Everyday Anarchism

Tomas Rothaus joins me to discuss his book Argentina, A Tale of Two Utopias: Anarchism, Soccer, Neoliberalism . We talk about the way that true soccer clubs are anarchic: they represent a community coming together and organizing around something. By contrast, billionaire-owned sports franchises are just corporate business. Tomas tells his story of being part of both anarchist and soccer organizing...

Nathan Gelgud comes back on the show to discuss No Concessions , the next volume of his cartoon strip about a radical cell of Marxist cinephiles trying to create a revolutionary society by screening films the right way. Nathan and I talk about everything from "selling out" to the meaning of progressive politics to the films of Abbas Kiarostami. You can find Nathan on instagram here: https://www.in...

If money is just made up, can't we solve the problem of poverty by just giving people money? This radical idea feels new, but Thomas Paine proposed it as a revolutionary solution during both the US and French revolutions. Alberto Tena-Camporesi joins me to discuss Paine's radical idea, its relationship to current ideas about UBI, and why this idea just keeps coming up in radical (and right-wing) c...

The audio recording of a talk I gave at Oriel College, Oxford University. Thank you to Nick Gaskill and Oriel for inviting me!

No one seems to really understand what money is and what it does. In this new book, Josh Mason and Arjun Jayadev give the best explanation I've ever seen for what money does, how it works, and the damage it's doing to the world.

Ruth Kinna joins me for the Fifth Anniversary Episodes! First, an announcement: I wrote a book to be published by PM Press introducing everyday anarchism. No publication date yet, so more later on that front! Ruth and I discuss just what anarchy and anarchism is, and why anarchy is actually always all around us. This means that everything from Donald Trump to the Roman Empire are, in some key way,...

For my 200th episode, I invited science fiction writer Ann Leckie to the show! Ann's novels are one of the original inspirations for the podcast. Ann has imagined worlds which are completely human, and yet totally different from the one we live in. Her works help me to remember that everything can be different, that another world is possible, and the future is unwritten. Here's Ann's website: http...

Rhiannon Firth joins me to discuss Journey Through Utopia , Mary Louise Berneri's anarchist survey of utopian thinking. Rhiannon and I discuss why so many utopias seem so totalitarian, and how we can imagine a better world without falling into that trap. Here's a link to the Berneri book: https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1008 And Rhiannon's book Disaster Anarchy : https://w...

It's generally accepted that there was an "age of revolutions" in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. Sometimes the American revolution is added. But there were many, many revolutions in the Caribbean and Latin America in that same time. Shouldn't we have an "age of American revolutions"? And if so, doesn't that mean the American revolution (or "United States Revolution") was just one American re...

Amit Chaudhuri rejoins me to discuss his new novel/memoir/essay, Chateau Rouge . The book is about a writer who finds himself in a region of Paris, Chateau Rouge, filled with immigrants and their small business hustles, not cafes and patisseries. Shocked by how different Chateau Rouge is from the Paris of Hemingway and Proust, the narrator has to find a new way to understand what Paris is and what...

Shays' Rebellion was a nonviolent, popular movement designed to stop corrupt Massachusetts elites from lining their pockets at the expense of workers. It worked, and is thus a perfect example of "self-regulation" or, as we might put it, anarchy. Jefferson called it "anarchy" and also "honorable." So what was the result of this honorable anarchy? The US Constitution, which was designed to prevent s...

David Thomson joins me to discuss his new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light . Although we both love movies, we've noticed that movies have distorted our way of seeing the world, changed our sense of reality, and most of all, turned politics into a fascist mass spectacle. After all, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mussolini all loved movies. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin love putting themselves on scree...

Historian Benjamin Carp joins me to discuss The Boston Tea Party and how we should remember it today. We particularly discuss the tea party's place in revolutionary history, the radicalism embedded in the New England colonies, and whether or not labels like "direct action" or "civil disobedience" should be applied to it.

Christopher B. Zeichmann joins me to discuss his new book about ancient anarchism. We discuss the way the origins of the word anarchy, the way that democracy and anarchy have long been linked, and how to remember the radical communities that the historians of that time wanted to forget or attack. Here's the link to the book: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780745350394

Cory Doctorow joins me to discuss how capitalist ideology has made AI worse than useless, and if there's a way for us to make AI useful rather than malicious https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780374621568

In this episode of Radicalism in the American Revolution, Historian Mark Peterson joins me to discuss his new book The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History . We discuss the way the constitution emerged from a long British tradition, Thomas Jefferson's ironic place in American imperialism, and the new understanding of the constitution as a mere piece of paper wh...

The fastest, easiest way to anarchize your life is to buy food locally and cook it yourself (or grow it yourself). It won't create an anarchist society. But it's a great first step. Mark Bittman and I discuss that first step, what might come after it, and what difference it'll make in today's episode. We also talk for a while about why processed food is poison and what that means for Ozempic-style...

Before it became west of Islam, or China, or "the Orient," "The West" was simply the Western Roman Empire, and what it was east of was the Eastern Roman Empire. But the westerners wanted to be the true inheritors of the classical tradition, so they renamed it "western civilization," and made up reasons why the Eastern Roman Empire was actually something exotic and foreign and decadent and queer. T...

This episode is a crossover with Peter Michael Bauer's Rewilding Podcast . Peter and I talk about rewilding, everyday anarchism, and the connections between rewilding and anarchy We recorded this episode in support of Peter's new documentary film series on rewilding. It has successfully funded on kickstarter, but you can still back the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/villagevide...

Luke Kemp rejoins me to discuss the second part of Goliath's Curse , "Imperial March and Fall." Luke and I start off talking about why empires and states are actually the same thing, and move from there to various ways that people justify imperial politics, what it's like to be anti-empire when surrounded by defenders of empire, and how we can try to get the machine of empire to stop. Here's the l...

For this first episode in the Radicalism in the American Revolution series, historian Annette Gordon-Reed joins me to discuss her new book Jefferson on Race , a collection of writings by Jefferson on the topic of race from throughout his entire career. Anette and I grapple with a pair of irresolvable facts about Jefferson: he was a race radical and an enslaver. You can find the link to Annette's b...

Here's an introduction to a new series on Radicalism in the American Revolution, in honor of/in frustration with 250 years of America. Soon to come: Jefferson on Race, the American constitutional tradition, Thomas Paine's basic income, and more!

How do you know your life is worthwhile? How do you connect to the world around you? What sort of life is worth living? In her new book, Transcendence for Beginners , the philosopher and biographer Clare Carlisle works through answers to these questions, answers inspired by the philosopher Spinoza and the novelist George Eliot. And those answers, rather than pointing to something beyond, point us...

Eric Blair, known as George Orwell, had all of his successes after he met and married Eileen O'Shaughnessy. The graphic novel Mrs. Orwell , written by Andrea Chalupa, is the story of how George Orwell became a couple, and helps re-introduce Eileen to history as the dynamic, radical activist and editor who has been left out of the Orwell story. You can get a copy of the book here: https://flyleafbo...

Joan Slonczewski joins me to discuss their novel A Door Into Ocean , a science fiction novel about an all-female society of "sharers" on an ocean planet, Shora. Joan's sharers are one of the best speculative depictions of what an anarchist society would look like, so Joan and I discuss the inspirations for the world, including Gene Sharp, Ursula Le Guin, and Gandhi, and what we can draw on from th...