Jacobin Radio

With Trump's indictment in the news, we thought it might be a good time to watch the movie that has been more influential on QAnon than any other: Ridley Scott's little-loved seafaring adventure WHITE SQUALL (1996). We parse this half-forgotten film to figure out why, exactly, the QAnon people love it so much. "Where we go one, we go all!" Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our...

Writer and political adviser Nimrod Flaschenberg discusses the popular uprising in Israel against Bibi’s reactionary government. Software engineer Dwayne Monroe revisits the (useful) hype around ChatGPT. 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 here: https://www.leftbusinesso...

It started with a few cones and a cryptic sign.  Produced by Omar Etman. Edited by Liza Yeager, Mitchell Johnson, and Daniel Denvir.  Special thanks to Alan Dean, Alex Lewis, and Nihal El Aasar. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

We mark the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War by revisiting some of the classic clips from our cowed and deferential news media circa 2003. PLUS: What is artificial intelligence and what does it mean for the future? Pulitzer-winning columnist Thomas Friedman doesn't know, but that didn't stop him from writing about it. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hoste...

Maxine Doogan and Tara Burns, contributors to a report, "How the War on Sex Work Is Stripping Your Privacy Rights," on how cops are snooping on sex workers and using what they learn to spy on the rest of us. David Broder, author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren , discusses the fascist heritage behind Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her party. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers...

Featuring Max Fox and Chris Nealon on the late Christopher Chitty's book Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System . Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletters and vast archive at thedigradio.com Further reading: libcom.org/article/after-fall-communiques-occupied-california viewpointmag.com/2012/09/12/towards-a-socialist-art-of-government...

For nearly 20 years, one libertarian businessman with a wildly dangerous theme park held the state of New Jersey under his thumb. We discuss the documentary CLASS ACTION PARK (2020) and its uneasy mix of nostalgia and condemnation for Action Park. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Fifty years ago, a group of Native Oglala Lakota and their supporters occupied a small village called Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was the site of a notorious massacre in 1890, when US cavalry killed nearly 300 Lakota people. Local spiritual leaders and civil rights activists called in the American Indian Movement, or AIM, to support the occupation. It r...

Coming Soon: The Dig Presents is a new monthly series that features original documentary reporting, personal narrative, and other sonic experiments from a wide range of contributors. 

After some introductory comments on the bank failures, Doug speaks with Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative about the state of the carceral state . Then, Annelle Sheline discusses the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. 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...

Featuring Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg on how American capitalism and its illusions of whiteness both created the opioid crisis and shaped the response to it. We are discussing their book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America . Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletters and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to J...

A man spends a night in an isolated woman's desert shack, and loses his identity in the process, in WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964), Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kōbō Abe's resonant parable about... what, exactly? Your hosts are not entirely sure, but forge ahead anyway with this seminal work of postwar Japanese cinema. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will...

Suzi talks to veteran journalist Marc Cooper , who was a translator to President Salvador Allende in the Popular Unity government from 1970-1973. Marc has memorialized his experience in Chile in Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti Memoir (2001). Marc just returned from a month in Chile looking at Chilean politics 50 years after the coup and one year since the new leftwing government of Gabriel Boric w...

A Florida follow-up: historian and union president Paul Ortiz on the DeSantis agenda and resistance to it. Then human rights lawyer Noa Levy discusses the far right agenda in Israel and resistance to it (see the Ayelet Shaked "Fascism" ad here ). 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...

Featuring Nelson Lichtenstein on his life and scholarship, from membership in the International Socialists and studies of the early United Auto Workers and CIO to his later turn to studying Walmart and international supply chains. Guest host Micah Uetricht interviews one of the greatest living labor historians. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletters and vast archives at th...

Suzi talks to Vladyslav Starodubtsev and Jeremy Bigwood about the war in Ukraine, now entering its second year. Russia’s war on Ukraine has been a disaster causing human suffering and economic devastation not just in Ukraine but also on the lives of ordinary Russians, treated like cannon fodder. The war has also had an impact on global hunger and energy supplies and the world environmental crisis....

In the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church declared a holy war against a group of Christian heretics in the South of France. The Albigensian Crusade became notorious for its brutality and gave rise to a new regime of feudal oppression and religious conformity in Languedoc. It was a defining moment in the history of medieval Europe. Elaine Graham-Leigh, historian and the author of The Southern...

George Orwell's popularity is at a new high in the post-Trump era, and he's been claimed by both the left and right. We discuss NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1984), Michael Radford's feature-film adaptation of Orwell's most famous novel, and try to rescue a self-described socialist from the Dave Rubins of the world. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will...

Doug interviews Judith Levine about the trans kids panic and moves to defund the Kinsey Institute. Phil Wegner of the University of Florida discusses Ron DeSantis’s moves to quash academic freedom in that state. 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 here: https://www.leftb...

Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America . How the civil-military divide makes troops into super citizens and what it means that agents of state violence are turning to the grammar of identity politics—and more. The second in a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to New Left Review newleftreview.org/subscri...

Abbas Kiarostami's masterpiece CLOSE-UP (1990) used the true story of a poor man who impersonated a famous filmmaker to meditate on class, identity, and the cinematic apparatus. PLUS: the slow erosion of universal healthcare, and checking in on Fox News post-Trump. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Doug speaks with Jamie Webster of BCG about western Europe’s energy situation. Then Kari Lydersen, author of a recent In These Times article , and Ron Kaminkow, locomotive engineer and organizer with Railroad Workers United , talk about the miseries of the industry and why it should be nationalized. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their com...

Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America . A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological foundations of American militarism: American civilians are enjoined to venerate troops, deferring to their traumatized positionality. The first in a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast arc...

Since the late 1990s, Pakistan has experienced several rounds of intense political turbulence. But the crisis unfolding today may be the most dramatic episode to date. The ousted prime minister Imran Khan has refused to go quietly, and his supporters are challenging the powerful military establishment. Khan himself survived an assassination attempt last November. Ayyaz Mallick, lecturer in human g...

Some topics are too vast, too vital for us to cover on our own. Today, we address one such topic. We invited Jacobin 's Meagan Day and Branko Marcetic for a roundtable discussion on EMPIRE RECORDS (1995). We proffer some theories about why this attempt to hit the Gen X zeitgeist resonated more strongly with millennials, and how its depiction of alt-culture proved life-changing for at least one of...