Coming From Left Field (Audio)

Can Jewish identity be separated from support for Zionism? Benjamin Moser argues that Jewish history offers a powerful answer—and that many of its dissenting voices have been pushed out of view. In this episode of Coming From Left Field, we talk with the Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer about “Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History.” Through twelve portraits of religious thinkers, writers, intellectuals,...

What does it take to build a fighting union—and what does it take to destroy one? Historian Roger Keeran returns to Coming From Left Field to discuss Stephen Meyer’s “Stalin Over Wisconsin: The Making & Unmaking of Militant Unionism, 1900–1950.” Keeran wrote the new foreword to this rediscovered labor history, which follows the rise and dismantling of militant unionism at the Allis-Chalmers ma...

In this episode, we welcome political scientist and longtime University of Minnesota professor August H. Nimtz to discuss his book, “Black Marxism: A Marxist Critique.” Nimtz revisits Cedric J. Robinson’s influential 1983 “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition” and explains why he believes Robinson’s account of the Black radical tradition downplays class struggle, revolutionary...

In this episode of Coming From Left Field, philosopher and cultural critic Gabriel Rockhill joins us to discuss “Requiem for French Theory: Transatlantic Funeral Dirge in a Marxist Key,” his new book co-written with Aymeric Monville. Rockhill examines how postwar French Theory—associated with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others—was received, promoted, and...

Bill Moyer has spent over two decades turning protest into an art form — literally. As co-founder and executive director of the Backbone Campaign, he's behind the giant "We the People" banners, the overpass bannering, the light projections, and the inflatables that have shown up at marches from Seattle to Washington D.C. In this conversation, he joins us to talk about where that all started, the "...

Communist writer, educator, creator, and translator Luna Oi (Luna Nguyen) joins us from her home in Vietnam for a conversation that dismantles just about everything the West thinks it knows about her country. Luna has spent six years translating Vietnam's official university Marxism-Leninism curriculum into English — an annotated, diagram-rich series with contributions from Vijay Prashad, Gerald H...

In this episode, we talk with St. Louis historian Jackie Dana, author of “The Unseen History of St. Louis,” about the hidden history of central and southern Illinois coal mining. Jackie traces how immigrant workers and their families, including her own Croatian relatives in Benld, Illinois, were drawn to the mines that helped power St. Louis industry and the American economy. We explore the rich e...

This conversation with Bev Stohl, author of “Chomsky and Me,” takes you inside Noam Chomsky’s office and daily life in a way few people have ever seen. Drawing on nearly 25 years as Chomsky’s assistant at MIT, Bev shares intimate, funny, and moving stories about his work habits, his chaotic “checkerboard” office, his deep kindness toward ordinary people, and the emotional toll of spending a lifeti...

This episode, artist, writer, and journalist Molly Crabapple discusses her new book, “Here Where We Live Is Our Country.” Through the conversation, she explores how art, memory, and reportage can challenge borders, social movements, and official narratives, focusing on the lives of workers, migrants, and resisters who carve out solidarity and dignity in hostile conditions. The discussion highlight...

Vietnam veteran, poet, educator, and essayist Bill (W.D.) Ehrhart joins our podcast to discuss his new collection, “Getting Shot At: Essays on War, Conflict and Culture Clash.” Drawing on more than fifty years of writing and activism, Ehrhart reflects on how Vietnam shattered his belief in American good intentions and how that disillusionment informs his sharp, plain-spoken essays on U.S. militari...

In this episode, our guest is Chris Smalls, discussing his new book, “When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class.” Smalls, best known as the co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union, led the first successful union drive at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. Smalls traces his path from growing up working class in Hackensack, New Jersey, to becomin...

In this episode, our guest is Chris Smalls, discussing his new book, “When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class.” Smalls, best known as the co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union, led the first successful union drive at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. Smalls traces his path from growing up working class in Hackensack, New Jersey, to becomin...

In this episode, we feature historian Sven Beckert discussing his sweeping new book, “Capitalism: A Global History.” We dig into how capitalism emerged over the last thousand years, why it’s not just “markets” but a specific, historically created social order, and how it became a genuinely global system built on “connected diversity” of labor regimes—from wage work and peasant farming to slavery a...

Les Leopold’s new book, “The Billionaires Have Two Parties – We Need a Party of Our Own,” starts from a simple claim: Republicans and Democrats alike have become instruments of the billionaire class, while working people are left with no real political home. On Coming From Left Field, Leopold walks through the economic history behind that argument, from deindustrialization and NAFTA to Wall Street...

In this episode of Coming From Left Field, we sit down with anthropologist Ida Susser to talk about her book “The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century.” We dig into how a seemingly narrow revolt against a diesel fuel tax exploded into a nationwide uprising that shook Emmanuel Macron’s government and exposed the deep fractures between France’...

In this podcast, we interview philosopher Dr. John K. Roth to discuss his latest book, ”Saving the American Dream: Meditations for Dark Times.” Roth explores the origins of the American Dream, its dual nature as both an aspiration and a nightmare, and the urgent calls to revive it amid authoritarian threats in 2026. Our conversation links Dr. Roth’s Holocaust scholarship to America's ideals. Key t...

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Heather Ann Thompson joins us to discuss “Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage,” her new book about the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting and how it became a flashpoint in the Reagan-era politics of fear, austerity, and race. Drawing on never-before-seen archival materials, Thompson reconstructs what really h...

Philosopher and activist Gabriel Rockhill joined us today to discuss his new book, “Who Paid the Piper in Western Marxism?” where he lays out how US imperial power has waged an “intellectual world war” through universities, foundations, journals, and cultural institutions—shaping what counts as radical thought inside the imperial core. We talk about Che Guevara’s assassination and the battle over...

In this episode of Coming From Left Field, we feature author J. Albert Mann discussing her nonfiction book, “Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States,” and why honest labor history for young people is both urgently needed and systematically suppressed. Mann explains that she wrote the book for middle- and high-school readers using accessible language, drawing heavily on left labor...

Caroline Fraser joins the Coming From Left Field podcast to discuss "Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers," her genre-bending blend of true crime, environmental muckraking, and personal memoir about growing up near Tacoma’s Asarco smelter in the heyday of Ted Bundy and other Pacific Northwest serial killers. Drawing on research about lead and arsenic exposure, brain scienc...

In this episode, we sit down with sociologist and author Dr. Charles Derber to dig into his new book, “Fighting Oligarchy: How Positive Populism Can Reclaim America.” At a moment when most Americans feel one paycheck away from disaster and both major parties seem unable—or unwilling—to confront corporate power, Derber offers a clear, historically grounded argument for why Trump’s far‑right populis...

In this episode, we welcome Lorri Nandrea and Tony Pecinovsky to discuss the book they edited, “Square Up: Building Labor's Power in the Second Gilded Age”— a vital call to arms for the working class from International Publishers. Square Up is a collection of 16 essays bringing together activists, organizers, and rank-and-file trade union leaders to assess the state of labor in the Trump era and c...

This episode centers on a conversation with sociologists Dr. Nicholas Wolfinger and Dr. Matthew McKeever about their book “Thanks for Nothing: The Economics of Single Motherhood since 1980” and what it reveals about poverty, race, and U.S. policy. The hosts discuss the core puzzle: even after four decades of gains in women’s education and employment, single-mother families are still about five tim...

Toby Manning joins the Coming From Left Field Podcast to discuss his book, “Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music,” a sweeping, theory-driven history of commercial popular music from the 1950s to today. Dr. Manning traces how popular music doesn’t float above politics but is shaped by – and responds to – capitalism, class struggle, race, empire, and changing economic regimes...

In this intergenerational dialogue, we welcome writer A.J. Horn, a remarkable young Marxist-Leninist scholar. We discuss the enduring legacy of the great intellectual, Michael Parenti, who passed away a month ago. We examine what made Parenti’s work—such as his classic “Blackshirts and Reds”—so powerful: his unwavering class analysis, his clear and principled writing, and his ability to trace soci...