The breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in a brutal civil war. The conflict ended an experiment in multinational coexistence across the Western Balkans. But the tragic end of Yugoslavia shouldn't define the way we think about its history. The Yugoslav nationalities played an outsized role in the struggle against Nazi Germany. During the Cold War, Yugoslavia's government helped organize the Non-Aligned Movement and developed their own form of socialism. Catherine Samary , historian ...
Apr 20, 2023•55 min
How did Warren Beatty convince a Hollywood studio to make a movie about American communists in 1981? We discuss REDS (1981), his epic biopic of writers John Reed and Louise Bryant, as well as Reed's landmark book about the Russian Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World. PLUS: Fiery hot takes on billionaire Hitler collector Harlan Crowe. "The Paid Pundits Defending Clarence Thomas And His Billionaire Benefactor" by Andrew Perez - https://www.levernews.com/the-paid-pundits-defending-clarence-th...
Apr 19, 2023•50 min
Philosopher Kate Soper talks about her book, Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism , just out in paperback: living on less but without the hair-shirtism. 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 here: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html...
Apr 17, 2023•53 min
Featuring Jane McAlevey on how to organize mass numbers of new workers into unions that wage mass strikes to fight employers and revive the labor movement. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Dan's 2019 interview with McAlevey thedigradio.com/podcast/strike-with-jane-mcalevey Buy Set Fear on Fire by LASTESIS versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2853-set-fear-on-fire Buy The New Cold War by Gilbert Achcar haymarketbooks.org/books/2007-the-new-cold-war...
Apr 15, 2023•1 hr 34 min
Ben Affleck's AIR (2023) chronicles the wheeling and dealing that led to Michael Jordan signing with Nike, and this unabashed celebration of the world's most famous shoe brand positions the Air Jordan as a victory for trickle-down economics. We discuss the movie that asks the question: "What if you made The Social Network about people who were frickin' epic??" Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage....
Apr 11, 2023•36 min
James Bamford, author of Spyfail and a recent article in The Nation , discusses Israeli collusion with Donald Trump in 2016. Then Donna Murch , associate professor of history at Rutgers and president of the New Brunswick campus’s faculty union, talks about why the teaching staff is on the verge of a strike and why it matters well beyond that institution. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the glo...
Apr 10, 2023•53 min
Featuring Edo Konrad and Joshua Leifer on how Zionism's long-running contradictions led to the current political crisis in Israel. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out +972 Magazine at 972mag.com Subscribe to Jewish Currents ' Israel/Palestine newsletter at jewishcurrents.org/newsletter Buy The New Cold War: The United States, Russia, and China from Kosovo to Ukraine by Gilbert Achcar haymarketbooks.org/books/2007-the-new-cold-war...
Apr 08, 2023•1 hr 53 min
In the past few years, Peru has experienced several waves of political turbulence. The latest cycle of unrest began when Pedro Castillo was ousted as president last December. State security forces have killed dozens of people protesting against Castillo’s removal from office. The political questions being posed in Peru and other Latin American countries today have a long history behind them. A century ago, the Peruvian intellectual José Carlos Mariátegui tackled many of those questions in his wo...
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Suzi talks to Sebastian Budgen and Yoav Peled about two existential crises rocking the social order. First in France, where President Macron used constitutional powers to bypass parliament and impose deeply unpopular pension reform. This move has provoked one of the largest waves of continuous popular mobilization since May 1968. The second crisis is in Israel, where half the population has taken to the streets and shut down their workplaces in a spontaneous protest over Prime Minister Netanyahu...
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 9 min
With Trump's indictment in the news, we thought it might be a good time to watch the movie that has been more influential on QAnon than any other: Ridley Scott's little-loved seafaring adventure WHITE SQUALL (1996). We parse this half-forgotten film to figure out why, exactly, the QAnon people love it so much. "Where we go one, we go all!" Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Apr 05, 2023•55 min
Writer and political adviser Nimrod Flaschenberg discusses the popular uprising in Israel against Bibi’s reactionary government. Software engineer Dwayne Monroe revisits the (useful) hype around ChatGPT. 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 here: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html...
Apr 03, 2023•53 min
It started with a few cones and a cryptic sign. Produced by Omar Etman. Edited by Liza Yeager, Mitchell Johnson, and Daniel Denvir. Special thanks to Alan Dean, Alex Lewis, and Nihal El Aasar. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig
Mar 31, 2023•30 min
We mark the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War by revisiting some of the classic clips from our cowed and deferential news media circa 2003. PLUS: What is artificial intelligence and what does it mean for the future? Pulitzer-winning columnist Thomas Friedman doesn't know, but that didn't stop him from writing about it. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Mar 29, 2023•52 min
Maxine Doogan and Tara Burns, contributors to a report, "How the War on Sex Work Is Stripping Your Privacy Rights," on how cops are snooping on sex workers and using what they learn to spy on the rest of us. David Broder, author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren , discusses the fascist heritage behind Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her party. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. F...
Mar 27, 2023•53 min
Featuring Max Fox and Chris Nealon on the late Christopher Chitty's book Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System . Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletters and vast archive at thedigradio.com Further reading: libcom.org/article/after-fall-communiques-occupied-california viewpointmag.com/2012/09/12/towards-a-socialist-art-of-government-michel-foucaults-the-mesh-of-power thenewinquiry.com/blog/in-love-and-memory Buy Abolition Geograph...
Mar 25, 2023•1 hr 54 min
For nearly 20 years, one libertarian businessman with a wildly dangerous theme park held the state of New Jersey under his thumb. We discuss the documentary CLASS ACTION PARK (2020) and its uneasy mix of nostalgia and condemnation for Action Park. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Mar 25, 2023•39 min
Fifty years ago, a group of Native Oglala Lakota and their supporters occupied a small village called Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was the site of a notorious massacre in 1890, when US cavalry killed nearly 300 Lakota people. Local spiritual leaders and civil rights activists called in the American Indian Movement, or AIM, to support the occupation. It resulted in a siege that pitted AIM against US Marshals, the FBI, and a private militia known as the ...
Mar 23, 2023•1 hr 22 min
Coming Soon: The Dig Presents is a new monthly series that features original documentary reporting, personal narrative, and other sonic experiments from a wide range of contributors.
Mar 22, 2023•2 min
After some introductory comments on the bank failures, Doug speaks with Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative about the state of the carceral state . Then, Annelle Sheline discusses the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. 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 here: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html...
Mar 20, 2023•53 min
Featuring Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg on how American capitalism and its illusions of whiteness both created the opioid crisis and shaped the response to it. We are discussing their book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America . Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletters and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to Jacobin bit.ly/digjacobin and Catalyst bit.ly/digcatalyst...
Mar 19, 2023•1 hr 43 min
A man spends a night in an isolated woman's desert shack, and loses his identity in the process, in WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964), Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kōbō Abe's resonant parable about... what, exactly? Your hosts are not entirely sure, but forge ahead anyway with this seminal work of postwar Japanese cinema. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Mar 18, 2023•40 min
Suzi talks to veteran journalist Marc Cooper , who was a translator to President Salvador Allende in the Popular Unity government from 1970-1973. Marc has memorialized his experience in Chile in Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti Memoir (2001). Marc just returned from a month in Chile looking at Chilean politics 50 years after the coup and one year since the new leftwing government of Gabriel Boric was elected in a landslide. The first installment of Marc’s writing on Chile went online March 8 on T...
Mar 16, 2023•1 hr 16 min
A Florida follow-up: historian and union president Paul Ortiz on the DeSantis agenda and resistance to it. Then human rights lawyer Noa Levy discusses the far right agenda in Israel and resistance to it (see the Ayelet Shaked "Fascism" ad here ). 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 here: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html...
Mar 14, 2023•53 min
Featuring Nelson Lichtenstein on his life and scholarship, from membership in the International Socialists and studies of the early United Auto Workers and CIO to his later turn to studying Walmart and international supply chains. Guest host Micah Uetricht interviews one of the greatest living labor historians. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletters and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy Keywords for Capitalism by John Patrick Leary haymarketbooks.org/books/1886-keywor...
Mar 12, 2023•1 hr 49 min
Suzi talks to Vladyslav Starodubtsev and Jeremy Bigwood about the war in Ukraine, now entering its second year. Russia’s war on Ukraine has been a disaster causing human suffering and economic devastation not just in Ukraine but also on the lives of ordinary Russians, treated like cannon fodder. The war has also had an impact on global hunger and energy supplies and the world environmental crisis. It is no exaggeration to say that this war has changed the trajectory of the twenty-first century. ...
Mar 09, 2023•1 hr 8 min
In the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church declared a holy war against a group of Christian heretics in the South of France. The Albigensian Crusade became notorious for its brutality and gave rise to a new regime of feudal oppression and religious conformity in Languedoc. It was a defining moment in the history of medieval Europe. Elaine Graham-Leigh, historian and the author of The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade , joins Long Reads to discuss this crusade and its relev...
Mar 09, 2023•42 min
George Orwell's popularity is at a new high in the post-Trump era, and he's been claimed by both the left and right. We discuss NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1984), Michael Radford's feature-film adaptation of Orwell's most famous novel, and try to rescue a self-described socialist from the Dave Rubins of the world. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Mar 07, 2023•49 min
Doug interviews Judith Levine about the trans kids panic and moves to defund the Kinsey Institute. Phil Wegner of the University of Florida discusses Ron DeSantis’s moves to quash academic freedom in that state. 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 here: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html...
Mar 06, 2023•53 min
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America . How the civil-military divide makes troops into super citizens and what it means that agents of state violence are turning to the grammar of identity politics—and more. The second in a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to New Left Review newleftreview.org/subscriptions/new Buy My Country is the World: Staughton Lynd’s Writings, Speeches, and Statements Against ...
Mar 05, 2023•1 hr 23 min
Abbas Kiarostami's masterpiece CLOSE-UP (1990) used the true story of a poor man who impersonated a famous filmmaker to meditate on class, identity, and the cinematic apparatus. PLUS: the slow erosion of universal healthcare, and checking in on Fox News post-Trump. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Mar 01, 2023•54 min
