Long Reads: Big Pharma's Toxic Record w/ Nick Dearden
From the HIV/AIDS crisis, to the opioid epidemic, to the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmaceutical corporations have been accused of profiteering at the expense of countless lives. Nick Dearden, director of …
Behind the News: The Black Panthers, Myth & Reality w/ Donna Murch
Historian Donna Murch, author of Living for the City, takes on some myths about the Black Panther Party. Saadia Toor and Rabia Mehmood discuss Pakistan.
Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers…
Organize the Unorganized: Is There an End to the CIO?
The eighth, penultimate episode of Organize the Unorganized concludes the main story of the CIO. We cover the organization’s communist purge in the late 1940s and Operation Dixie, the failed campaign…
Dig: Thawra Ep. 3 - The Post-Colonial Arab State System
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRD episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of th…
Jacobin Radio: A Talk on Latin American Revolts
Chilean writer and activist Pablo Abufom spoke at UCLA on February 23, 2024 about how the October 2019 social revolt in Chile propelled Gabriel Boric to power, created a Constituent Assembly to write…
Dig: Thawra Ep. 2 - Birth of Arab Nationalism
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out early 20th-century anti…
Organize the Unorganized: War
The early period of the CIO arguably ended with the Little Steel strike in 1937. The strike's brutal repression and failure dramatically illustrated the limits of the New Deal order. But the CIO cont…
Behind the News: Desi Diaspora Politics w/ Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer, author of a recent article for The Nation, discusses Indian Americans in politics and society. Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno, authors of The Fall and Rise of American Finance, takes on t…
Michael and Us: An Irreverent Tendency
In 1987, America was ready to look back on the Vietnam War... with laughter. We discuss GOOD MORNING VIETNAM (1987) and why it is one of the quintessential "boomer liberal" texts. PLUS: We check in o…
Long Reads: From Gaza to Yemen w/ Helen Lackner
Over the last four months, the Israeli war on Gaza has spilled over into the rest of the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq. But the most dramatic example has been the link between events in Palestine…
Jacobin Radio: Repression in Russia w/ Ilya Budraitskis
There are many markers showing February 2024 to be a landmark month of cruelty — not least in Gaza, but also in Russia, where we turn our focus today. The slow murder of opposition leader Alexei Nava…
Dig: Thawra Ep. 1 - Europe's Imperial Juggernaut
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment sets the stage: European imperial…
Behind the News: The Eternal Present w/ Anna Kornbluh
Gerald Epstein, author of Busting the Bankers’ Club, discusses the finance racket and how to transform it. Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, examines our sped-up, unmediated cultural eternal presen…
Organize the Unorganized: From the Docks to the Killing Floors
On episode six of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we go deeper into some of the key CIO unions: the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the International Long…
Michael and Us: Eat the Rich
We discuss THE MENU (2022) and its place in the context of the current wave of "eat the rich" cinema. PLUS: we discuss Walter Isaacson's new hagiography of Elon Musk, and Joe Biden's wildly successfu…
Behind the News: Climate Politics w/ Ajay Singh Chaudhary
Ajay Singh Chaudhary talks about his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. Matt Notowidigdo, co-author of a recent NBER paper, examines how recessions increase life expec…
Long Reads: France's First Revolution w/ Justine Firnhaber-Baker
If you think about the French revolutionary tradition, you’re most likely to picture the storming of the Bastille and the overthrow of the monarchy. But that wasn’t the first time there was a major u…
Dig: Your Money Or Your Life w/ Luke Messac
Featuring Luke Messac on Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine. An estimated 100 million people in the US are in debt because they sought medical treatment. Medical debt exace…
Michael and Us: Adaptation
Are commercial considerations always doomed to taint art? And are commercial considerations really a taint? We discuss Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's meta-movie ADAPTATION (2002) and the artist/ha…
Organize the Unorganized: Little Steel
Episode five of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO examines the Little Steel strike in the summer of 1937. It was a tragic failure for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and the CIO, o…