Everyday Anarchism

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...

Amit Chaudhuri joins me to discuss his new collection of essays, Incompleteness . In these essays and his novels, Amit is constantly searching for new language that will acknowledge the instability and flux of the world around us. It is intellectual anarchy of the highest order, as well as artistically breathtaking. You can find all of Amit's books published by NYRB here: https://www.nyrb.com/coll...

Kim Stanley Robinson comes back to discuss Aurora , his novel of a generational starship, in which generations of humans are born, live, and die onboard without ever seeing a planet. We discuss the generational starship as a science fiction genre, whether humans will ever be able to travel to the stars, and what it would mean for science fiction if we can't. We also take a detour into the question...

Dan Chiasson joins me to discuss his combined Bernie and Burlington biography, Bernie for Burlington , and the connections between Bernie's socialism and Mamdani's socialism. You can purchase Dan's book here: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780593317495 Here's Dan's article about Mamdani: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/11/06/have-you-met-z-zohran-mamdani/ And we discuss Corey Robin's piece on...

For almost 20 years, PM Press has been publishing brilliant anarchist books, including many covered on this podcast. Co-Founder Ramsey Kanaan joins me to discuss what PM Press does, how it works on anarchist lines, and why they need to own their own building to secure their future. If you'd like to contribute to that future, here's the fundraising link for the merch page, which also has the GoFund...

Leonard Williams, who was my second guest on this podcast back in November of 2021, returns to talk about Trump's presidency over the past year, what it means, and what we can do to fight it. To hear more from Leonard, here's his 2024 podcast on what to expect from the Trump regime: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-hbbe4-17349e4 And here's Leonard's Substack: https://crosspollination.substack.com/ No...

Ray Dorsey joins me to discuss The Parkinson's Plan , his new book about fighting and hopefully ending the disease. Ray and his co-author Michael S. Okun show that Parkinson's is primarily caused by human-made chemicals, chemicals we can stop using. As with climate change or ultraprocessed foods, we've made an environment that's sickening us. Now it's time to make a new, healthier world. You can l...

The modern anarchist movement began in 1999, when the World Trade Organization met in Seattle in order to create a set of rules which would require every country to accept the worst excesses of capitalism. Waiting for them in Seattle was a loose coalition of anarchists, farmers, organized labor, punks, Zapatistas, and giant puppets. Team Puppet won. D.W. Gibson's new book One Week to Change the Wo...

Ever since C. Thi Nguyen appeared on the podcast, I've been trying to use games to understand more about the relationship between rules and life. Jay Dragon, whose game Wanderhome is almost ruleless, joins me to discuss games, rules, and anarchy, and we especially talk about how we can analyze oppressive real-world systems as if they're games. Here are some links for more from Jay: https://possumc...

Robin Schuldenfrei rejoins me to talk more Bauhaus! In this episode, we discuss her book Luxury and Modernism , covering the complexities of the Bauhaus, which had a leftwing ethos but produced luxury objects, and made them by hand to appear machine made. Robin talks us through how the contradiction between luxury and egalitarianism ran from Morris's arts and crafts movement to the Bauhaus, and mo...

John McGowan joins me to discuss Liberty as Independence , Quentin Skinner's new book about the way that our ideals of liberty were formed in in 17th and 18th century debates. The book covers legendary figures, such as Hobbes, Milton, Locke, Swift, Paine, and Jefferson, as well as many lesser-known figures that they engaged with. For more from John McGowan, here's the link to his blog: https://jzm...

Nathan Gelgud joins me to discuss Reel Politik , a comics collection about a group of Brechtian revolutionaries who take over the movie theatre they work in. Nathan and I discuss our shared love for movies, the radical nature of paying attention to a movie screen, and The Chelsea Theate r, a local movie theatre in Chapel Hill that Nathan and I both love (I even worked there!). Many thanks to Bruce...