Jacobin Radio

Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (2019) hit the zeitgeist by consciously going against the 2019-era cultural grain. Tarantino looks back on the winds of change that greeted the movie business in the late 1960s and lands firmly - but not uncomplicatedly - on the side of the old guard. PLUS: Bluesky vs Twitter, wrapping up the Toronto mayoral election, and checking in on a man by th...

Anatol Lieven, Eurasia director of the Quincy Institute , discusses Prigozhin’s aborted uprising in Russia and Putin’s status. Samuel Bazzi, co-author of a paper on "The Confederate Diaspora," talks about the effects of white migration out of the South after the Civil War. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the...

William Morris is renowned for his work as an artist and designer. But he was also one of Britain's greatest socialist thinkers. Morris combined his opposition to capitalism with a deep understanding of environmental questions that was rare in his own time. Matthew Beaumont, professor of English at University College London and author of books including The Spectre of Utopia and Nightwalking: A No...

Did Tetris bring down the USSR? That's the implication of TETRIS (2023), a highly fictionalized account of the beloved video game's journey from the Soviet Union to your phone. We examine what anti-Communist kitsch looks like in the year 2023. PLUS: Russian coups, disappearing subs, and further thoughts on the movie on everyone's lips, The Flash. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema...

Behind the News is slaying sacred cows this week. M. E. O’Brien, author of Family Abolition , discusses doing that and “communizing care." Then Jane Chung, author of a recent article in The Nation , lays out what’s wrong with the American cult of homeownership. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to th...

Jacobin Radio pays tribute to the late Daniel Ellsberg, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this year and passed away on June 16 at age 92 . A committed, consequential activist with a moral compass that never left him, Ellsberg was always generous with his time. Shortly after he publicly announced his terminal illness, he took part in a Progressive Democrats of America Town Hall on Ap...

Featuring Meredith Whittaker, Edward Ongweso Jr., and Sarah Myers West on the mundane dystopia concealed beneath the AI hype machine. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to New Left Review newleftreview.org Register for the Socialism 2023 Conference socialismconference.org  

Our sacred quest to tackle every political comedy inevitably reaches the Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis vehicle THE CAMPAIGN (2012). We discuss what a middle-of-the-road comedy from the middle of the Obama era captures of its time and ambience. PLUS: Checking in on some of the wackier characters in the Toronto mayoral race. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world...

While other shows are getting applause for interviewing Corey Robin about his excellent book on Clarence Thomas (who is very much in the headlines these days), Behind the News was there first, as it so often is. This is a rebroadcast of a show that first ran in 2019: Corey Robin on The Enigma of Clarence Thomas . Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics...

Featuring Giuliano Garavini on his book The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century . The second in a two-part series on the 20th-century history of petrostates, petrocapitalists, and the world system. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to n+1 . Go to nplusonemag.com/thedig and enter THEDIG at checkout Learn more about Haymarket's Book Clubs at haymarketbooks.org

Italy’s current prime minister Giorgia Meloni can trace her political roots all the way back to Mussolini. But what exactly does the Italian far right of today have in common with its fascist forebears? In part two of our interview, David Broder, Europe editor for Jacobin and the author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren , discusses the rise and record of Meloni. You can find the first part of the conve...

Hell is real, and it's really bad, and it's really important that you repent. That's the thesis of THE BURNING HELL (1974), a crackpot Evangelical oddity from the deep south, brought to you by the dynamic duo of director Ron Ormond and preacher/star Estus W. Pirkle. We discuss what this bizarre handmade movie tells us about American religious conservatism. PLUS: enter Mike Pence and Chris Christie...

Christopher Layne discusses his Harper’s magazine article, “Why are we in Ukraine?” Plus: Marcus Brown talks about his augmented reality exhibit that evokes the eighteenth-century Wall Street slave market. 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 .

Featuring Giuliano Garavini on his book The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century. The first of a two-part series on the 20th-century history of petrostates, petrocapitalists, and the world system. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to n+1 . Go to nplusonemag.com/thedig and enter THEDIG at checkout

A ragtag gang of Beltway misfits discover how to start a proxy war in CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR (2007), a lighthearted look at American intervention from the combined forces of Tom Hanks, Mike Nichols, and Aaron Sorkin. We discuss how this celebration of the Reagan Doctrine from the very heart of "liberal Hollywood" offers a, shall we say, sanitized version of the end of the Cold War. PLUS: We discuss...

Wanda Bertram of the  Prison Policy Initiative  talks about some under-appreciated aspects of the carceral state: probation, parole, and civil commitment. Francisco Pérez of the  Center for Economic Democracy  on why mainstream economics is so terrible and an  online course  that can help civilians break through the discipline’s mystifications. Behind the News , hoste...

Featuring Brenna Bhandar on Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land and Racial Regimes of Ownership . The centuries-long history of how dominant conceptions of private property were (and are) made alongside race and racial hierarchies in colonial encounters stretching from Ireland and British Columbia to Australia and Palestine. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Register for the Socialism Confer...

For over two decades, a pair of New England-based independent filmmakers have created a cinematic universe out with their friends, family, and as little money as possible. Cohost Will finally brings his well-documented obsession with Matt Farley and Charlie Roxburgh to the Michael & Us podcast with a discussion of their recent MAGIC SPOT (2022), and what it says about the democratic potential...

Tina Gerhardt , author of  Sea Change ,  talks about the effects rising oceans are having on small island nations. Quinn Slobodian , author of  Crack-Up Capitalism ,  compares libertarian enclaves insulated from democracy. 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...

Marc Cooper and Pablo Abufom join Suzi in a conversation about Marc's Dig “Chile's Utopia Has Been Postponed," The Truthdig original series compares dramatic political events in Chile over recent years to the Popular Unity period between 1970 and 1973. Marc and Pablo integrate the legacy of the military coup 50 years ago with a discussion of the present challenges for the leftist government of Gab...

As Canadians, we simply couldn't pass up a movie about our greatest national export. Matt Johnson's BLACKBERRY (2023) puts a darkly comic spin on the rise and fall of "the phone you had before your iPhone." We discuss the ways that this very funny film is both similar to and crucially different from such recent boardroom dramas as AIR. PLUS: the return of Pete Buttigieg, and a weekend with the wor...

A sonic memorial to the Black women of the Peoples Temple. Produced and reported by Babette Thomas. Edited by Liza Yeager and Mitchell Johnson, with editorial oversight from Daniel Denvir and Alex Lewis.  Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to The Dig Presents to find all of our documentary stories on one feed. 

Italy’s liberation during the Second World War was meant to have consigned fascism to history. But eight decades later, the country has a prime minister from the far-right tradition; Giorgia Meloni’s party is directly descended from the diehard supporters of Benito Mussolini who reorganized after the war. David Broder, Europe editor for Jacobin and the author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren , discuss...

Jeff Sharlet talks about his new book, The Undertow , essays on the increasingly violent and authoritarian politics on the right unleashed by Trump. Claire Dunning , author of Nonprofit Neighborhoods , discusses urban governance by philanthropists. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Fin...

Featuring Quinn Slobodian on Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy . Radical libertarians, including anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard, envision a world of micro-polities governed by private property and contract. In fact, we already live in their world, a world of zones—places where special rules tailor-made for capitalists prevail over the ordinar...