The Dig

What else to talk about right now other than everything about right now? Election, pandemic, BLM, climate, and how the left should think about and struggle with it all. Dan interviews Naomi Klein and Nikhil Pal Singh. Support this podcast on Patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig Book Club. Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club

Political theorist Wendy Brown on how neoliberalism attacked society and democracy and in doing so laid the foundation for right-wing authoritarianism and nihilism. Episodes from the archives on neoliberalism: A History of Neoliberalism with Quinn Slobodian Family Values with Melinda Cooper

Roberto Lovato on Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas . Growing up Salvadoran-American in The Mission, fighting with the FMLN in El Salvador, making sense of MS-13, weaving back together the pieces of a transnational history severed by borders and violence. Lovato retells El Salvador and US history through his family’s story. Support this podcas...

Dan interviews legal scholars Aziz Rana and Amna Akbar, and Movement for Black Lives lawyer Marbre Stahly-Butts, on SCOTUS, liberal RBG and court veneration, and other big questions on the law and politics facing the left. Join a Dig book club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Bathsheba Demuth on her monumental book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait . From the 19th century through today, governments and capitalists on the Russian, Soviet, and American Arctic borderlands extract energy from a natural world whose reproductive cycles they don’t comprehend and strive to convert Indigenous people into national subjects. Support this podcast...

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews tech organizer and scholar Meredith Whittaker on the political economy of the tech leviathan that’s remaking capitalism, empire, and the carceral state. FYI: Whittaker mentioned this interview with Sarah T. Hamid on carceral technologies logicmag.io/care/community-defense-sarah-t-hamid-on-abolishing-carceral-technologies/ Support this podcast with a contrib...

Dan interviews historian Paul Renfro on his book Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State . Stranger Danger is also this month’s Dig Book Club book. Read and discuss it with fellow listeners, and then on Zoom with Paul by signing up here: thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/ A relevant Dig ep from the archives: Melinda Cooper on her book Family Values: Between Neo...

Dan interviews Tithi Bhattacharya, Daniel Bessner, Simon Torracinta on the manifold crises engulfing higher ed as covid exposes and exacerbates decades of austerity and neoliberal iniquity. “House of Cards: Can the American university be saved?” by Daniel Bessner thenation.com/article/society/gig-academy-meritocracy-trap-universities-crisis “Extinction Event: Given what is to com...

Dan interviews historian Matthew Countryman on his book Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia . Join a Dig Book Club reading group and discuss Up South with Countryman on September 12. Sign up here thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan’s recent live event with Yanis Varoufakis on how 2020 revealed that 2008 had changed capitalism forever. Also: we had some pod feed issues last week. If you missed Dan’s interview with brilliant organizers Andres Celin and Rapheal Randall—and this is a must-listen for everyone interested in organizing—check it out: www.thedigradio.com/podcast/organize-to-win-with-andres-celin-and-r...

A must-listen conversation on organizing to win with two extraordinary organizers from Philadelphia’s Youth United for Change. Download their book Y’all Tryna Win or Nah?! https://www.youthunitedforchange.org/y_all_tryna_win_or_nah Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Kelly Lytle Hernández on MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol . Dan’s 2017 interview with Lytle Hernández on City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965 : thedigradio.com/podcast/a-history-of-human-caging-with-kelly-lytle-hernandez Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan’s 2018 interview with Matthew Frye Jacobson on Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America . With a new intro from Dan on the Columbus myth and the politics of white ethnicity. Support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Our police system is a product of Cold War US imperialism too. Dan interviews Stuart Schrader on Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing . Support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

This is an incredible moment to learn about the Young Lords from historian Johanna Fernández, the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History . Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan talks to @loggins__ and @MuseWendi about why people are reading White Fragility and ten books about racism, capitalism, and Black radicalism that you should read instead. Check out Left POCket Project @LeftPOC Blacks In and Out of the Left by Michael C Dawson Dig interview with Michael Dawson Democracy Remixed by Cathy Cohen Dig interview with Cathy Cohen, Jasson Perez, Malaika Jabali Mapping...

Aziz Rana interviews Dan Denvir on how policing and mass incarceration became core features of the war on immigrants and on his book All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It . Please support this podcast wit $ at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Dan’s book at versobooks.com/books/2858-all-american-nativism

Mike Davis on his classic book about why the US has long lacked strong socialist and labor politics. One recurrent answer: racism. Read Dan’s essay on the moment: jacobinmag.com/2020/06/donald-trump-war-american-democracy-riots-coronavirus Not in the mood for a long, complex Dig interview? Check out Antibody , which is like commie This American Life: thedigradio.com/antibody Support this pod...

A Dig special. Zoom forum Dan hosted with leading defund police organizers from around the country. For more info: blackvisionsmn.org byp100.org daretowin.org reclaimRI.org blmla.org If you live in RI, support the fight for a people’s budget: actionnetwork.org/petitions/say-no-to-a-brutal-austerity-budget-in-rhode-island Dan’s essay on Trump’s origins in ordinary bipartisan secur...

Antibody is a narrative series about how Covid-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. In this episode: All Cops Are Idiots (featuring Kafui Attoh, you can buy his book here: ugapress.org/book/9780820354217/rights-in-transit ) A Few Basic Demands (produced by Chenjerai Kumanyika ( twitter.com/catchatweetdown ) After the Peak (by Karim Sariahmed ( twitter.com/sariahmed ), along with Alex Azan...

Dan interviews returning guests Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana on the long history behind the crisis of American imperial legitimation that has become so manifest amid the pandemic. Some works by Bâli and Rana cited in this interview: bostonreview.net/war-security-politics-global-justice/asl%C4%B1-u-b%C3%A2li-aziz-rana-sanctions-are-inhumane%E2%80%94now-and-always lawreview.uchicago.edu/publication/const...

Antibody is a new narrative series about how Covid-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. In this episode: The Corner (featuring Pablo Alvarado and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network ) Stranger Pleasure (featuring Samuel Delany ; produced by David Gutherz) One House in Oakland (produced by Sophie Kasakove ) Role Call (produced by Andrea Long Chu ) Support day laborer economic survi...

Dan interviews Cathy Cohen, Jasson Perez, and Malaika Jabali on this uprising, the conditions that made it possible, and where it might be headed. Support Black Visions Collective at blackvisionsmn.org Check out Malaika’s short film Left Out .

Antibody is a new narrative series about how Covid-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. In this episode: Zoom Canvass (featuring Nikil Saval ) Hardwood Flesh (produced by Ari Mejia ) Dial 3 to Admit Your Personal Failure (produced by Ian Lewis and Caroline Kanner) You Can’t Go Home Again (written by Alex Press ) The International Trans Person Helpline (produced by Cass Adair and Arl...

From The Dig and Jacobin: a new narrative series about how COVID-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. The first of three episodes is coming soon.