Jacobin Radio

Featuring Matt Christman on how American history brought us to this awful present. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig 

Dina Khoury joins Long Reads for a two-part conversation about Iraq since the US occupation. Dina is a historian of the Middle East, and her books include Iraq in Wartime . Listen to part two here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/long-reads-us-destruction-of-iraq-part-2 Read her piece for Catalyst , "Iraq After US Occupation," here: https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/09/iraq-after-us...

Suzi talks to Ukrainian expert Bohdan Krawchenko, just back from Kyiv, to get his perspective of the state of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The view from Ukraine, as Bohdan Krawchenko reports, is that Russia is losing this war, has wasted thousands of lives, and is running out of troops and war materiel. Despite their huge costs and losses, Moscow is getting more aggressive and brutal. Many Ukrainians...

This week's episode of The Jacobin Show tackles Du Bois's legacy as an analyst of class domination in America, whether the Democratic Party is hurtling toward doom as continues to fail working-class voters, and why the recent wave of union campaigns must move from spontaneity to sustained "structure-based" organizing. Jeff Goodwin on Du Bois: https://catalyst-journal.com/2022/06/black-reconstructi...

Jennifer Berkshire discusses Pete Hegseth, Christopher Rufo, and the right’s latest fronts in their war on public education . Then, Peter Korotaev looks at the political economy of Ukraine, before, during, and after the 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. Find the archive here: http...

Alexandra Pelosi strikes again! In her documentary SAN FRANCISCO 2.0 (2015), the political scion turns her attention to her home city, gazing with awe upon the tech industry's sudden takeover while registering some tepid notes of ambivalence about the gentrification that has priced many longtime residents out. We discuss why, despite being Nancy Pelosi's daughter who regularly makes films for HBO,...

Cale, filling in for Jen, speaks with Ben Burgis about how the left should navigate periods of defeat. Benjamin Fogel interviews René Rojas, author of a recent piece for Catalyst , "Chile's Resurgent Left," about social-democratic politics in Chile in the post-Pinochet period and especially since the 2019 uprising. The Jacobin Show is a weekly YouTube show offering socialist perspectives on class...

This week, Grace speaks to Mike Savage, author of  The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past . They discuss the renewed focus on inequality in social science and politics more generally, different forms of inequality and how they’re linked, and different theoretical approaches to understanding inequality and social class, from Marx to Bourdieu. A World to Win is a pod...

Featuring Nancy Fraser on why a total analysis of capitalism requires taking Marxism beyond a narrowly economistic view: what everyday labor exploitation requires from politics, care work, war-making, borders, appropriation of nature, sexism, racism, and more. Dan's 2018 interview from the archives. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Erik Baker , author of a recent article for Bias magazine, joins Doug for another look at the latest Behind the News obsession: post-leftism. Then, José Sanchez , author of a critique in Jacobin about Afropessimism , examines the school of thought and its contradictions. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the l...

Adrienne Buller joins Long Reads for a discussion about "asset-manager capitalism" and the climate crisis. Adrienne is senior research fellow at Common Wealth, a progressive think tank, and co-author of the forthcoming book Owning the Future . Read Adrienne's review of Trillions here: https://jacobin.com/2022/03/index-funds-blackrock-vanguard-stocks-ownership-democracy-concentration/ And her repor...

Paul Prescod explains how the rise and fall of the black middle class was set to the fortunes of the auto sector—and why the Democratic Party keeps writing off the working class. Jen Pan covers the GOP's bogus war on woke capitalism. And Aziz Rana outlines what a real, robust left internationalism should look like and how it can be tied to domestic fights for social democracy. The Jacobin Sho...

Doug speaks with Jenny Brown of National Women’s Liberation (and author of Without Apology and Birth Strike ) on the early struggle for abortion rights that led to Roe and what we can learn from it for today. Then David De Jong , author of Nazi Billionaires , discusses how respectable German businessmen became loyal Nazis. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics an...

This week, Grace speaks to Vicky Spratt, author of the book Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain’s Housing Emergency . They discuss the multiple problems that tenants face in accessing and maintaining secure housing and the strategies renters in the UK are using to resist the exploitative and extractive practices of landlords. A World to Win is a podcast from Grace Blakeley and Tribune...

Before he was an archconservative, David Mamet wrote a great play and movie about a group of salesmen grinding in a system where morality does not exist. Our Superdelegate patron tier has voted for us to discuss GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992). Fuck you - THAT'S our name. PLUS: We say goodbye to Boris. Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and L...

Suzi talks to Dean of Berkeley School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky about the just completed Supreme Court term, handing down decisions that overturned vast areas of law. The Court’s decisions ignored settled law and took away a Constitutional right in the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade . Chemerinsky argues that this court did not follow a judicial methodology, legal principles, or preceden...

Featuring Evgeny Morozov on his essay "Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason." Thinkers from the Marxist left all the way to the neoliberal and even neo-reactionary right are convinced that we’ve exited capitalism entirely and entered neo-feudalism. Morozov argues that our bleak moment is in fact still a thoroughly capitalist one.  Evgeny's essay: newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/articles/evgeny-mor...

It's an extremely discouraging political moment for our neighbors in the United States, so we decided the time was right to finally examine one of the quintessential cinematic articulations of American exceptionalism, FORREST GUMP (1994). Is life, in fact, like a box of chocolates? We investigate. "The Man Who Loved Presidents: On John Meacham" by Thomas Frank - https://harpers.org/archive/2021/07...

Doug speaks with Geo Maher , author of A World Without Police , on the movement to defund and eventually abolish the cops. Then, an interview with Tariq Fancy, author of a series of articles about "sustainable investing," about the (severe) limits to using finance to fix the climate. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interaction...

This week, Grace speaks to Eddie Dempsey, Senior Assistant General Secretary of the RMT, about the strike action being taken by the rail union up and down the UK. They discuss the background to the strikes, how the government constructed a railway network that funnels money away from workers towards executives, and the union’s "militant, rank-and-file culture of democracy." A World to Win is a pod...

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us how badly we need to understand the links between science, politics, and commercial interests. For Marxists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these were some of the most important questions to be addressed in their work. The cross-fertilization between Marxism and science had major implications for the development of both. Helena Sheehan, e...

Featuring Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on his essay "Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference," an interview first posted in December 2020. This pairs well with last week's Jared Clemons interview on In This House We Believe antiracism. Since 2020, Táíwò has published a book expanding on these ideas: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) . Re...

Suzi talks to Forrest Hylton about Gustavo Petro’s historic victory in Colombia’s June 19 Presidential Election. Historic because it is the first victory for a leftist candidate in Colombia's history, despite a heavy challenge from the right. Former Bogota Mayor Gustavo Petro and his VP, the Afro-Colombian environmental activist and human rights lawyer Francia Márquez, won on a platform of a green...

This week Jen Pan sits down with professor Gary Gerstle to discuss how the neoliberal order came into being and whether or not we're witnessing its dying days. We also get Felix Biederman's thoughts on the FDA's war on Juul e-cigarettes. Also, Jen offers a solution to working class depoliticization. The Jacobin Show is a weekly YouTube show offering socialist perspectives on class and capitalism i...

The Buzz Lightyear origin movie LIGHTYEAR (2022) has become a cultural lightning-rod in the right-wing moral panic over "grooming." We discuss this controversy (which is ridiculous, by the way), and then discuss the movie, in which we can learn a little bit about how the Disney Company views itself. Support the National Network of Abortion Funds - https://abortionfunds.org/ Abortion Funds in Every...