Jacobin Radio

Journalist @melissagira eviscerates a newspaper investigation that conflates sex work with trafficking. She examines how reporters unwittingly fall into a savior complex, which ends up criminalizing workers in the name of defending women's dignity. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Futures of Black Radicalism https://www.versobooks.com/books/2438-futures-of-black-radicalism . And su...

The Intercept's Ryan Grim on the the state of the GOP, which despite recent losses in this week's elections, controls all three branches of the federal government and is currently trying to pass a tax bill. Then, Rachel Sherman , author of Uneasy Street , on the consciousness of the rich.

Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell on those abominable things dotting the American landscape. Then, Donna Minkowitz , author of this article , reports on her visit to the genteel white supremacists of AmRen.

Centrist business elites believe in an America that doesn't exist. Two guests this episode: first, @mollyesque talks about her piece "On Safari in Trump's America" for T he Atlantic. Her article follows the centrist organization Third Way on a “listening tour” of the real America. Then @EricLevitz (35:52), who just published on op-ed in the N ew York Times entitled “America is not ‘center-right,"...

Writer and author Andy Durgan discusses the fast-moving events taking place in Catalonia. This past week, Catalonia declared independence, and the Spanish government is moving quickly to repress the independence movement's political leaders and keep the region within its fold. Then, journalist Michael Sainato joins Suzi to talk about the post-2016 election fights within the Democratic Party, and w...

Why have the size of American police departments grown so dramatically in recent decades, even as crime rates have fallen? One factor may have been the growing centrality of real estate for urban economies, according to a new article published in the journal Social Forces b y Adam Goldstein, a professor of sociology at Princeton, and Brenden Beck, a PhD student in sociology at CUNY. Thanks to our...

Aziz Rana discusses his pivotal book, The Two Faces of American Freedom . Rana overturns conventional accounts of American history, from settlement and Revolution to the Populists and the present day. In reality, settler-colonialism, empire, and a brutally exploitative economic system grounded in racial subjugation have always been at the core of the American project. But radical thinkers and move...

Benjamin Opratko , a fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin who teaches at the University of Vienna, on the rise of the far right in Austria. On Sunday, October 16, Austria held elections, and the two right-wing parties will form a government (you can read Opratko's Jacobin articles for more on this subject). Then Steven Teles , author of The Captured Economy , launches a hybrid "liberalitarian"...

The exposure of Weinstein's predations has reignited widespread fury over the longstanding problem of sexual harassment and assault—especially in the workplace. Jacobin editor @alexnpress discusses two new pieces she wrote on how dealing with these problems as individuals only ends up harming individual women and why women must organize to fight back. Support us on Patreon.com/TheDig with some cas...

Corey Robin points to a tension that has defined conservatism from the get-go, between two competing conceptions of virtue and nobility: one defined by political and military distinction and another by entrepreneurial acumen and accumulated wealth. Robin parses how Trump fits into this dynamic history, in part by taking a look back to seminal conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke and Friedrich H...

Dan was on a panel last week on ending the war on drug dealers at the Drug Policy Alliance conference in Atlanta. The panel was moderated by asha bandele and included Daryl Atkinson, Constanza Sánchez Avilé, Lyn Ulbrich, Kemba Smith and Dan. Thanks for listening. Support us at patreon.com/TheDig .

Suzi Weissman switches seats with Robert Brenner: she is the guest and he does the interviewing. The program begins with a talk Suzi gave recently in Berkeley: " One Hundred Years Since October: When the Russian Working Class Opened the Possibilities For Humanity." Robert and Suzi then discuss the significance of October 1917, when workers took power with profoundly democratic institutions of popu...

Isabel Hilton, editor of ChinaDialogue.net , discusses recent developments at the Chinese Communist Party Congress. Then, Doug is joined by Alex Vitale, author The End of Policing , who addresses how we cure ourselves of the cop sickness.

Since Bernie Sanders's success in the 2016 Democratic primary, much of the Left, from progressive Democrats to socialists, has had its sights set on something we had long at least implicitly assumed was impossible: state power and governing. The question now is how to take power, and the Left is consumed by debates over how and whether to engage with the Democratic Party or, in a more limited fash...

In his new book The End of Policing Brooklyn College sociologist @avitale makes the case that technocratic reforms won't fix American policing. In reality, we can only fix policing by ending the carceral state and defeating neoliberalism. Thanks to Verso Books for their support. Check out Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump by David Neiwert versobooks.com/<wbr />bo...

An extended interview with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on his new book, Adults in the Room , the story of his surreal negotiations with Greece’s creditors

Chapo went on The Dig. Dan talks to @cushbomb about optimism, pessimism, Manitowoc, reptilians, why the internet might be mostly bad, and Dan’s personal connection to the PizzaGate coverup. Toss us some cash love at Patreon.com/thedig and check out The End of Policing by Alex Vitale, from our sponsors at Verso Books.

<font size="4">Suzi Weissman talks to</font> <font size="4"> Einde O’Callaghan, a teacher and member of Die Linke, about Germany’s recent election, in which the far-right AfD gained 94 seats in Parliament, making it larger and more influential than the left-wing Die Linke. Then, Richard Lichtman joins us to discuss the notion (and failures) of democracy in the current period. How...

Former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner talks about being horrified by Trump, why single-payer is suddenly hot among likely 2020 Democratic contenders, and the work that Our Revolution is doing nationwide to fight the Democratic Party's neoliberal leadership. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books, who just published Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot. Also,...

Prevailing debate obscures the fact that we already have a form of gun control in the United States. As legal scholar Ben Levin explains, the problem is that it’s a form of gun control that is mostly about locking up poor black men in huge numbers. The Left should demand a society without readily available weapons of war on the streets and a society without mass incarceration. Thanks to our suppor...

First, author Joel Schalit explores the rise of the right in Germany. Then, Professor Marisol LeBrón talks about the role of debt and austerity in impairing Puerto Rico's hurricane recovery. And finally, Shawna Potter of the band War on Women, on being a feminist punk rocker.

Here's Dan's full interview with civil rights attorney and Democratic nominee for Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. You heard some of it yesterday on the first in a four-part series on mass incarceration that we are co-producing with Cited, a podcast out of the University of British Columbia. Sponsorship from Harvard Law's Fair Punishment Project (sign up for their newsletter: http://e...

In the late 1960s, criminologists like Todd Clear predicted America would soon start closing its prisons. They couldn't have been more wrong. Interviews with Clear, formerly incarcerated poet and legal scholar Dwayne Betts, and civil rights attorney and Democratic nominee for Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. Today's show is the first in a four-part series on mass incarceration that we...

Journalist Lukas Hermsmeier on German politics after the recent election, which saw a breakthrough for the AfD, a far-right party, the first to have seats in the German Bundestag since the Nazi era. Then, the writer Margaret Corvid discusses the recent UK Labour Party conference.

Today’s Diglet is not really diminutive at all. Dan has two interviews with two separate guests because too much has happened over the past few weeks and there are too many smart people to analyze it all. First, scholar @marisollebron on how Wall Street-imposed austerity set Puerto Rico up for devastation, and why it will be an obstacle to a just recovery. Then, Twitter expert @BrandyLJensen on re...