Featuring Patrick Blanchfield on assassination and political violence: from the routine to the extraordinary; authored by the state, capital, the left, the right, the unwell and alienated; as an anxiety, in our fantasies, as a morbid symptom and repetition compulsion; and as expressing distinctively American logics of domination and human disposability. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Listen to the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast at ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/ Read Patrick’s essay on ...
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 59 min
Bernie Sanders resurrected socialist politics in the United States after many decades of defeat. But what socialism will entail or how we get there remains unclear. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber discusses the difference between social democracy and socialism, how progressives won policies in the past, and where the Left should go after the Bernie moment. Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy , and published...
Dec 18, 2024•42 min
The Democratic Party has long clung to the notion of “demographic destiny,” the view that minorities will vote blue no matter who. But now it is clear that workers of all races are abandoning the Democratic Party, either by moving to the right or dropping out of politics altogether. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek discuss how Donald Trump’s recent victory is different from eight years ago, why the Democrats gave up their working class base, and how t...
Dec 11, 2024•40 min
Larry Bartels discusses his Foreign Affairs article about the right-wing “populist wave." Sopo Japaridze, co-author of a recent Jacobin article , examines the crisis of democracy in Georgia (the country, not the US 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 online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html...
Dec 10, 2024•53 min
Suzi talked to Gilbert Achcar just before the spectacular collapse of the Assad regime that has ruled Syria for more than fifty years. Achcar, author of many books on the region, explains Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)’s origins, what is behind the lightning offensive that toppled Assad's government, and how that overthrow was prepared by Israel’s war on Lebanon and Gaza. We will also get Gilbert’s take on the collapse of the political center and rise of the far right worldwide, including in France ...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min
In the inaugural episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber is joined by Jacobin 's editorial director Bhaskar Sunkara to discuss why Trump won the election, how socialists should think about strategic alliances with liberals, and what it means to be an anti-capitalist. Read the articles mentioned in this episode: https://jacobin.com/2024/09/liberalism-marxism-cohen-rawls-workers https://jacobin.com/2024/11/obama-democrats-2024-election-race Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is pr...
Dec 04, 2024•41 min
Brooke Harrington, author of Offshore , uncovers how and where the mega-rich stash their cash. Mahendran Thiruvarangan talks about a new leftish government in Sri Lanka. 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...
Dec 03, 2024•53 min
Featuring Quinn Slobodian and Wendy Brown on Trump’s triumphant return to power and the freakish, obscene, billionaire-dominated, capitalist reactionary, Christian nationalist, contradiction-ridden MAGA movement that surrounds him. A comprehensive early assessment of what is going on, where it’s coming from, and where it all might be heading. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Share Thawra with a friend thedigradio.com/Thawra Use code "DIG" for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com Subsc...
Nov 29, 2024•2 hr 34 min
Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. It was a rare moment of hope for Palestinians, but the US government responded with outrage. Earlier this year, a report by the Guardian and +972 Magazine showed that Israel had been spying on the ICC for a number of years. The aim of the espionage was to keep track of which particular allegations of war crimes were being investigated ...
Nov 28, 2024•47 min
Veteran journalist Marc Cooper joins Suzi to talk about the landslide that wasn’t, Trump’s transition swamp, and the state of the Fourth Estate. Trump’s victory is confined to the undemocratic electoral college. His winning margin in the popular vote is 1.6 percentage points, the smallest in more than 20 years. Trump may claim an historic, unprecedented mandate, but he just squeaked by. He is still dangerous but vulnerable. We talk about the danger and the chaos to come, including the threat to ...
Nov 26, 2024•58 min
Michael Meeropol , son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, talks about how the government executed his mother despite knowing her innocence. Ruth Whippman , author of BOYMOM: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity , discusses the challenges of raising boys. See recent documents shedding light on "Why Ethel's execution was wrongful": https://www.rfc.org/node/4836 Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from...
Nov 25, 2024•53 min
Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar in the final installment of a three-part series on Central America. This episode picks up with Nayib Bukele’s authoritarian crypto enthusiasm in El Salvador; Daniel Ortega’s perversion of Sandinismo’s revolutionary legacy in Nicaragua; anti-mining movements in Panama; Honduras and Guatemala, where popular social movements have elected left presidents to confront entrenched power structures. We conclude by discussing mass migration from the region tha...
Nov 23, 2024•1 hr 36 min
Anatol Lieven tries to divine a Trump foreign policy out of unreliable rhetoric and early appointments. Alex Vitale tries similar on Trump and criminal justice. 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...
Nov 20, 2024•53 min
Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar in the second of a three (not two!) part series on the history and present of Central America. This interview picks up our discussion of revolutionary armed struggles against brutal US-backed military-oligarchic regimes in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Then, the peace accords and postwar transitions accompanied by the imposition of neoliberal economic restructuring. Finally, the rise of mass migration, new transnational gangs, and the regime...
Nov 18, 2024•2 hr 6 min
Suzi talks to UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley, who has written a great deal about fascism and far right politics. The US has just elected to the Presidency a man who represents a dire threat to democracy and constitutional rule as we know it. We get Dylan’s understanding of the specificity of Trump’s politics, the basis of his support, and the fascistic measures favored by people in and around his party, including the frightening Project 2025. Central to MAGA is a reactionary view of gender,...
Nov 18, 2024•57 min
Earlier this week, Joe Biden welcomed the Israeli president Isaac Herzog to the White House. Last October, Herzog announced that there were no innocent civilians in Gaza. The International Court of Justice cited his comments as evidence that the Palestinian people needed protection from the threat of genocide. Akbar Shahid Ahmed of the Huffington Post has been following the Biden administration’s support for the Israeli attack on Gaza from the start. He’s currently working on a book that will gi...
Nov 14, 2024•56 min
We look at the election results that took many of us by surprise — giving Donald Trump and Republicans an across the board victory. For a look at the bigger picture, Suzi speaks to Robert Brenner, professor of history at UCLA, for analysis and some post-election blues. This podcast was recorded on November 8, before all the votes were counted along the West Coast. The final tallies will likely shrink Trump’s margin of victory, but not the overall results. The striking character of the Trump vict...
Nov 13, 2024•56 min
Doug comments on the Trump victory and the role of inflation. Dahlia Scheindlin talks about Israeli public opinion. James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, authors of a recent paper , discuss Ukrainian nationalism in the Western political imagination. 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...
Nov 12, 2024•53 min
Oh lord almighty, when will we be rid of this man? Apparently not for another four years at least. We ring in the latest chapter of this never-ending "Trump Era" with the new biopic/origin story THE APPRENTICE (2024). Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Nov 11, 2024•49 min
Featuring Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Trump’s decisive victory, Harris’s catastrophic loss, multi-racial working-class dealignment, and where the left might go from here. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig We now have a special feed dedicated entirely to our Thawra series. Listen and spread the word: thedigradio.com/Thawra Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin Buy Solidarity is the Political Version of Love at haymarketbooks.com...
Nov 09, 2024•1 hr 53 min
Laura Jedeed , author of a recent feature article for Lux , discusses the right’s war on North Idaho College. Mouin Rabbani talks about what’s driving Israel’s multiple wars, and the Axis of Resistance. 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 ....
Nov 06, 2024•53 min
Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar on the history of Central America. This is the first episode in a two-part series covering the late-19th and early-20th century rise of export-crop oligarchies and constant US intervention, the US-backed separation of Panama from Colombia to take control of the Canal, the CIA's 1954 Guatemala coup, the rise of armed revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and the US-backed dirty wars that were prosecuted in response—that and...
Nov 03, 2024•1 hr 55 min
Alan Minsky sits in for host Suzi Weissman on a special pre-election edition of Jacobin Radio . In the first half, Alan speaks with economist Mark Paul, Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University, about a California ballot measure, Prop 33, that addresses one of the top concerns of voters across the country: the cost of housing. Prop 33 would eliminate statewide restrictions on rent control measures. Predictably, a PAC supported by large real estate corporations is spending over $100 milli...
Nov 02, 2024•55 min
Is Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER (1979) about the Soviet Russia in which it was made? And if not, then where exactly is "The Zone"? We wade into one of the most forbidding cinematic objects of all time, but realize that the answer is only ever found within. PLUS: Justin Trudeau is historically unpopular - so why hasn't he stepped down? "US Politics Has Reached a Dead End" by Luke Savage - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/19/trump-campaign-leaked-data-voters-elon-musk "Revealed: Trump gr...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 31 min
Featuring Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix on their book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea . Guest hosted by Micah Uetricht. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Get 40% off The Years of Theory with code "DIG" at Versobooks.com Buy Our History is the Future at Haymarketbooks.com
Oct 29, 2024•1 hr 30 min
William Hartung , co-author of a recent paper for Brown University's Watson Institute , outlines how much aid the US has given to Israel over the last year (plus, he shares some wacky stuff on AI weapons). The sociologist Scott Schieman talks about his surprising research showing that people actually like their jobs. 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://...
Oct 28, 2024•53 min
The German Peasants’ War was the biggest social revolt in a European country during the period before the French Revolution. In the wake of the Reformation, a movement among the popular classes rose up against feudalism and aristocratic power. The revolt was brutally crushed and the challenge to the feudal order was defeated. Marxist writers like Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky later made it into a key reference point for their theories of class struggle. Long Reads is joined by the writer and...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Five years after Joker because an era-defining cultural phenomenon, its sequel, JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (2024), is the biggest flop of the year. We sifted through the wreckage to find a purposely abrasive object, and are split on its effectiveness. Toronto listeners, see Luke speak at Progressive Publics: A Symposium Connecting Scholarship & Independent Media, November 8 - https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/progressive-publics-a-symposium-connecting-scholarship-independent-media-tickets-1051089455857 P...
Oct 22, 2024•48 min
Anatol Lieven dissects the ambitiously aggressive grand design of the Biden-Harris foreign policy. Lily Lynch, author of a recent article for The Baffler , talks about the emptying out of the Balkans. 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...
Oct 21, 2024•53 min
Featuring Naomi Klein on how the pandemic turbocharged a far-right conspiracist politics that’s sweeping into power. This strange new world, however, is a product of an old contradiction: the need to disavow and deny a long history and awful present; the inability to make sense of the extreme violence and oppression that makes everyday Western capitalist society possible. We discuss Klein’s book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World and her Guardian essay "How Israel has made trauma a weapo...
Oct 18, 2024•1 hr 41 min
