Ajay Singh Chaudhary talks about his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World . Matt Notowidigdo , co-author of a recent NBER paper , examines how recessions increase life expectancy. 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 ....
Feb 09, 2024•53 min
If you think about the French revolutionary tradition, you’re most likely to picture the storming of the Bastille and the overthrow of the monarchy. But that wasn’t the first time there was a major uprising against the established order in France. In the second half of the fourteenth century, there was a popular revolt known as the Jacquerie, which terrified the French ruling class. They drowned the revolt in blood and set about demonizing the peasants who took part in it. It was only in the wak...
Feb 08, 2024•45 min
Featuring Luke Messac on Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine . An estimated 100 million people in the US are in debt because they sought medical treatment. Medical debt exacerbates poor and working-class people's physical and psychological suffering while undermining their financial well-being and freedom. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to a year of Jewish Currents at secure.jewishcurrents.org/forms/subscribe 50% off with special code DIG2024 Buy What W...
Feb 08, 2024•1 hr 53 min
Are commercial considerations always doomed to taint art? And are commercial considerations really a taint? We discuss Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's meta-movie ADAPTATION (2002) and the artist/hack dichotomy. PLUS: We mark the passing of the world's most famous minimalist sculptor and murder suspect. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr
Episode five of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO examines the Little Steel strike in the summer of 1937. It was a tragic failure for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and the CIO, one that illustrates the limits of the New Deal order. The Little Steel strike was in many ways a turning point, a key hinge in our story. To fully understand it, we also delve into the general history of steel organizing in the US, a fantastically brutal affair that reveals the soul of American capit...
Feb 06, 2024•47 min
Ed Broadbent died January 11, 2024. Suzi speaks with the co-authors of Ed's recent book, Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality . We also hear clips from Ed during his long political career. Ed was the very popular leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Canada, first elected to the House of Commons in 1968 from Oshawa, Ontario, and always at the forefront of the parliamentary struggle for democratic socialism. Ed was also Vice President of the Socialist Internatio...
Feb 03, 2024•1 hr 13 min
Sean Jacobs explores why South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel. Eric Blanc , who wrote a recent piece about sprawl and the suburbs, talks about organizing in a scattered and atomized society. Hassan El-Tayyab discusses the widening war in the Middle East. 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 at https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html ....
Feb 02, 2024•53 min
Featuring Emily Dische-Becker on how Germany became attached to a wildly narcissistic anti-antisemitism and Israeli proxy nationalism that have made it one of the most anti-Palestinian governments on earth. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletters and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin Buy Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine before the Nakba at haymarketbooks.org...
Feb 01, 2024•2 hr 22 min
How was it that the CIO was finally able to make good on the decades-old dream of industrial unionism? In the fourth episode of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO , we outline two more factors, alongside political opportunities and organizational militancy, that were key to the CIO’s success. First, we look at the great energy and commitment of the left toward the stable end of collective bargaining. Then we discuss what podcast guest Lizabeth Cohen has called the “culture of unity” b...
Jan 30, 2024•50 min
The world can't stop discoursing about it. Hillary Clinton herself has championed it. And our superdelegate patrons specifically requested it. It's time for us to turn our attention to the most discussed movie of the past year, BARBIE (2023). PLUS: We bid a fond farewell to Ron DeSanctimonious. Seeking Social Democracy , the book Luke coauthored with Ed Broadbent, is available here: https://ecwpress.com/products/seeking-social-democracy-ed-broadbent Michael and Us is a podcast about political ci...
Jan 29, 2024•1 hr 14 min
At least 26,000 people are now estimated to have been killed by Israel’s war on Gaza, although the real figure is believed to be even higher. The main legal challenge to Israel’s war has come from South Africa at the International Court of Justice. The court published its first response to the South African case on Friday, January 26th. John Reynolds, professor of law at Maynooth University and author of Empire, Emergency, and International Law , joined Long Reads the day of the court response t...
Jan 27, 2024•55 min
Shireen Al-Adeimi of Michigan State and the Quincy Institute discusses the Houthis. Political scientist Aurélie Daher gives another view of Hezbollah. 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 at https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html ....
Jan 26, 2024•53 min
Featuring Helen Lackner on the Houthis, the politics of their attacks on Red Sea shipping, and the long history of Yemen from British colonial Aden through the current civil war. Read Helen's articles for Jacobin jacobin.com/author/helen-lackner Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements are Leading the Fight for our Planet at haymarketbooks.org/books/2101-environmentalism-from-below Buy The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger ...
Jan 24, 2024•2 hr 4 min
On the third episode of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO , we examine the first major victories of the CIO in rubber, auto, and steel. The story begins at the Goodyear complex in Akron, Ohio, where a victorious strike put the CIO on the map. We turn to the General Motors strike in the winter of 1937, a transformational victory and perhaps the most iconic confrontation of the period. Finally, we hear about an important steel organizing campaign, whose success was drawn in part from t...
Jan 23, 2024•43 min
Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative discusses ankle bracelets and electronic monitoring. Joseph Daher, author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God , delves into that demonized organization. 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 at https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html ....
Jan 19, 2024•53 min
On the second episode of Organized the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO , we discuss the institutional formation of the CIO and meet some of the organization’s key personalities. We learn about figures such as John L. Lewis, whose bold leadership came at a decisive moment in history, and Sidney Hillman, the only other real center of power besides Lewis in the early CIO. Finally, we hear about some of the CIO’s key organizers, most of whom hailed from the United Mine Workers of America. Listen to...
Jan 16, 2024•37 min
Political scientist Jacqueline Behrend examines Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. Then Benjamin Fong, author of Quick Fixes , talks about Americans’ love-hate relationship with drugs. 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 at leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html ....
Jan 15, 2024•53 min
Featuring Ashley Mears on her book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit . Mears, a sociologist and former fashion model, explores the super-elite "models and bottles" party scene where beautiful young women and conspicuous consumption heighten the status of rich men. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Contact Spotify and tell them: stop hiding The Dig! Why is The Dig so hard to find on Spotify? support.spotify.com/contact-spotify-support Buy Against Erasure: A ...
Jan 13, 2024•1 hr 37 min
Your coworkers are spying on you. Your boss won't let you keep the expired food. The coffeeshop is charging you an arm and a leg to rent a laptop. In Aki Kaurismäki's funny and wonderful FALLEN LEAVES (2023), can a budding romance survive the everyday indignities of life under capitalism? PLUS: What would a British West Wing look like? Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Jan 11, 2024•48 min
On episode one of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO , we explore the conditions that led to the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. We first dive into the history of the organization from which the CIO broke off, the American Federation of Labor. Then, we discuss three key developments that raised workers’ expectations in the lead-up to the CIO’s inauguration: the broken promises of welfare capitalism, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the mass strikes of 19...
Jan 09, 2024•42 min
Suzi talks to Boris Kagarlitsky, Russian left intellectual writer-activist, just two weeks after he won his release from over four months in pre-trial custody. Kagarlitsky was arrested in Moscow on July 25 by the FSB, the Russian secret police, and taken more than 800 miles north to the city of Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic, where the local FSB opened a criminal case against him. He was accused of justifying terrorism, ostensibly for comments that he posted months earlier on social media regard...
Jan 08, 2024•52 min
Featuring Ussama Makdisi on how Western colonialism and Zionism exploited, exacerbated, and imposed sectarianism across the Arab Middle East. This is the SECOND of a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Contact Spotify and tell them: stop hiding The Dig! Why is The Dig so hard to find on Spotify? support.spotify.com/contact-spotify-support/ Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger at versobooks.com B...
Jan 06, 2024•1 hr 39 min
Samuel Moyn, law professor and historian, discusses the political and legal dubiousness of excluding Trump from the presidential ballot. Labor journalist Alex Press talks about the year in labor. See her Jacobin article, "In 2023, the US Working Class Fought Back" 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 online ....
Jan 05, 2024•53 min
This is another special episode of Long Reads looking at Israel’s war on Gaza. Our focus today is on the politics of the Biden administration and its backing for Israel. Joe Biden and his team are still giving their firm support to Benjamin Netanyahu as he talks about a war lasting for “many months." With a presidential election due in the fall, there appear to be strong echoes of Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam in 1968. Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the senior diplomatic correspondent for the Huffington Pos...
Jan 04, 2024•46 min
We kick off 2024 by raiding the fridge for some holiday leftovers. It's become an annual tradition on this podcast to try to extract ideology from Tim Allen's "Santa Clause" franchise. With THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE (2006), we hit the motherlode. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Jan 03, 2024•44 min
There have been many moments of labor upsurge in America: the influx of members into the Knights of Labor in 1886, the dramatic growth of unions during and after World War I, and the great wave of public sector unionism in the 1960s and ‘70s. But none matches the period of the 1930s and ‘40s, when millions of workers unionized under the aegis of the great labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. If we’re looking to get millions of private-sector workers into the labor ...
Jan 02, 2024•4 min
Gabriel Hetland has just published his study of populist experiments in Venezuela and Bolivia, Democracy on the Ground , showing the complexity of implementing participatory democracy at the grassroots level. Suzi talks to him about his findings. He examines the possibilities, limits, and concrete cases of participatory democracy, including participatory budgeting at the local level during the highpoint of Latin America’s Left Turn in the 2010s. Hetland's study immediately begs the question: wha...
Dec 29, 2023•51 min
Featuring Ussama Makdisi on the late Ottoman Empire's Arab culture of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish coexistence—an ecumenical frame that was interrupted by European colonialism and Zionism, which exacerbated and exploited sectarianism. This is the first of a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Shop Haymarket's ALL 40% off Holiday sale at haymarketbooks.org Buy Let Them Eat Crypto at plutobooks.com...
Dec 23, 2023•1 hr 58 min
If society outlawed emotions, could we stop all war and conflict? This is the very, very stupid question at the heart of EQUILIBRIUM (2002), the dystopian extravaganza that introduced the world to the art of "gun kata." Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Dec 23, 2023•45 min
Environmental journalist Tina Gerhardt analyzes the recently concluded COP28 environmental summit, where limited good intentions were uttered and oil contracts were signed. Historian Forrest Hylton talks about Javier Milei, the new libertarian, authoritarian president of Argentina. 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 ....
Dec 22, 2023•53 min
