The Dig

US empire in the Philippines, Filipino migration, labor organizing in the fields, and the nativist campaign for Asian exclusion. Dan interviews Rick Baldoz on his remarkable book The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898-1946. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

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

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: Antiforeign...

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

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

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...

Why we need the PRO Act with Jimmy Williams, General Vice President of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. Sign up to join DSA’s PRO Act phonebank actionnetwork.org/forms/proactphonebank Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Join The Dig Book Club and discuss The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy with Paolo Gerbaudo thedigradio.com/dig-book-cl...

Dan interviews Jacobin ‘s Alex Press and organizer Jonah Furman on the state of the labor movement. Sign up to join DSA’s Pro Act phonebank actionnetwork.org/forms/proactphonebank Read Alex Press’s interview with political scientist Michael Goldfield on the Amazon organizing drive in Bessemer jacobinmag.com/2021/02/amazon-unionize-alabama-operation-dixie-organizing-south Subscrib...

We’re taking a week off to play catch up and posting an early Dig episode from the archives that people keep returning to time and again: Barbara and Karen Fields on their book Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (episode 75 from December 13, 2017). Peruse The Dig’s vast archives at thedigradio.com and we’ll be back with a new ep next week. Support this podcast at...

Dan interviews Sarah Jaffe on her book Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion To Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone . Support this podcast on Patreon.com/TheDig Join The Dig Book Club and discuss The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy with Paolo Gerbaudo thedigradio.com/dig-book-club

Dan interviews Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman on the history and post-Trump trajectory of conservative intelligentsia. Listen to Know Your Enemy , their really great podcast on the American Right, wherever you get your podcasts. Sign up on Patreon for bonus episodes: patreon.com/knowyourenemy Recommended reading and listening: “What’s left of liberalism? Why the left and right both seem to a...

Dan interviews Jeanne Morefield on her book Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection and how the disavowed wars have come home on the American Right. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Join the Dig Book Club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Check out our vast archives at thedigradio.com

Dan interviews sociologist Paolo Gerbaudo on his book The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy . How does the promise of direct digital democracy obscure how leaders are made more powerful and less accountable? Examples from Italy (Five Star Movement) and Spain (Podemos). How does the failure to incorporate people into rooted forms of political organization undermine the left...

Dan interviews author Fatima Bhutto on social media subjectivities; Pakistani history, politics, and identity; and her novel The Runaways . Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig Book Club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club

Dan interviews Thea Riofrancos on how Ecuador’s Pink Tide government was constrained by an unequal world system and on the conflict over mining that erupted between leftist President Rafael Correa and the Indigenous movement that laid the groundwork for his rise to power. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig book club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club

Nikhil Pal Singh and Joe Lowndes discuss and debate today’s American Right: what sort of threat does the Far-Right pose? How does it relate to the Republican Party and to the neoliberal imperial Center? What does that mean for the Left? Read Corey Robin’s smart and short piece on impeachment jacobinmag.com/2021/01/corey-robin-what-impeachment-could-mean-trump Listen to Dan’s inte...

Dan interviews historian and essayist Gabriel Winant on the social worlds that make US politics and how that sociality is rooted in the economy, carceral state, social media, religion, and more. Read these n+1 essays and Dissent interview for context: We Live in a Society nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/we-live-in-a-society Coronavirus and Chronopolitics nplusonemag.com/issue-37/politics/c...

From The Dig archives: Dan interviews Melinda Cooper about her book, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, which makes the case that neoliberalism and social conservatism have been consistent collaborators in creating an economy that redistributed wealth ruthlessly upwards with a risk-absorbing family at its privatized center. We’ll be back next week with a ne...

A big-picture interview with Tobita Chow and Jake Werner on China that puts today’s geopolitical conflict and repression into the context of global capitalism. Join a Dig Book Club thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at patreon.com/TheDig

What happened to social democratic politics? Dan interviews sociologist Stephanie Mudge on her book Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism . Join a Dig Book Club thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at patreon.com/TheDig

Prevailing identity politics norms call on people “listen to the most affected” or “centre the most marginalized.” But this often works out quite badly in practice. Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on his brilliant essay “Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference.” It’s The Dig’s four-year anniversary. Support us at Patreon.com/TheDig and take a mom...

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews Thomas Frank about his book The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism . From The Dig archives on populism: Universalizing American Liberty with Aziz Rana Populism’s Power with Laura Grattan and Thea Riofrancos Worker Freedom with Alex Gourevitch Join a Dig Book Club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews political scientist Megan Ming Francis about the NAACP’s struggle against racist violence in the teens and 20s and how it remade the criminal justice system and the civil rights movement alike. Join a Dig book club! Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/ Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Mike Davis on what the election reveals about this US political moment and the way forward for the Left. Support this podcast at www.patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig book club! Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/

Dan interviews Cornel West on how to think about and act upon the world that this week presented to us. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig