Anatol Lieven looks at the global dimensions of Trumpism. Quinn Slobodian, who wrote a recent article for the New York Review of Books , muses on whether Trump is a neoliberal and examines the three major strands of DOGE-ism. 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 25, 2025•53 min
For now, the ceasefire deal between Hamas and the Israeli government appears to be holding. However, Donald Trump has openly proposed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Trump has used the destruction of Gaza with American-made bombs as a rationale for his plan. Paul Rogers, emeritus professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford and the author of many books, joins Long Reads for a conversation about Trump’s scheme and whether it can be stopped. Paul’s most recent work is The Insecurity Trap...
Feb 22, 2025•37 min
Featuring Danielle Carr on the history and present state of American unwellness and how that’s been shaped by psychiatry, prescription drugs, neuroscience, popular culture, smartphones and social media. We trace the rise of psychiatry as a Gilded Age human science, the disastrous contradictions of asylum deinstitutionalization, the invention of neuroscience and deep brain stimulation, Elon Musk’s Neuralink fraudulence, how Adderall made the Internet run, the liberal gospel of traumatic literalis...
Feb 19, 2025•2 hr 15 min
Our theme for today’s program is resistance in the time of monsters: resistance to the Trump/Musk wrecking ball that threatens the well-being of millions of people here and across the globe. Their actions are illegal, have provoked a constitutional crisis, and constitute a technical coup. At the same time, the Trump/Musk rampage has galvanized resistance in the courts and on the streets. Suzi talks to Geologist and IFPTE local president Colin Smalley, who is part of the Federal Unionists Network...
Feb 18, 2025•54 min
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò picks apart the contradictory strands of the DEI obsession. Sophia Rosenfeld, author of the book The Age of Choice , explores the history of that concept over the last few centuries. 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 18, 2025•53 min
Within weeks of assuming the presidency, Donald Trump has instituted tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. Trump has touted protectionism as a way of supporting American workers. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber and Jacobin contributor Melissa Naschek discuss how nineteenth and twentieth-century protectionist trade policies helped build domestic manufacturing bases around the world, but why Trump's twenty-first century tariffs are very different. While de...
Feb 12, 2025•43 min
Kristin Du Mez, author of the book Jesus and John Wayne , looks at the world of Christian nationalism. Jennifer Middlestadt, who wrote a recent opinion piece in the New York Times , speaks about the “sovereigntism” guiding the foreign policy of Trump et al. 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 10, 2025•53 min
Featuring Chris Newman on Trump's far-right anti-migrant agenda and Democrats' cruel and stupid complicity. Read All-American Nativism versobooks.com/products/704-all-american-nativism Read Dan's essay on Gaza and migration politics in n+1 nplusonemag.com/issue-48/politics/do-border Trump's immigration executive orders propublica.org/article/donald-trump-immigration-executive-orders Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy After Accountability at Haymarketbooks.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobi...
Feb 09, 2025•2 hr 35 min
Last year, Martin Empson joined Long Reads to speak about the German Peasants’ War, Europe’s biggest social revolt before the French Revolution. Martin returns to talk about what happened next. After the revolt was crushed, radical religious tendencies became a vehicle for social discontent. The most famous of those tendencies was known as Anabaptism. A group of religious radicals inspired by Anabaptist ideas even took power in the German town of Münster. After the bloody repression of the Munst...
Feb 07, 2025•41 min
Just two weeks in power, the new Trump administration has already led a horrifying whirlwind of attacks on immigrants, transgender people, tribal nations, people of color, and women. Government institutions are being dismantled. Make no mistake, these shock-and-awe actions are designed to keep people in fear and paralyzed as a fascistic presidency stages what is being called an administrative coup. Our guests today, David Cobb and Kali Akuno, are among the few who saw this moment coming years ag...
Feb 04, 2025•57 min
Eoin Higgins, author of Owned , talks about tech moguls and the journalists, like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, who work for them. Ronnie Grinberg, author of Write Like a Man , on the mostly male, mostly Jewish New York intellectuals of the postwar scene. 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 03, 2025•53 min
Featuring Hannah Srajer on building tenant unions by applying labor organizing models. The Connecticut Tenants Union is partnered with SEIU 1199NE to organize fighting super majority tenant unions that win collectively bargained leases and wield working class political power. It's a model that's spreading nationwide. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Peruse The Dig's vast archives at thedigradio.com Support Reclaim RI https://secure.actblue.com/donate/reclaimri Buy Not Your Rescue Project at...
Feb 01, 2025•1 hr 23 min
President Trump is back in power and immediately moved to carry out his xenophobic policies with a slew of unconstitutional executive orders and plans for mass detention and deportation of the nation’s immigrants. Suzi talks to three extraordinary activists whose organizations and coalitions are building effective solidarity and defense for those about to be detained and deported: Victor Narro, UCLA’s long time expert on immigrant rights and low-wage workers, works in the sanctuary movement, Nan...
Jan 30, 2025•56 min
There is no cultural phenomenon more hated today than what is called wokeness. While it is wrongly associated with the Left, the Right is very successfully taking advantage of it. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber traces the political and economic origins of it, and argues that the Left should be at the forefront of criticizing it. Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy , and published by Jacobin . Music by Zonk...
Jan 29, 2025•43 min
Featuring Leonardo Vilchis and Tracy Rosenthal on their book Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis . Tenant unions fighting to transform Los Angeles, the country, and the world. Support Reclaim RI https://secure.actblue.com/donate/reclaimri Buy Abolish Rent haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent Subscribe to Dissent at dissentmagazine.org/subscribe Use code ‘DIG50’ for 50% off your first order at Plutobooks.com The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles a...
Jan 28, 2025•2 hr 13 min
Mouin Rabbani surveys the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s plans for the Middle East. Angela Jones and Bernadette Barton discuss the new book they co-edited, Sex Work Today . 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...
Jan 27, 2025•53 min
Akbar Shahid Ahmed returns to Long Reads to discuss the recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas — and what’s likely to happen next. Akbar is the senior diplomatic correspondent for the Huffington Post and the author of a forthcoming book about the Biden administration and the Israeli attack on Gaza. He has been a guest on the show several times last year. This conversation was recorded January 23rd. Read more about the role of Gaza in the 2024 election: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/p...
Jan 25, 2025•43 min
Laura Jedeed , author of an article for the New Republic , talks about San Francisco and tech moguls’ plans to “fix” it. Yasha Levine , co-director of a new documentary, Pistachio Wars , talks about billionaire couple and self-styled philanthropists the Resnicks and their involvement in the California water crisis. 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://ww...
Jan 22, 2025•53 min
Featuring Michael Denning on Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order , collectively authored by Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Hall’s method of Marxist conjunctural analysis applied to the generalized crisis that paved the way for neoliberalism's rise; a model for how we should ask questions about our world that will provide us with knowledge we need to change it. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/The...
Jan 19, 2025•2 hr 24 min
Jacobin Radio has featured many presentations from the recent conference held in honor of Boris Kagarlitsky, author of The Long Retreat , a sobering analysis of the international Left that was discussed in our previous episode, and currently a prisoner in Russia for speaking out against Putin’s war in Ukraine. We continue with Trevor Ngwane, a South African scholar-activist at the University of Johannesburg, and Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Rese...
Jan 18, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Colette Shade , author of Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything , talks about culture at the turn of the millennium. Tim Shorrock discusses the political crisis in South Korea. 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...
Jan 16, 2025•53 min
Foregrounding workers’ material interests used to be commonplace among socialists. But as the Left faced decades of defeat, a materialist approach to politics fell out of favor. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber defends materialism from its critics and discusses how a materialist perspective understands rationality, the challenges around collective organizing, and cultural differences. Read the article mentioned in this episode: https://catalyst-journal.com/2024/12/the-fl...
Jan 15, 2025•37 min
Featuring Michael Denning on Stuart Hall’s Marxism—a Marxism without guarantees. This is a comprehensive introduction to Marxism as a method to analyze historically specific, complex and contradictory capitalist social formations, and what that means for making, rather than assuming the existence of, a working-class socialist politics. Next week Dan interviews Denning on Policing the Crisis , a 1978 book collectively authored by Hall and his colleagues; it’s a remarkable project that anticipates...
Jan 11, 2025•1 hr 39 min
This week is a best of 2024, with Rashid Khalidi, Pankaj Mishra, Annelle Sheline, Aziz Rana, Anna Kornbluh, Brooke Harrington, and, in memoriam, Jane McAlevey. 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
Jan 06, 2025•53 min
Branko Marcetic, staff writer at Jacobin and author of Yesterday's Man , says farewell to Joe Biden (and takes some shots at Joe Scarborough too). Santiago Pérez, co-author of a recent paper , discusses his research on how little the class composition of elite college student bodies has changed. 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.leftbusinessobserv...
Jan 03, 2025•53 min
In the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the Left's association with identity politics has been a major focus of public debate. But what identity politics is or who primarily benefits from it remains contested. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber discusses the Democrats’ long-standing attachment to identity politics, why this form of politics can't fight oppression, and the real history behind struggles for justice. Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Cat...
Jan 01, 2025•46 min
Suzi recently participated in a conference in honor of the dissident sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, who is languishing in Putin's prison for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. On this episode of Jacobin Radio , we bring you a panel from the conference discussing Boris's latest book, The Long Retreat , published while he was in prison. Three activist-scholars, Bill Fletcher Jr., Alex Callinicos, and Jayati Ghosh, present their appreciation and their critiques of Kagarlitsky's analysis of th...
Dec 27, 2024•54 min
Featuring Bassam Haddad on the historical and geopolitical origins of Assad’s rise and fall — and what might happen next. We think through the contradictions: honoring the joy felt by Syrians at Assad’s ouster while simultaneously taking stock of a truly bad geopolitical outcome. Want to learn more? Listen to “Thawra,” our series on the 20th-century political history of the Arab East thedigradio.com/Thawra Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Palestine in a World on Fire at Haymarketbooks.c...
Dec 24, 2024•2 hr 38 min
Trita Parsi and Joshua Landis analyze what’s been going on in Syria. Tina Gerhardt reviews the annual UN climate conference, COP29, where little happened. 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 23, 2024•53 min
As with many other periods, the history of the Roman Empire has often been told from the vantage point of a minoritarian social elite. Sarah Bond, a professor of classics at the University of Iowa, set out in her research to uncover something different: a "history from below" detailing the class struggle in ancient Rome. She joins Long Reads to discuss this project. Sarah's book Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire will be published in February of next year. Long Reads is a ...
Dec 20, 2024•45 min
