Jacobin Radio

The world can't stop discoursing about it. Hillary Clinton herself has championed it. And our superdelegate patrons specifically requested it. It's time for us to turn our attention to the most discussed movie of the past year, BARBIE (2023). PLUS: We bid a fond farewell to Ron DeSanctimonious. Seeking Social Democracy , the book Luke coauthored with Ed Broadbent, is available here: https://ecwpre...

At least 26,000 people are now estimated to have been killed by Israel’s war on Gaza, although the real figure is believed to be even higher. The main legal challenge to Israel’s war has come from South Africa at the International Court of Justice. The court published its first response to the South African case on Friday, January 26th. John Reynolds, professor of law at Maynooth University and au...

Shireen Al-Adeimi of Michigan State and the Quincy Institute discusses the Houthis. Political scientist Aurélie Daher gives another view of Hezbollah. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online at https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html .

Featuring Helen Lackner on the Houthis, the politics of their attacks on Red Sea shipping, and the long history of Yemen from British colonial Aden through the current civil war.  Read Helen's articles for Jacobin jacobin.com/author/helen-lackner Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements are Leading the Fight for our Planet at haymark...

On the third episode of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO , we examine the first major victories of the CIO in rubber, auto, and steel. The story begins at the Goodyear complex in Akron, Ohio, where a victorious strike put the CIO on the map. We turn to the General Motors strike in the winter of 1937, a transformational victory and perhaps the most iconic confrontation of the period. F...

Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative discusses ankle bracelets and electronic monitoring. Joseph Daher, author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God , delves into that demonized organization. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive at https://www.le...

On the second episode of Organized the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO , we discuss the institutional formation of the CIO and meet some of the organization’s key personalities. We learn about figures such as John L. Lewis, whose bold leadership came at a decisive moment in history, and Sidney Hillman, the only other real center of power besides Lewis in the early CIO. Finally, we hear about some...

Political scientist Jacqueline Behrend examines Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. Then Benjamin Fong, author of Quick Fixes , talks about Americans’ love-hate relationship with drugs. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive at leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html .

Featuring Ashley Mears on her book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit . Mears, a sociologist and former fashion model, explores the super-elite "models and bottles" party scene where beautiful young women and conspicuous consumption heighten the status of rich men.  Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Contact Spotify and tell them: stop hiding The Dig! Why...

Your coworkers are spying on you. Your boss won't let you keep the expired food. The coffeeshop is charging you an arm and a leg to rent a laptop. In Aki Kaurismäki's funny and wonderful FALLEN LEAVES (2023), can a budding romance survive the everyday indignities of life under capitalism? PLUS: What would a British West Wing look like? Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our cru...

On episode one of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO , we explore the conditions that led to the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. We first dive into the history of the organization from which the CIO broke off, the American Federation of Labor. Then, we discuss three key developments that raised workers’ expectations in the lead-up to the CIO’s inauguration: the bro...

Suzi talks to Boris Kagarlitsky, Russian left intellectual writer-activist, just two weeks after he won his release from over four months in pre-trial custody. Kagarlitsky was arrested in Moscow on July 25 by the FSB, the Russian secret police, and taken more than 800 miles north to the city of Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic, where the local FSB opened a criminal case against him. He was accused o...

Featuring Ussama Makdisi on how Western colonialism and Zionism exploited, exacerbated, and imposed sectarianism across the Arab Middle East. This is the SECOND of a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Contact Spotify and tell them: stop hiding The Dig! Why is The Dig so hard to find on Spotify? support.spotify.com/contact-spotify-support/ Check out our newsletter and vast ar...

Samuel Moyn, law professor and historian, discusses the political and legal dubiousness of excluding Trump from the presidential ballot. Labor journalist Alex Press talks about the year in labor. See her Jacobin article, "In 2023, the US Working Class Fought Back" here . Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the l...

This is another special episode of Long Reads looking at Israel’s war on Gaza. Our focus today is on the politics of the Biden administration and its backing for Israel. Joe Biden and his team are still giving their firm support to Benjamin Netanyahu as he talks about a war lasting for “many months." With a presidential election due in the fall, there appear to be strong echoes of Lyndon Johnson a...

We kick off 2024 by raiding the fridge for some holiday leftovers. It's become an annual tradition on this podcast to try to extract ideology from Tim Allen's "Santa Clause" franchise. With THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE (2006), we hit the motherlode. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

There have been many moments of labor upsurge in America: the influx of members into the Knights of Labor in 1886, the dramatic growth of unions during and after World War I, and the great wave of public sector unionism in the 1960s and ‘70s. But none matches the period of the 1930s and ‘40s, when millions of workers unionized under the aegis of the great labor federation, the Congress of Industri...

Gabriel Hetland has just published his study of populist experiments in Venezuela and Bolivia, Democracy on the Ground , showing the complexity of implementing participatory democracy at the grassroots level. Suzi talks to him about his findings. He examines the possibilities, limits, and concrete cases of participatory democracy, including participatory budgeting at the local level during the hig...

Featuring Ussama Makdisi on the late Ottoman Empire's Arab culture of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish coexistence—an ecumenical frame that was interrupted by European colonialism and Zionism, which exacerbated and exploited sectarianism. This is the first of a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Shop Haymarket's ALL...

If society outlawed emotions, could we stop all war and conflict? This is the very, very stupid question at the heart of EQUILIBRIUM (2002), the dystopian extravaganza that introduced the world to the art of "gun kata." Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Environmental journalist Tina Gerhardt analyzes the recently concluded COP28 environmental summit, where limited good intentions were uttered and oil contracts were signed. Historian Forrest Hylton talks about Javier Milei, the new libertarian, authoritarian president of Argentina. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions,...

If anyone thinks about medieval Flanders today, it’s most likely because they have an interest in the art of painters like Bruegel and Rubens. But Flanders also pioneered the art of class warfare. There was nowhere else in Europe during the Middle Ages where the popular classes posed such an effective challenge to aristocratic power. At its high point during the early fourteenth century, this wave...

Joel Schalit, editor of The Battleground , discusses what it is in Israeli politics and society that’s behind the carnage in Gaza. Amy Schiller, author of The Price of Humanity , looks at what’s wrong with philanthropy and how to fix it. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archi...

The French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte have inspired a lot of takes... so, of course, you can depend on Ridley Scott to find the least imaginative one. We discuss his lugubrious NAPOLEON (2023). PLUS: An update on Canadian politics, and some thoughts on the man who may be Prime Minsiter, Pierre Poilievre. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world...

Featuring Shaul Magid on post-1948 Jewish Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism—including today's new generation of young, militant, left-wing, anti-Zionist American Jews and the Jewish establishment's quixotic efforts to deny and disavow them. PART TWO of a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Join Jewish Voice for Peace jewishvoiceforpeace.org/join-us Buy The Internet Con: How to...