Jacobin Radio

Mosaab Baba, who wrote an article about Sudan for Black Agenda Report , looks at what’s behind the horrendous civil war. Jake Adelstein , an American journalist who’s been living in Japan for almost 40 years, discusses that country’s reactionary new prime minister. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local t...

Featuring Brace Belden, Liz Franczak, Gabriel Winant, Aziz Rana, Sumaya Awad, Thea Riofrancos, and Alex Lewis. Toasts and roasts celebrating 500 episodes of The Dig . Plus a short speech from Dan. Live at Brooklyn’s Littlefield. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig On December 10th in Brooklyn, join us for a live-recorded Dig episode: “Zohran and the Return of Municipal Socialism.” Navigating opp...

While Democrats recently scored some much-needed electoral wins, the party remains in crisis. Recent reports like Welcome PAC’s “Deciding to Win” argue that the Democrats must drop unpopular cultural positions and recenter economic demands. Can a populist economic agenda shorn of unpopular identity politics get the party back on track? On this episode of Confronting Capitlism , Vivek Chibber evalu...

Zohran Mamdani’s decisive mayoral victory was powered by a coalition of tenants, immigrants, and workers. Suzi talks to Alina Shen, organizing director of CAAAV Voice , Jagpreet Singh, political director of DRUM Beats (Desis Rising Up and Moving), and Alicé Nascimento, political director of NYCC (New York Communities for Change) — representatives of three organizations that, along with the New Yor...

Featuring Thea Riofrancos on Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism . The green energy transition requires a vast array of inputs: copper, cobalt, rare earth elements, and the focus of this discussion, lithium — all of which must be mined from the earth. This is a wide-ranging discussion stretching from Chile to Nevada, and from the dawn of colonialism to the geoeconomic conflict between th...

Suzi speaks with Jacobin writers Alex Press and Luke Savage about Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent — and successful — New York City mayoral campaign. Alex Press takes us out after dark in Queens with the democratic socialist mayor-elect, meeting taxi drivers at LaGuardia, nurses and residents at Elmhurst Hospital, delivery workers on the night shift — the people who keep New York running while the city...

Gabriel Hetland, author of a recent article for Jacobin, looks to Venezuela for a model of municipal socialism. Lea Ypi, author of Indignity , looks into her grandmother’s story and unfolds a rich history of Albania and its environment. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Featuring Fernando Haddad on Brazilian political economy and where Brazil fits into a world capitalist system structured by relationships of domination and unequal exchange. Haddad is Finance Minister of Brazil. He served as mayor of São Paulo and in 2018 was the Workers’ Party (PT) presidential candidate. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy From Apartheid to Democracy at UCPress.com Read th...

Neoliberalism’s victory over Keynesianism wasn’t an intellectual revolution — it was a class offensive. Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms. The latest issue of Catalyst is out and you can subscribe for just $20 using the code CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM: https://catalyst-journal.com/subscribe/?code=CONFRO...

Jacob Silverman, author of Gilded Rage , examines the rightward move of the Silicon Valley elite. Forrest Hylton conducts a political tour d’horizon of South America. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

We’re joined again today by Eoghan Gilmartin to continue our discussion about the government of Pedro Sanchez in Spain. Eoghan is an Irish journalist based in Madrid, a regular contributor to Jacobin , and co-host of the Sobremesa podcast about Spanish politics. In contrast with Greece and Portugal, Spain still has a government today headed by the center left. The Spanish Socialist leader Pedro Sa...

Featuring Walden Bello and Jane Nalunga on neoliberalism’s defeat of Third Worldist radical projects and the Global South social movement and civil society networks that rose from the ashes to take on neoliberal globalization. A wide-ranging interview with two important, long-standing Global South leaders. Call in to leave a question for The Dig ’s mailbag episode: speakpipe.com/ListenerMailbag Su...

Margaux MacColl, co-author of a series of articles in the SF Standard , discusses Zoomer tech bros. Susannah Glickman, who wrote a recent piece for the New York Review of Books , looks at the new arms makers who want to disrupt the legacy prime contractors. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the gl...

Featuring Alexandra Wandel, Gonzalo Berrón, and Paul Adlerstein on the 1999 mass protest against the World Trade Organization in Seattle and on the giant global justice movement that mobilized unions, farmers, environmentalists, public interest advocates, and various radical leftists all over the world. Recorded live in Brussels with the European Trade Justice Coalition. First in a two-part series...

Grab your coffee and your backpack — it's time for Professor Chibber's Office Hours! On this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek answers YOUR questions. We received so many interesting and thoughtful emails from listeners, we decided to dedicate a whole podcast to them. Vivek talks about how socialists should confront discrimination in their organizing, the relevance of the concept of monopo...

Suzi talks to Capital & Main reporter Jesse Baum and David Williams, a Dollar General stocker and organizer with Step Up Louisiana, about how workers are fighting for dignity and better working conditions in “right-to-work” states — places where an anti-union climate, legal roadblocks, and intimidation make winning union recognition nearly impossible. Dollar Store workers in Louisiana organize...

Ilan Pappé, author of Israel on the Brink , gives an update on the ceasefire and how the deepening crisis of Israeli society could lead to something better. Jennifer Berkshire examines the appalling Trump educational agenda. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Long Reads continues our recent focus on the politics of southern European countries over the last decade. This week and in our next episode, we’re looking in detail at what’s been happening in Spain. In contrast with Greece and Portugal, Spain still has a government today headed by the center left. The Spanish Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez has attracted a lot of interest from the international m...

Jake Werner of the Quincy Institute analyzes Trump’s creeping softness on China, and how that country sees its role in the world. Jeet Heer, author of a recent book review for the Nation , talks about the slick but odious William F. Buckley Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Professor Tom Alter, a tenured historian at Texas State University, was recently fired for speaking at an online socialism conference. His remarks were secretly recorded and doctored by a self-proclaimed fascist influencer who launched a smear campaign. There was no due process, a blatant violation of his First Amendment and academic freedom rights. The president of Texas State University upheld t...

Featuring Melinda Cooper on Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance . Balanced budget conservatism and supply side populism engineered a politics of austerity and budget deficits. Deep cuts to the social wage like welfare reform disciplined labor so severely that Fed chair Alan Greenspan opened the floodgates of easy money confident it would juice the price of assets alone....

In this tumultuous political era, it’s common to hear that the Left needs to rebuild its historic sources of power. But it’s more accurate to say that the Left is essentially in the process of starting over again. On this episode of Confronting Capitalism , we share Vivek Chibber’s keynote address at the Jacobin conference, “Socialism in Our Time,” which marked the 15th anniversary of the magazine...

At the end of September, political theorist Ilya Matveev joined the Critique editorial board to present his ideas about imperialism in the 21st century. Suzi Weissman moderated that enlightening discussion and brings it now to Jacobin Radio . Matveev examines the emerging era of inter-imperialist rivalry and asks what’s really driving the strategies of Russia, China, and the United States. China h...

Erin Thompson considers the politics of public monuments as Trump talks of restoring Confederate statues. Mouin Rabbani returns for a look at Trump’s dubious Gaza peace scheme. Ted Hamm, author of Run Zohran Run! , discusses Mamdani’s campaign for NYC mayor. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the g...

This week’s episode of Long Reads is the second in a two-part interview. In our last episode, we spoke to Catarina Príncipe about the politics of Portugal since 2015. Today we’re going to cover developments from 2022 onward. One of the main themes in that period has been the rise of the far right. In 2022, the parties of the radical left, the Communist Party and the Left Bloc, lost ground and were...