Jacobin Radio

Alejandro Velasco looks at Trump’s oil grab in Venezuela. Alex Vitale imagines a post-carceral future. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Unions have more public support than just about anything else in the US, and yet, their membership has cratered. This poses an immense challenge to left-wing politicians, who won't be able to enact lasting change without a robust labor movement beside them. On this latest episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber addresses the age-old question of whether unions are inherently political, th...

Producer and guest host Mel Figueroa speaks with economist Michael Roberts about the teetering house of cards that is the US and global economy, and how it is all connected to the Iran war and more: Scott Bessent, bond markets, the crisis in private credit, the AI bubble, de-dollarization, and inflation. Is a recession or a depression imminent? The media financial and economic discourse is wildly...

Featuring David Wallace-Wells, Madison Condon, and Moira Birss on how insurance companies profit off climate catastrophe — and, in doing so, ensure that people and the planet suffer the consequences. Guest hosted by Astra Taylor. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Read “National Disaster Insurance for All: Single-Payer Disaster Insurance and Community Resilience Investments for Safer and More A...

David McNally, author of Slavery and Capitalism , discusses the political economy of the institution. Plus: Billy Fleming, author of Building Postcarbon Futures , explains how we might get from here to there. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Mike Davis died in 2022, but his work is more urgent than ever. As record temperatures, fires, floods, El Niño, and megadroughts threaten the planet, we hear his prescient 1995 talk, “Reconceptualizing the Environment.” Mike challenged the idea of “natural disaster,” showing how market-driven development put Los Angeles in harm’s way while shifting costs onto the public and the poor. Our sponsor E...

Aurélie Daher, author of a piece for Responsible Statecraft , looks at the destruction Israel is visiting upon southern Lebanon. Annie McClanahan, author of Beneath the Wage , discusses nonstandard forms of work and compensation. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Advanced capitalist countries have recently rediscovered the role of industrial policy to build out key economic sectors like semiconductors and AI. But what happens if business is the one calling all the shots? On this latest episode of Confronting Capitalism , we’re sharing Vivek Chibber’s keynote address from the 2026 IFAR Consortium Conference, hosted by the Indonesian International Islamic Un...

Jodi Dean, who has a new Substack on the issue, surveys how AI has been terrible. Anatol Lieven, author of a new article for New Left Review ’s Sidecar blog, looks at the bloody stalemate that is the Russia–Ukraine war. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Featuring Molly Crabapple on her book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund . The second in a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Decolonizing Money at Plutobooks.com   Buy Femmephilia at Haymarketbooks.org The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvi...

From the very start of the Gaza genocide, Western media outlets were happy to repeat the most outlandish claims from Israeli government officials. One of the most notorious examples was the allegation that dozens of Israeli babies were beheaded on October 7, 2023, a story amplified by CNN and promoted by the former US president, Joe Biden, who claimed to have seen “pictures of terrorists beheading...

“Men in hard hats were once the heart of America’s working class. Now it is women in scrubs,” says historian Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift , who joins Suzi to explain how deindustrialization made health care the country’s largest employer, but the jobs are lower paid, understaffed, and more precarious. That’s playing out now at UVM Medical Center, where Vermont's own regulator found the...

Aditya Nigam looks at the “Cockroach” protest movement in India. Then, Gerald Epstein and Juliet Schor outline a detailed set of proposals to transform the US economy. Read their papers here: https://peri.umass.edu/gamechangers/ Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Featuring Molly Crabapple on her book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund . The first episode of a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig . Buy Unions of Our Own and Femmephilia at Haymarketbooks.org . The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvir.

Libertarian thinkers like Milton Friedman like to say that capitalism not only gave birth to democracy but also is the ideal economic system to complement democracy. But while capitalism may have created the conditions for democracy, it’s actually the main obstacle to securing full democratic rights. On this latest episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek examine the w...

The eighth and final episode in a series on the history of Indonesia: a hinge in the world system where colonialism and revolution have decisively shaped the trajectory of global history. This last installment picks up with the 2014 election of Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, to the presidency. That promise was soon betrayed, laying the groundwork for the rise of Prabowo Subianto, a scion of Suharto who r...

Over the last couple of years, media coverage of China has focused on the trade war launched by the Trump administration. While Trump and his tariffs have been grabbing the headlines, there have been some major developments in China’s domestic political economy. So far this year, the Chinese authorities have announced plans to reform the hukou system that controls the movement of workers around th...

In a jam-packed final installment of The People’s Game on Jacobin Radio, Mel and Alan speak with five distinguished guests. The feature interview is with Jules Boykoff, author of Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine . Boykoff, speaking on the day before the final between Spain and Argentina, reflects on what has defied, met, or exceeded his expectations about thi...

Michaela Brangan, co-chair of the group that wrote DSA’s new platform, speaks about the group’s vision. Hagen Blix, co-author of Why We Fear AI , examines exactly that. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

We try to cover a lot of topics on this show, and that inevitably leads to many more follow-up questions. Luckily for you, on this latest episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber answers YOUR questions! In particular, Vivek explains property under market socialism, assesses the effectiveness of salting in working-class jobs, and disentangles class locations and occupations. The latest iss...

Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Country of Lords , traces the anti-egalitarian tradition in American politics. Aziz Rana discusses the tensions between the Declaration and the Constitution (from a 2024 interview). And Jasmine Wynn, author of a recent Jacobin article , looks at the National Black Empowerment Coalition, basically an AIPAC front group. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers th...

The World Cup has entered its final week, and so far we’ve seen unprecedented levels of direct political interference in the organization of the tournament. The FIFA president Gianni Infantino gave his ally Donald Trump a blank check to exclude anyone he liked from the US, even referees. Trump himself notoriously weighed in after a US player received a red card before their game against Belgium; F...

The seventh episode in a series on the history of Indonesia: a hinge in the world system where colonialism and revolution have decisively shaped the trajectory of global history. This penultimate installment analyses the 1998 fall of Suharto and his New Order dictatorship. Basic political freedoms were established but the transition to democracy never included a transition away from oligarchy. And...

In another installment of The People’s Game on Jacobin Radio , co-hosts Alan Minsky and Meleiza Figueroa speak with eminent sports historian David Goldblatt, who lays out all the ways in which, despite the corruption and controversy surrounding FIFA’s oligarchic nature and Trump’s bumbling attempt to put his thumb on the scale, the World Cup — and the game itself — will always belong to the people...

Hettie O’Brien, author of The Asset Class , on the private equity racket — who they are, what they do. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.