debate between the Left and the corporate Democratic establishment over who is best poised to beat Republicans. The coming anti-Republican wave is an opportunity that...
Nov 17, 2017•41 min
Brooke Harrington, author of Capital Without Borders , on the offshore wealth racket and the Paradise Papers. Then Kali Akuno, co-editor of Jackson Rising and a co-founder of Cooperation Jackson, on building a green municipal socialism in Jackson, Mississippi.
Nov 17, 2017•52 min
Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández tells the story of human caging in Los Angeles, from the Spanish Conquest to the mid-twentieth century, in her new book C ity of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965 . It's a story of indigenous exploitation and elimination, immigrant detention and deportation, and the suppression of cross-border revolutionary movements. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out O ut of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age ...
Nov 15, 2017•1 hr 7 min
Journalist @melissagira eviscerates a newspaper investigation that conflates sex work with trafficking. She examines how reporters unwittingly fall into a savior complex, which ends up criminalizing workers in the name of defending women's dignity. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Futures of Black Radicalism https://www.versobooks.com/books/2438-futures-of-black-radicalism . And support us on Patreon.com/TheDig with some cash....
Nov 11, 2017•58 min
The Intercept's Ryan Grim on the the state of the GOP, which despite recent losses in this week's elections, controls all three branches of the federal government and is currently trying to pass a tax bill. Then, Rachel Sherman , author of Uneasy Street , on the consciousness of the rich....
Nov 10, 2017•52 min
Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell on those abominable things dotting the American landscape. Then, Donna Minkowitz , author of this article , reports on her visit to the genteel white supremacists of AmRen.
Nov 08, 2017•52 min
Centrist business elites believe in an America that doesn't exist. Two guests this episode: first, @mollyesque talks about her piece "On Safari in Trump's America" for T he Atlantic. Her article follows the centrist organization Third Way on a “listening tour” of the real America. Then @EricLevitz (35:52), who just published on op-ed in the N ew York Times entitled “America is not ‘center-right," sorts through research to argue that what Americans often mean when they say they are “moderate” is ...
Nov 08, 2017•1 hr 21 min
Writer and author Andy Durgan discusses the fast-moving events taking place in Catalonia. This past week, Catalonia declared independence, and the Spanish government is moving quickly to repress the independence movement's political leaders and keep the region within its fold. Then, journalist Michael Sainato joins Suzi to talk about the post-2016 election fights within the Democratic Party, and what they mean for the next wave of election cycles.
Nov 06, 2017•42 min
Why have the size of American police departments grown so dramatically in recent decades, even as crime rates have fallen? One factor may have been the growing centrality of real estate for urban economies, according to a new article published in the journal Social Forces by Adam Goldstein, a professor of sociology at Princeton, and Brenden Beck, a PhD student in sociology at CUNY. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out The End of Policing by Alex Vitale v ersobooks.com/books/ <wbr ...
Nov 03, 2017•34 min
Aziz Rana discusses his pivotal book, The Two Faces of American Freedom . Rana overturns conventional accounts of American history, from settlement and Revolution to the Populists and the present day. In reality, settler-colonialism, empire, and a brutally exploitative economic system grounded in racial subjugation have always been at the core of the American project. But radical thinkers and movements have consistently stepped forward at critical junctures to propose transformative alternatives...
Nov 01, 2017•1 hr 10 min
Benjamin Opratko , a fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin who teaches at the University of Vienna, on the rise of the far right in Austria. On Sunday, October 16, Austria held elections, and the two right-wing parties will form a government (you can read Opratko's Jacobin articles for more on this subject). Then Steven Teles , author of The Captured Economy , launches a hybrid "liberalitarian" attack on rent-seeking....
Oct 30, 2017•52 min
The exposure of Weinstein's predations has reignited widespread fury over the longstanding problem of sexual harassment and assault—especially in the workplace. Jacobin editor @alexnpress discusses two new pieces she wrote on how dealing with these problems as individuals only ends up harming individual women and why women must organize to fight back. Support us on Patreon.com/TheDig with some cash.
Oct 27, 2017•32 min
Corey Robin points to a tension that has defined conservatism from the get-go, between two competing conceptions of virtue and nobility: one defined by political and military distinction and another by entrepreneurial acumen and accumulated wealth. Robin parses how Trump fits into this dynamic history, in part by taking a look back to seminal conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek. Support us with $ at patreon.com/TheDig Listen to Dan's first interview with Corey: blubrry.co...
Oct 25, 2017•1 hr 2 min
Dan was on a panel last week on ending the war on drug dealers at the Drug Policy Alliance conference in Atlanta. The panel was moderated by asha bandele and included Daryl Atkinson, Constanza Sánchez Avilé, Lyn Ulbrich, Kemba Smith and Dan. Thanks for listening. Support us at patreon.com/TheDig .
Oct 23, 2017•1 hr 9 min
Suzi Weissman switches seats with Robert Brenner: she is the guest and he does the interviewing. The program begins with a talk Suzi gave recently in Berkeley: "One Hundred Years Since October: When the Russian Working Class Opened the Possibilities For Humanity." Robert and Suzi then discuss the significance of October 1917, when workers took power with profoundly democratic institutions of popular control from below in the Russian empire, creating the Soviet Union.
Oct 23, 2017•48 min
Isabel Hilton, editor of ChinaDialogue.net , discusses recent developments at the Chinese Communist Party Congress. Then, Doug is joined by Alex Vitale, author The End of Policing , who addresses how we cure ourselves of the cop sickness.
Oct 23, 2017•52 min
