The Dig

We need Bernie but a lot more too. Dan does three interviews with down-ballot left insurgent candidates: Jessica Cisneros, a Justice Democrat running against incumbent conservative Democrat Henry Cuellar in Texas’s 28th congressional district; Stephen Smith, who is running a populist campaign for West Virginia governor; and Heidi Sloan, a DSA candidate in the Democratic primary for Texas’s 25th Re...

Why we need single-payer healthcare, why Medicare for All is suddenly at the center of debate, and why this is all part of a broader struggle for health justice. Dan interviews Tim Faust. Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at Patreon.com/TheDig Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

An interview on how the transformation of capitalism has changed the possibilities for anti-capitalist struggle with Michael Hardt, co-author with Antonio Negri of Assembly . Read Dan’s essay on the 20th anniversary of the WTO protests in Seattle jacobinmag.com/2019/11/seattle-world-trade-organization-protests-socialism Read Hardt and Negri reflect on the 20th anniversary of Empire newleftre...

On the occasion of our third anniversary we are taking a break. Here’s a classic on settler colonialism from our archives: Paul Frymer on Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion . a.k.a. episode 85 from January 30 2018. Thanks to University of North Carolina Press. Check out their Justice, Power, and Politics series uncpress.org/series/justice-power-politi...

Political scientist Jeff Webber discusses the coup against Evo Morales and the recent history of Bolivia. Read “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Macho Camacho” by Jeff Webber and Forrest Hylton www.versobooks.com/blogs/4493-the-eighteenth-brumaire-of-macho-camacho-jeffery-r-webber-with-forrest-hylton-on-the-coup-in-bolivia Thanks to University of California Press. Check out their titles at u...

Dan interviews Naomi Klein on her new essay collection On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal . Thanks to University of California Press. Check out their huge selection of titles at ucpress.edu Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Maria hit Puerto Rico as austerity dismantled its social and material infrastructure. But as Yarimar Bonilla explains, these years also taught Puerto Ricans about their own collective power, fueling the summer’s mass movement that overthrew Governor Ricardo Rosselló. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast at Patre...

Mathew Lawrence, founder and director of the left-wing UK think tank Common Wealth, explains why ownership must be socialized, what that might look like, and how to make it happen. Thanks to UNC Press. Check out Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice By Lana Dee Povitz uncpress.org/book/9781469653013/stirrings Please support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/T...

The divide between Latin American and the United States was not always so evident. Across the hemisphere, creoles—the descendants of European settlers, born in the Americas—launched revolutions to cast off European rule and preserve their own elite position over black and indigenous people. Joshua Simon explains how rival settler-colonial projects became today’s status quo of US dominance. T...

Adom Getachew explains how anticolonial leaders from across the black Atlantic tried to not only cast off European rule but also end empire by constructing an egalitarian global political and economic order in its place. Thanks to University of North Carolina Press. Check out Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor uncpress....

Perhaps nowhere is the far right stronger than in India. There, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, continues in power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi after winning a huge victory in this year’s elections. The BJP, however, isn’t just a party. It’s the electoral wing of a Hindu nationalist movement that constitutes the largest and most organized far-right force on earth. A deep dive with Indian...

Dan interviews Alex Gourevitch about how 19th century US labor radicals remade the idea of freedom into a principle of working-class social transformation. If you want more on the debate over Lexit, which they only touched on briefly, check out this June interview with Chris Bickerton and Jerome Roos www.thedigradio.com/podcast/the-european-situation-with-chris-bickerton-and-jerome-roos Thanks to...

Dan interviews Noura Erakat, the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, a new book that analyzes the history of settler-colonialism in Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation from just before the British mandate to the present through the lens of the law. Thanks to Haymarket Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at haymarketbooks.org Please...

Lisa Duggan wrote a book that explains everything you need to know about Ayn Rand and why she became so enormously consequential so that you don’t have to read Rand’s work yourself. Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed is out now from University of California Press. Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this pod...

The history of suburbanite reactions to school integration in Atlanta and Charlotte reveal the class power underpinning both racism and the demolition of the New Deal order. Dan interviews Matt Lassiter, discussing suburbanite resistance to school busing, why Nixon’s Silent Majority was the the product of a suburban strategy rather than a Southern one, and why the class base of all politics...

Dan interviewed legendary feminist scholar Silvia Federici on Caliban and the Witch at her Brooklyn apartment. Next year, he’ll make a return trip to discuss Wages for Housework. Here’s the article on the Pawtucket factory strike by Joey La Neve DeFrancesco that Dan mentions jacobinmag.com/2018/06/factory-workers-strike-textile-mill-women Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection...

Dan discusses the history of black politics in the US—left, nationalist, liberal, and neoliberal—with Michael Dawson. Check out New Dawn, Michael’s podcast on race and capitalism: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-dawn/id1213696020 Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com...

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz about Indigenous people’s history to reexamine all of history, the present, and our possible futures. Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Ordinary language is the sound of hegemony; it is also an archive of the struggles to overturn it. Language is an institution and a constantly emergent field of struggle; it is the product of power relations and it is also itself power relations. Dan interviews John Patrick Leary, the author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism. Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing t...

Dan talks to Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara about his book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality . We must study socialism’s history and plan for its future. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jobs have in recent years gotten much worse for millions of service workers at Amazon, McDonalds and call centers. Dan interviews Emily Guendelsberger on her book On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Lily Geismer, the author of Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party . While Boston whites fought school busing in the streets, suburban liberals along Route 128 maintained and benefited from the larger system of metropolitan residential and school segregation that made the crisis possible. Suburban liberals also played a key role in cre...

Dan is taking his first week off ever in Dig history to finish his book. Here’s a classic from deep in the archives: our first interview with Aziz Rana, on his book The Two Faces of American Freedom, aka episode 62. If you’ve already heard this one and are hungry for more content we’ve got everything organized by date, guest and topic at www.thedigradio.com . Support this podcast...

Dan’s lengthy interview with two brilliant Chilean social movement organizers: Alondra Carrillo and Pablo Abufom. Carrillo organizes in the country’s massive feminist movement. Abufom works in the labor-backed movement for a just pension system. Read Dan’s interview with Daniel Jadue, the Communist mayor of Recoleta, in Jacobin . Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge select...

View Transcript Dan interviews Sophie Lewis about her new book Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family . Something is deeply wrong with commercial surrogacy—but it’s just not what you might think. What’s wrong is the brute labor exploitation taking place at the reproductive crossroads of a racialized global capitalist order. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of...