Jacobin Radio

Suzi talks to historians Mike Davis and Jon Wiener , touching on some of the many intersecting stories they tell in their long awaited and absolutely compelling history, Set the Night on Fire: Los Angeles in the Sixties . Here we see Los Angeles as a hotbed of political, social and cultural upheaval — from the Watts rebellion to the Chicano Blowouts, the anti-war movement, youth protests and strik...

Dan interviews anthropologist Adia Benton on the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and what its politics reveal about the Covid-19 pandemic today. Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/thdig

We're on to Part II of The Making of the English Working Class . We cover chapter six and seven--"Exploitation" and "The Field Labourers," plus discuss the 1986 film Comrades , which follows the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of laborers who were transported to Australia for organizing an early trade union. No secondary reading this week, though if you can find Comrades online, watch it! In the United...

Thea Riofrancos , co-author of this book , on why the Green New Deal is more urgent than ever. Then, Alexander Zaitchik , author of this article , on how the profit-driven drug industry is an obstacle to developing a vaccine.

Dan interviews Frank Rosenthal on the history of the radical science organization Science for the People and Nafis Hasan on everything about a left-wing politics of science. Subscribe to Science for the People at magazine. ScienceForThePeople.org Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

With guest Asad Haider, we discuss at length the theoretical polemic of E.P. Thompson against Louis Althusser. What was the historical context for each side of this conflict (in which Althusser never participated directly)? What was Thompson’s critique? Asad argues that Thompson did not understand Althusser correctly, or even provide a satisfactory conceptual account of what was best about his own...

Dan is playing catch up. Here's a fav interview from the archives: critical theorist Nancy Fraser on how a total analysis of capitalism requires analyzing capitalism's totality, including socially reproductive work that makes possible the world that capitalism exploits. This is painfully relevant today as people everywhere do the work of staying at home and social distancing to beat this pandemic...

We cover Chapter Five, but first have an extensive discussion of the debate between Thompson and Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn over the history of social class and economic development in England, with sociologist Jonah Stuart-Brundage. What should we make of liberalism in England at the end of the eighteenth century and what it meant for the prospects of revolution? Secondary readings: Perry Ander...

Michael Seltzer is a cultural anthropologist and professor emeritus at Oslo University in Norway. There is a sharp contrast in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic between Norway, Finland, and Denmark, where isolation and quarantine are in effect, as compared to Sweden, where the economy is open, and the death rate is much higher. Mike says learning from the experience of Scandinavia is instructi...

No book better captures what it's like to be a socialist who has jumped headlong into the fight for a better world than Vivian Gornick's The Romance of American Communism . Thankfully, Verso has reissued it after the book was out of print for decades. Micah Uetricht talks to Alyssa Battistoni, Sean Estelle, and Meagan Day about it. You can buy Romance from Verso here: https://www.versobooks.&l...

Dan interviews Aaron Benanav, who argues that the problem isn't that robots are stealing our jobs but rather that capitalist growth is finding its limits and making jobs worse. Read "Automation and the Future of Work" in New Left Review . Parts one and two . Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig .

We cover chapters three and four—"Satan's Strongholds" and "The Free-Born Englishman." With guest John Bohstedt (author of The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, 1550-1850 ) we discuss the history and logic of riots in early modern England: why did riots occur so frequently? What did they mean? And how did they relate to the widely held ideas about...

There are too many bad takes out there about the end of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Thankfully, Hadas Thier and Paul Heideman wrote one that is good: "Bernie's Campaign Strategy Wasn't the Problem." Read it here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2020/04/bernie-sanders-<wbr />campaign-strategy-democratic-<wbr />party-biden-trump Find Hadas's book here: https:...

Vijay Prashad on China (and Sinophobia), Kerala, and the crucial importance of social organization. Then, Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht , authors of Bigger than Bernie , on Bernie Sanders, socialism, electoralism, and where it all goes from here.

Dan interviews Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht, the authors of Bigger Than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism, to assess the campaign and the way forward. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks with her brother Irv Weissman , director of Stanford University’s Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine about the science and politics of coronavirus, and with Sheheryar Kaoosji , director of the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, about the dangerous working conditions at Amazon fulfillment centers and the threat they pose to the company’s workers and to public health...

Yanis Varoufakis talks about life under COVID-19, the economic crisis, vultures stripping Greece, and democratizing the European Union (includes bonus audio clip of Jim Cramer recalling his Trotskyist past).

Dan interviews the makers of a new podcast series telling the history of the Iraq War. Blowback is available only on Stitcher Premium—and for a month you can listen for free. Go to stitcherpremium.com and sign up with the code BLOWBACK. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

We cover chapters one and two — "Members Unlimited" and "Christian Apollyon" — on this week's episode. Rachel Foxley, a professor of history at the University of Reading and author of The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution , joins us to talk about the English Revolution. Secondary Reading: Rachel Foxley, The Levellers (Manchester University Press, 2013). Christopher Hil...

Dan interviews historian Kim Phillips-Fein about her book Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics and about how the destruction of social democracy made today's city where coronavirus is killing its poor and working-class people. In other news: Dan's Jacobin essay on keeping the Bernie infrastructure alive is here and the volunteer petition to do so, which you should...

Welcome to Casualties of History, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. We’ll be working our way through EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class . In this first episode, Alex and Gabe introduce themselves and cover the book’s preface, as well as outline the context in which it was written. Who was Thompson, and what was he aiming to do in writing this book? Who was he arguing with, and wh...

Bernie Sanders is out of the race. We can’t go on; we must go on. Micah talked about it with Jacobin contributor Eric Blanc and Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee member Marianela D’Aprile. Read Eric’s piece on Bernie dropping out here: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/<wbr />04/bernie-sanders-campaign-<wbr />supporters-2020-election Buy ‘Bigger th...

Dan interviews veteran organizer Jasson Perez and journalist Sarah Jaffe on left organizing amid covid and where it might go. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks to James K. Galbraith on the economic policies we need, and Aaron Benanav on the crisis of unemployment. James K Galbraith responds to the multiple crises and challenges brought by the coronavirus pandemic, laying out the economic policy we need now , and the mobilization necessary to get it. He proposes concrete measures, like a Health Finance Corporation, that could be an efficient on...

'Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism' is out this week, and coauthors Micah Uetricht and Meagan Day are talking about it today. Buy it from Jacobin for $12.95 here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />store/product/69