Everyday Anarchism

I'm joined today by Anthony Kaldellis, author of The Byzantine Republic and host of the podcast Byzantium and Friends . Anthony and I discuss how Byzantium, popularly associated with with bureaucracy and authoritarianism, depended on mass protests for political legitimacy.

What if Batman's biggest enemy isn't crime? What if his deepest fear isn't bats? What if the secret villain Batman faces in every Batman story is anarchism? I keep trying to go on hiatus, but I keep making new episodes. I guess this is Season/Phase 2. Enjoy!

In this episode, I sit down with Revolutions podcaster Mike Duncan to discuss Kropotkin's influence on the Russian Revolution, protesting in Macron's France, mutual aid during the worst of the pandemic, and whether our current political system can avoid another revolution. Many thanks to the people of Flyleaf Books, a wonderful Chapel Hill bookstore, who provided the venue for our interview. You c...

The authors behind the award-winning novel and TV series The Expanse join me to discuss the politics and sociology of the science fiction future they've created. The Expanse is not a dystopia or a utopia, just a regular ole topia, in which corporations and governments continue to compete and cooperate both with each other and with resistance movements and labor unions. But in space! Daniel, Ty, an...

This week's episode is an edition of my new podcast, AIdeas . Oscar Wilde imagined an anarchist utopia without drudgery and without slavery. How did he propose to accomplish this? Automation. Here's the article about American slavery that I mentioned by Nell Irvin Painter: How We Think About the Term "Enlsaved" Matters Subscribe to AIdeas for more!

This week's guest is J. Bradford DeLong, author of the new economic history of the 20th century, Slouching Towards Utopia . Brad and I discuss William Morris, pre-industrial civilization, jobs versus occupations, and how much blame anarchists deserve for ruining the world. Brad and I had a bit of trouble with our setup, so the audio on his end is a bit rough.

One year later, Everyday Anarchism continues! In this episode, Ruth Kinna and I discuss William Morris, the brilliant craftsman/poet/artist who set out to defeat capitalism when he realized that the forces of commerce wouldn't let craftspeople make a living unless they sold their wares to wealthy. Just don't call him an anarchist. You can also hear Ruth's previous appearances on Everyday Anarchism...

My guest this week is Jon Raymond, novelist and screenwriter, whose most recent book, Denial , imagines a world in 2052 in which climate justice has been delivered via Nuremberg-style trials, climate catastrophe has been avoided, and climate change denial has nevertheless continued. Jon and I discuss Denial , as well as Night Moves , the film he wrote about a group of activists planning a bombing...

This week we will survey nihilism in Russian literature with Maya Slater and Nicolas Pasternak Slater, translators of a new edition of Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Children . Turgenev's novel introduced nihilism as an idea to an entire generation of Russian dissidents - including Kropotkin. Join me as the Slaters show how nihilism is portrayed in this epoch-making novel, as well as famous depiction...

This week's episode is an edition of my new podcast, AIdeas . How should we teach AI about human ethics? Simple: anarchism! Subscribe to AIdeas for more!

In this episode of Anarchism 101: An Anarchist Syllabus , I'm joined by Jacqueline Jones, author of Goddess of Anarchy, to discuss Lucy Parsons and her legacy.

In this episode I'm joined by Asao B. Inoue to discuss contract grading, a radical (even anarchistic?) form of grading which strengthens the student-teacher relationship, lessens the power of hierarchy in the classroom, and fights the oppressive structures which are distorting education. If you'd like to learn more about contract grading - including how to integrate it into your syllabus - check o...

Welcome back to my continuing coverage of the Graeber and Wengrow book The Dawn of Everything . This week, is the conclusion of my conversation with four members of the Black Trowel Collective, a network of anarchist archeologists: James Birmingham, Lewis Borck , James Flexner , and Aris Politopoulos . This conversation covers next steps: in the wake of The Dawn of Everything and work done by the...

In this episode of Anarchism 101: An Anarchist Syllabus , I read Lucy Parsons' "The Principles of Anarchism"  and  "Speech on June 29 of the Founding Convention of the IWW"  . This project is year-long; on the first of each month of 2022, I'll be posting my reading of an important anarchist text. Later that month, I'll post an episode in which I discuss each text and its author with...

In this June 2022 discussion episode of Anarchism 101 , I discuss Gandhi's "Passive Resistance" with KP Shankaran . Join us as we discuss Gandhi's place in the anarchist movement, why his ethics based anarchism is the purest form of anarchism, and how his critique of colonialism is more important now than ever before. This project is year-long; on the first of each month of 2022, I'll be posting m...

Welcome back to my continuing coverage of the Graeber and Wengrow book The Dawn of Everything . This week, I'm joined by four members of the Black Trowel Collective, a network of anarchist archeologists: James Birmingham, Lewis Borck , James Flexner , and Aris Politopoulos . This is part one of our roundtable discussion, covering first impressions of the book and its place in recent work on archae...

Kim Stanley Robinson joins me to discuss his new book, The High Sierra: A Love Story . Stan and I discuss literary form, the need for Keynesianism in a crisis, utopian camping, his solution to leftist infighting, and how humanity can survive our current climate nightmare. You might also like Stan's most recent novel, a future history of how a worldwide crisis response to the climate emergency woul...

Iain McKay joins me to discuss the new edition of Kropotkin's Words of a Rebel from PM Press . In this book, Kropotkin's very first, he lays out the need for a revolution and how to prepare for that revolution. It's strikingly relevant, beautifully written, and packed with all sorts of context from Iain. I highly recommend the book!

In this episode of Anarchism 101: An Anarchist Syllabus , Abby Russ and I read Gandhi's " Passive Resistance " from his anarchist manifesto, Hind Swaraj. This project is year-long; on the first of each month of 2022, I'll be posting my reading of an important anarchist text. Later that month, I'll post an episode in which I discuss each text and its author with a scholar of anarchism. Look forward...

Labor journalist Kim Kelly joins me to discuss her new book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor . We talk unions, what they did historically, what they're doing right now, and most of all how they can make an impossible future possible.

The heart of modern capitalism is the exploitation of workers. But according to all of the great theorists of capitalism, capitalism will actually prevent the exploitation of labor. So maybe all those thinkers are just wrong. But maybe what we call "capitalism" is just an updated form of feudal serfdom in which CEOs and middle managers have replaced monarchs and aristocrats. But if we are living n...

This week I'm joined by Bruce Glavovic , Iain White , and Tim Smith to discuss their recent article " The Tragedy of Climate Science ." In the article, these three climate scientists point out the obvious: climate scientists keep making increasingly dire predictions, and politicians keep doing nothing. In a recent survey , a majority of climate scientists expect catastrophic global warming to occu...

This week I'm joined by Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind , to discuss American democracy in the wake of the January 6th attack and the supposed crisis of democracy it caused. Corey and I discuss democracy as a process, the work that needs to be done to support that process, and how Karl Rove was right about one thing: it's our job to imagine and realize a different world.

In this May 2022 discussion episode of Anarchism 101 , I discuss an excerpt of Bakunin's God and the State with Mark Leier . Join me and Mark as we discuss Bakunin's place in revolutionary thinking, his status as a founding anarchist, his dispute with Marx, and his relevance to contemporary debates about science and democracy. This project is year-long; on the first of each month of 2022, I'll be...

On this episode I'm joined by Aris Politopoulos, an archeologist who works on video games, to discuss the way that video games can help us understand the past, help us educate people about the past, and possibly make the entire project of understanding history more anarchist. Aris does much of his work on video games as part of the VALUE Foundation; you can find them on Twitter , Twitch , YouTube...