We travel back to Nixon's America with 1974's DEATH WISH, the franchise-spawning Silent Majority hit in which Charles Bronson transforms from a bleeding-heart liberal to a gun-wielding avenging angel. We discuss how the film's reactionary politics and apocalyptic vision of an American city are still being replicated in conservative media today. PLUS: The Last Blockbuster, new advancements in product-placement technology, and an unlikely new kingpin in the NFT landscape.
Apr 23, 2021•51 min
This week, Grace talks to Mat Lawrence, director of the think tank Common Wealth, and Laurie Layborn Langton, author and researcher, about their new book Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown . Planet on Fire argues that ‘the political status quo has no answer to the devastating and inequitably distributed consequences of the climate emergency’ and, in this episode, the guests discuss the multiple overlapping ecological, economic, and political crises the world is fa...
Apr 22, 2021•47 min
Every Wednesday at 6 PM ET, Jen Pan, Ariella Thornhill, and Paul Prescod host a new episode of The Jacobin Show, offering socialist perspectives on class and capitalism in the twenty-first century, the failures of liberalism, and the prospects of rebuilding a left labor movement in the US. This is the episode from April 21, 2021, hosted by Jen and Paul. Historian Matt Karp joins us to discuss how and why identity politics surface during eras of extreme economic inequality in the US, and the diff...
Apr 22, 2021•1 hr 45 min
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. In this episode, he speaks with Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht , authors of Bigger than Bernie , just out in paperback, on the legacy of the Sanders campaigns. Plus: Jane McAlevey , author and organizer, on why the union lost to Amazon in Alabama ( Nation article here )....
Apr 20, 2021•53 min
Every Saturday at 1 PM ET, Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila broadcast live from the Jacobin YouTube channel. Weekends features free-flowing and humorous commentary on current events and political strategy. This is the podcast version of the show from April 17, 2021. Leigh Philips, Jacobin's science writer, joins us to discuss the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause and the global vaccine rollout. We also look at Janet Yellen's proposed global tax and the predatory investors buying up land during the...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 52 min
A gay communist atheist directing the most reverential film ever made about Jesus Christ? It happened! Pier Paolo Pasolini's THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW (1964) uses neorealist aesthetics to emphasize the material side of Jesus's life over the divine, and foregrounds His politics over his miracles. PLUS: the pleasures and perils of being extremely online during a pandemic, and what conservatives say about democracy behind closed doors. "A Cinema of Poetry" by Patrick Rumble - https://www....
Apr 18, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Long Reads looks in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with longform writers. Hosted by Features Editor Daniel Finn. The guest is Lea Ypi, professor in political theory at the London School of Economics, and author of an essay about Rosa Luxemburg, "Reform to Revolution," which can be found here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/reform-revolution-rosa-luxemburg-socialism-democracy Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge ....
Apr 17, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Three thinkers and organizers on the much debated question of ultra-leftism post-Bernie 2020. Two texts that informed our discussion: The Liberal to Ultra-Left Pipeline: Breaking the Cycle by Brian W. Liberalism, ultraleftism or mass action , a speech delivered by Socialist Workers Party leader Peter Camejo. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig...
Apr 16, 2021•2 hr
Every Wednesday at 6 PM ET, Jen Pan, Ariella Thornhill, and Paul Prescod host a new episode of The Jacobin Show, offering socialist perspectives on class and capitalism in the twenty-first century, the failures of liberalism, and the prospects of rebuilding a left labor movement in the US. This is the episode from April 14, 2021. Kristen Ghodsee, author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, joins us to discuss socialist sex education and how Eastern European state socialism helped women ...
Apr 15, 2021•1 hr 34 min
This week, Grace talks to Doug Henwood, Marxist, journalist, host of the Behind the News podcast, and author of many books, including the classic Wall Street: How it Works and For Whom . They discuss Biden’s stimulus package, his corporate tax hikes, and what’s been going on in US stock markets – as well as how workers can organise in the post-Covid economy. You can support our work on the show by becoming a Patron . Thanks to our producer Conor Gillies and the Lipman-Miliband Trust for making t...
Apr 14, 2021•46 min
Suzi talks to labor historian John Logan who assesses the historic unionization drive against Amazon at the new Bessemer Alabama warehouse — and processes the outcome: a no vote for the Retail Workers union. Front line workers took on the second largest, notoriously anti-union company in the US during a pandemic — and won widespread sympathy and media coverage — but failed to win enough votes to get union recognition. With so much riding on this struggle, we ask what was achieved, and what the d...
Apr 13, 2021•57 min
Micah talks with Chapo Trap House's Matt Christman about historian Rick Perlstein's Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 , the politics of the 1970s and the possibilities for political alternatives to the right turn America ended up taking, the parallels of that era to the Obama/Bernie/Trump era, and (what else?) the desperate need to revive labor to escape our neverending culture wars.
Apr 13, 2021•56 min
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Doug interviews Jennifer Berkshire , co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door , about teachers’ unions and school reopenings. Plus: Helen Yaffe on Cuba’s handling of COVID-19 and their impressive vaccine development ( Counterpunch article here )....
Apr 13, 2021•53 min
Every Saturday at 1 PM ET, Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila broadcast live from the Jacobin YouTube channel. Weekends features free-flowing and humorous commentary on current events and political strategy. This is the podcast version of the show from April 10, 2021. Staff writer Meagan Day joins us to discuss what led to the disheartening defeat of the Amazon union drive in Alabama, how the new age of remote work will change workplace organizing, and how the left can regroup in the Biden era. New pa...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 49 min
Filmed over three years, the new HBO docuseries Q: INTO THE STORM (2021) seeks to find an answer to the question that plagued the Trump years: who is Q, the mysterious leader of the "QAnon" movement? The documentary offers a provisional answer... but of course, there is no one simple explanation for how QAnon came to dominate the past few years. We discuss the backwash of the Trump era, PLUS: a report on Fox News' new late-night talk show "Gutfeld!" "Howard Dean pushes Biden to oppose generic CO...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Dan interviews Charisse Burden-Stelly on racial capitalism, the history of the US Black left, and the US government's Red Scare attacks on Black radicals. Read Burden-Stelly's work: Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights Black Cold War Liberalism as an Agency Reduction Formation during the Late 1940s and the Early 1950s Constructing Deportable Subjectivity: Antiforeignness, Antiradicalism, and Antiblackness during the McCarthyist Structure of Feeling Caste Does Not Explain Race...
Apr 11, 2021•1 hr 24 min
Lauren Kaori Gurley at Vice.com ’s Motherboard has covered the unionization drive at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama for more than a year. Voting ended March 29 and counting is currently underway. If they vote to join the RWDSU they will become the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the country. Suzi talked to Lauren K. Gurley about Amazon’s business model, the pee scandal, and the anti-union campaign Amazon has mounted against the RWSDU. All eyes are on this titanic labor struggle in t...
Apr 07, 2021•33 min
Every Saturday at 1 PM ET, Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila broadcast live from the Jacobin YouTube channel. Weekends features free-flowing and humorous commentary on current events and political strategy. This is the podcast version of the show from April 3, 2021. We talk about why democracy demands that Bolivian coup plotters be punished, and with Jacobin's executive editor Seth Ackerman about why Joe Biden’s new spending plans won’t be enough to fix America. Join the Verso book club: https://www....
Apr 05, 2021•2 hr 1 min
Long Reads looks in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by Features Editor Daniel Finn. The guest for this episode is Christy Thornton. Christy is an assistant professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy . Read her interview with Jacobin here: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/01/mexico-developm...
Apr 03, 2021•1 hr 2 min
With the British monarchy at its lowest ebb of popularity since the week after Diana's death, we consider these two moments within the context of the wretched institution's ignoble history. We watch Christopher Hitchens' documentary DIANA: THE MOURNING AFTER (1998) - a controversial dissenting take on the Diana myth - and also discuss Netflix's THE CROWN and the Harry/Meghan phenomenon. In the process, we speculate how the existential threat facing this frankly worthless institution might lead t...
Apr 02, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Dan interviews the hosts of Time to Say Goodbye podcast on Asian American politics and identity. Check out Time to Say Goodbye wherever you get podcasts. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig
Apr 01, 2021•2 hr
Micah moderated a recent discussion between Chicago Democratic Socialists of America city council members (Alds. Jeanette Taylor, Daniel La Spata, and Byron Sigcho-Lopez) and New York City DSA city council candidates (Tiffany Cabán, Jaslin Kaur, Adolfo Abreu, Michael Hollingsworth, Brandon West, and Alexa Avilés).
Apr 01, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Before the container ship crisis in the Suez Canal, Grace spoke with Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, and author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula . They discussed the fascinating architecture and infrastructure that underpins the backbone of capitalism—global shipping—and what it tells us about state power, corporate sovereignty, and imperialism – as well as how those networks are adapting to China’...
Mar 31, 2021•41 min
Every Saturday at 1 PM ET, Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila broadcast live from the Jacobin YouTube channel. Weekends features free-flowing and humorous commentary on current events and political strategy. This is the podcast version of the show from March 27, 2021. Chapo Trap House's Matt Christman and Jacobin are live talking about unionizing Amazon sweatshops, how we expropriate Jeff Bezos's hoarded wealth, and why—despite what you're hearing in the liberal media—Joe Biden's still no FDR. Join th...
Mar 29, 2021•2 hr
How the 60s counterculture went on to make the techno-utopian ideology that suffuses our techno-dystopian reality. Dan interviews Fred Turner on his classic From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism . Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig
Mar 26, 2021•2 hr 5 min
The forces of liberal democracy (Jimmy Stewart) and rugged frontier self-reliance (John Wayne) come head-to-head in John Ford's masterpiece THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) - an elegiac look at a Wild West becoming tamed by progress. Aisling McCrea (contributing editor and podmaster general at Current Affairs magazine) fills in for Luke to discuss who shot Lee Marvin's chaotic outlaw, and what it means. The answers may surprise you! PLUS: the death of "mythos" in cultural criticism, and t...
Mar 26, 2021•46 min
Mike Goldfield , whose recent book is The Southern Key , discusses the unionization drive underway at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer Alabama. Mike’s book analyzed the history of efforts to unionize the South in the 1930s and 40s, and that history is the context for the struggle to unionize Amazon today, in the same area as the fight that failed in the 1940s. The current unionization drive is widely recognized as pivotally important, and is being extensively covered. A new Brookings Institution...
Mar 26, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Every Wednesday at 6 PM ET, Jen Pan, Ariella Thornhill, and Paul Prescod host a new episode of The Jacobin Show, offering socialist perspectives on class and capitalism in the twenty-first century, the failures of liberalism, and the prospects of rebuilding a left labor movement in the US. This is the episode from March 24, 2021. Jen and Paul are out, with David Griscom filling in as co-host. From “The Internationale” to “Fortunate Son” to “Kill the Poor,” music has been a part of left protest m...
Mar 26, 2021•1 hr 43 min
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. In this episode, Doug speaks with Sochie Nnaemeka , director of the New York Working Families Party, on the awfulness of Andrew Cuomo. Then, an interview with Susie Bright , the original sexpert, on what the pandemic is doing to our libidos....
Mar 22, 2021•53 min
Astra Taylor interviews Achal Prabhala on emerging global vaccine apartheid: from the neoliberal turn handing the pharmaceutical industry global patents to today's government-funded vaccines put under private pharma control. Groups fighting global vaccine apartheid Public Citizen: citizen.org/topic/safe-affordable-drugs-devices/global-access-to-medicines MSF: msfaccess.org Prep4All: prep4all.org People's Vaccine Alliance: peoplesvaccine.org Recent work by Prabhala nytimes.com/2020/12/07/opinion/...
Mar 20, 2021•1 hr 49 min
