Jacobin Radio

Latest Episodes:

The Dig: Organizing Amid Rising Tides Aug 31, 2018

Show notes

Dan speaks to Elizabeth Rush, the author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a lyrical, mournful but ultimately hopeful account of people dealing with amongst the most tangible effects of global warming right now: the rising seas that are threatening poor and working-class people with dislocation, community destruction and compounded destitution. It's a beautifully-written guide to the current crisis that sugarcoats nothing yet that highlights how ordinary people can organize to fight for their future and that of the planet where we live.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their massive collection of left-wing books for sale at versobooks.com

And please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Behind the News: Free Market Isn't Free Aug 29, 2018

Show notes

Rob Larson, author of Capitalism vs. Freedom, explores how the “free market” is a realm of unfreedom, and Keith Gessen discusses his new novel about contemporary Russia, A Terrible Country.

The Dig: Eco-Socialism and the Climate Crisis Aug 29, 2018

Show notes

Today's episode is a long one. It's the first of two this week on climate politics: a live event that I hosted at Verso Books in New York a couple weeks ago. Or, at least part of it is. The event livestream, which we grabbed the audio from, malfunctioned for the first half hour or so of the episode. And so, dear listeners, we made lemonade out of audiovisual lemons and re-did the first part of the interview later over the phone from Providence.

Dan spoke to Audrea Lim, Thea Riofrancos, Ashley Dawson and Daniel Aldana Cohen about how the left should respond to the climate crisis—and how that response, for better or for worse, will require a deep transformation in social and economic relations, and also in our built environment and how we inhabit it. In other words, eco-socialism is the only solution because we can't achieve real ecological balance without socialism, and true socialism that delivers liberation would be concretely impossible without ecological balance.

Thanks to Verso. Check out so many good lefty titles at www.versobooks.com

And please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jacobin Radio: Robin Blackburn on Corbyn Aug 28, 2018

Show notes

Suzi Weissman talks to Robin Blackburn about Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party's left-wing leader. Drawing on Robin's article, "The Corbyn Project," in the May/June 2018 New Left Review, Suzi asks Blackburn to explore the challenges and constraints a Corbyn Labour Left government would face after a decade of Tory austerity policies — that came on the heels of Thatcher and Blair's neoliberal politics making Britain the most unequal country in Western Europe. Suzi also asks Robin what fundamental changes a Corbyn government could implement, and to sketch the proposals and prospects for an egalitarian shift in the UK, with lessons for the US and beyond.

The Dig: Criminal Injustice with Josie Duffy Rice Aug 25, 2018

Show notes

Josie Duffy Rice on Justice in America, her new podcast from The Appeal that she co-hosts with with Clint Smith, media coverage of criminal justice, carceral feminism and domestic violence, and the disturbing liberal affection for federal law enforcement under Trump.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out For a Left Populism by Chantal Mouffe versobooks.com/books/2748-for-a-left-populism

Support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

The Dig: Russia Beyond Caricature Aug 22, 2018

Show notes

Russia: the more your average American thinks about it, the less they seem to know. National security-state enthused liberals blame Putin and for creating what is an obviously-if-incomprehensibly made-in-America monster. Trump, in turn, cannot seem to contain his giddy enthusiasm for Putin's brand of hyper-masculine authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Russia, an actual country where roughly 144 million people live, has become mostly invisible to Americans—because it has been replaced by a caricature. Sean Guillory, the host of the SRB podcast and author of seansrussiablog.org, explains it all.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle versobooks.com/books/2698-new-dark-age And The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield versobooks.com/books/2765-the-amateur

Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Behind the News: The Red Army Faction Aug 17, 2018

Show notes

Christina Gerhardt, author ofScreening the Red Army Faction(2018, Bloomsbury), on the RAF’s history and artistic reception in the context of the German 1960s and 1970s.

The Dig: Aslı Bâli on Syria, Part II Aug 17, 2018

Show notes

Part two of a two-part interview with Aslı Bâli on the Syrian civil war and the larger geopolitical conflicts that shape the Middle East — with an emphasis on the role played the United States. During part one, which you should definitely listen to first, Bâli discussed the various powers sacrificing the lives of Syrian people in the pursuit of their perceived geopolitical and sectarian interests. In this installment, Bâli discusses the restrictive frames that dominates the American discussion over Syria, and then assesses the lack of a coherent heterodox left-wing foreign policy in the United States — something that we desperately need as the possibility of the Left taking power becomes newly plausible.

Read: "Remember Syria?" by Bâli and Aziz Rana bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-bali-aziz-rana-trump-putin-syria and "The U.S. Debt to Syria" bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-u-bali-aziz-rana-us-debt-syria.

Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out For a Left Populism by Chantal Mouffe versobooks.com/books/2748-for-a-left-populism.

Support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig!

The Dig: Aslı Bâli on Syria, Part I Aug 15, 2018

Show notes

[note: this is being re-posted because the original post was accidentally deleted. So if you have already listened, no need to listen again!]

Aslı Ü. Bâli joins Daniel for part one of a two-part interview on the Syrian Civil War and the murderously instrumentalized geopolitics that fuel it. Syrians continue to suffer and to die while various actors treat the conflict as a proxy for their own geopolitical ends; meanwhile, huge numbers of Syrian refugees languish in neighboring countries, and the much smaller number who have made their way to Europe and the United States have been utilized by a resurgent far-right to blame ordinary Syrians for violence rooted in the colonial operations of those very same countries that now insist on keeping the refugees out.

Read: Remember Syria? by Bâli and Aziz Rana bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-bali-aziz-rana-trump-putin-syria and The U.S. Debt to Syria bostonreview.net/war-security/asli-u-bali-aziz-rana-us-debt-syria

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle versobooks.com/books/2698-new-dark-age And Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class by Mike Davis versobooks.com/books/2759-prisoners-of-the-american-dream

Support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

Jacobin Radio: Katie Halper; Murray Mednick and Maury Sterling Aug 13, 2018

Show notes

Suzi and Alan Minsky talk to Katie Halper of WBAI's The Katie Halper Show about the role of independent media and politics in the Trumpian landscape we inhabit. Then Suzi speaks to prolific, award-winning playwright Murray Mednick, whose enigmatic "Mayakovsky and Stalin" runs until August 19 at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood. The play examines two lives and two suicides, related but distant, responding to the liberating freedom of revolution in the Soviet Union, but then increasingly strangled and suffocated by the top down brutal dictatorship of Stalin, played by actor Maury Sterling (best known as Max on Homeland), who joins the conversation. The play traces the parallel stories of the giant of Russian poetry, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and his relationship to his love and muse, Lilya Brik (darling of Russia’s avant garde) and her husband, the literary critic Osip Brik. Their relationship exemplifies the freedom from conventional mores in the early years of the revolution. The second life and suicide is that of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's young wife who committed suicide during a state dinner in 1932, renouncing her husband and his horrific policies, reflecting her despair and suffocation being married to the supreme dictator while millions perished.

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