Shows / Jacobin Radio
Jacobin Radio
News, politics, history and more from Jacobin. Featuring The Dig, Long Reads, Confronting Capitalism, Behind the News, Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman, and occasional specials.
Episodes
Jacobin RadioJacobin Radio: Utopia Postponed? w/ Marc Cooper
Marc Cooper and Pablo Abufom join Suzi in a conversation about Marc's Dig “Chile's Utopia Has Been Postponed," The Truthdig original series compares dramatic…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: iPhone, Therefore I Am
As Canadians, we simply couldn't pass up a movie about our greatest national export. Matt Johnson's BLACKBERRY (2023) puts a darkly comic spin on the rise and…
Jacobin RadioDig Presents: Transmissions from Jonestown
A sonic memorial to the Black women of the Peoples Temple. Produced and reported by Babette Thomas. Edited by Liza Yeager and Mitchell Johnson, with editorial…
Jacobin RadioLong Reads: Mussolini to Meloni w/ David Broder (Part 1)
Italy’s liberation during the Second World War was meant to have consigned fascism to history. But eight decades later, the country has a prime minister from…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: A Slow Civil War w/ Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet talks about his new book, The Undertow, essays on the increasingly violent and authoritarian politics on the right unleashed by Trump. Claire…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Crack-Up Capitalism w/ Quinn Slobodian
Featuring Quinn Slobodian on Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. Radical libertarians, including…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: By Grapthar's Hammer
We begin with a rundown of recent events, from the Coronation to the CNN Trump town hall to the Liberal Party of Canada's recent convention, before discussing…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Cop City Primer w/ Micah Herskind
Michaela Chen of Foxglove discusses efforts to unionize the exploited workers who moderate content on social media. Micah Herskind, author of an article for…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Trans Children w/ Jules Gill-Peterson
Featuring Jules Gill-Peterson on Histories of the Transgender Child. Amid this right-wing reaction, a discussion of the history of trans medicine and trans…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: A Populist Dracula
"A soy-banter Nicolas Cage Dracula movie" was too enticing a pitch to pass up, so we hit up our local multiplex to see RENFIELD (2023). PLUS: Do conservatives…
Jacobin RadioJacobin Radio: Writers Guild Strike w/ Howard Rodman
Howard Rodman, former president of the Writers Guild of America West (WGA), joins Alan Minsky to discuss the Writers Guild strike, which began a minute after…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: The Chicago Model w/ Stacy Davis Gates, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, and Alex Han
Featuring Stacy Davis Gates, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, and Alex Han on how Chicago's labor left took over City Hall. Brandon Johnson's mayoral victory, the product…
Jacobin RadioSpecial: May Day w/ Richard Wolff
For International Workers' Day, Jacobin welcomed Richard Wolff, founder of Democracy at Work and visiting professor of international affairs at the New School…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Philly's Left Turn w/ Helen Gym & Nikil Saval
Featuring Nikil Saval and Helen Gym on how the history of Philadelphia social movements brought Nikil into the state senate and has made Helen, a long-time…
Jacobin RadioLong Reads: The Life and Death of Yugoslavia w/ Catherine Samary (Part 2)
In May 1980, Josip Tito died after ruling Yugoslavia for more than three decades. In his absence, the Yugoslav League of Communists put in place a collective…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: Know Thyself w/ Alex Shephard
A Christian boy goes up against his sinister atheist philosophy teacher (played by Kevin Sorbo!) in GOD'S NOT DEAD (2014), one of the biggest evangelical…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Chicago's New Mayor w/ Micah Uetricht
Jacobin editor Micah Uetricht explains how Chicago elected a progressive mayor, Brandon Johnson. Lily Lynch, editor of Balkanist and contributor to New Left…
Jacobin RadioDig Presents: Superhighway!
We have as many roads in the United States as we have streams and rivers. Produced by Caroline Kanner and Jackson Roach, with original music by Jackson Roach…
Jacobin RadioJacobin Radio: Putinism w/ Ilya Budraitskis
Suzi talks to long-time political activist and theorist Ilya Budraitskis about the transformation of Russia into a dictatorship and the nature of Putinism more…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: The Great Moving Right Show
A young man caught between his socialist father and Thatcherite uncle falls in love with a young National Front street punk while building a laundromat. We…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Green New Dead End? w/ Josh Mason
Economist Josh Mason of John Jay College (and author of a recent Jacobin article, written in response to a Dylan Riley article for New Left Review's website)…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Teach the Children Well w/ Jennifer Berkshire & Jack Schneider
Featuring Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider on the politics of public education. The authors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of…
Jacobin RadioLong Reads: The Life and Death of Yugoslavia w/ Catherine Samary (Part 1)
The breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in a brutal civil war. The conflict ended an experiment in multinational coexistence across the Western…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: Ten Days That Shook the World
How did Warren Beatty convince a Hollywood studio to make a movie about American communists in 1981? We discuss REDS (1981), his epic biopic of writers John…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Living on Less w/ Kate Soper
Philosopher Kate Soper talks about her book, Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism, just out in paperback: living on less but without the…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: How to Build a Fighting Labor Movement w/ Jane McAlevey
Featuring Jane McAlevey on how to organize mass numbers of new workers into unions that wage mass strikes to fight employers and revive the labor movement…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: Of Shoes and Men
Ben Affleck's AIR (2023) chronicles the wheeling and dealing that led to Michael Jordan signing with Nike, and this unabashed celebration of the world's most…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: University Unionism w/ Donna Murch
James Bamford, author of Spyfail and a recent article in The Nation, discusses Israeli collusion with Donald Trump in 2016. Then Donna Murch, associate…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Zionism's Civil War w/ Edo Konrad & Joshua Leifer
Featuring Edo Konrad and Joshua Leifer on how Zionism's long-running contradictions led to the current political crisis in Israel. Support The Dig at…
Jacobin RadioLong Reads: Mariátegui's Marxism w/ Mike Gonzalez
In the past few years, Peru has experienced several waves of political turbulence. The latest cycle of unrest began when Pedro Castillo was ousted as president…
Jacobin RadioJacobin Radio: Crises in France and Israel
Suzi talks to Sebastian Budgen and Yoav Peled about two existential crises rocking the social order. First in France, where President Macron used…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: One Insular Tahiti
With Trump's indictment in the news, we thought it might be a good time to watch the movie that has been more influential on QAnon than any other: Ridley…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Resisting Bibi w/ Nimrod Flaschenberg
Writer and political adviser Nimrod Flaschenberg discusses the popular uprising in Israel against Bibi’s reactionary government. Software engineer Dwayne…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig Presents: A Garden in Cairo
It started with a few cones and a cryptic sign. Produced by Omar Etman. Edited by Liza Yeager, Mitchell Johnson, and Daniel Denvir. Special thanks to Alan…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: Artificial Intelligence
We mark the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War by revisiting some of the classic clips from our cowed and deferential news media circa 2003. PLUS: What is…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Neo-Fascism in Italy w/ David Broder
Maxine Doogan and Tara Burns, contributors to a report, "How the War on Sex Work Is Stripping Your Privacy Rights," on how cops are snooping on sex workers and…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Sexual Hegemony w/ Max Fox and Chris Nealon
Featuring Max Fox and Chris Nealon on the late Christopher Chitty's book Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: London and World Assurance
For nearly 20 years, one libertarian businessman with a wildly dangerous theme park held the state of New Jersey under his thumb. We discuss the documentary…
Jacobin RadioLong Reads: The Wounded Knee Uprising w/ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Fifty years ago, a group of Native Oglala Lakota and their supporters occupied a small village called Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South…
Jacobin RadioTrailer: The Dig Presents
Coming Soon: The Dig Presents is a new monthly series that features original documentary reporting, personal narrative, and other sonic experiments from a wide…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: The State of the Carceral State w/ Wanda Bertram
After some introductory comments on the bank failures, Doug speaks with Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative about the state of the carceral state…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Racism, Class, and the Opioid Crisis
Featuring Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg on how American capitalism and its illusions of whiteness both created the opioid crisis and…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: I Don't Like Sand
A man spends a night in an isolated woman's desert shack, and loses his identity in the process, in WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964), Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kōbō…
Jacobin RadioJacobin Radio: 50 Years of Chilean Politics w/ Marc Cooper
Suzi talks to veteran journalist Marc Cooper, who was a translator to President Salvador Allende in the Popular Unity government from 1970-1973. Marc has…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: The DeSantis Agenda w/ Paul Ortiz
A Florida follow-up: historian and union president Paul Ortiz on the DeSantis agenda and resistance to it. Then human rights lawyer Noa Levy discusses the far…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Labor Histories w/ Nelson Lichtenstein
Featuring Nelson Lichtenstein on his life and scholarship, from membership in the International Socialists and studies of the early United Auto Workers and CIO…
Jacobin RadioJacobin Radio: A Year of War in Ukraine
Suzi talks to Vladyslav Starodubtsev and Jeremy Bigwood about the war in Ukraine, now entering its second year. Russia’s war on Ukraine has been a disaster…
Jacobin RadioLong Reads: The Cathar Crusade w/ Elaine Graham-Leigh
In the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church declared a holy war against a group of Christian heretics in the South of France. The Albigensian Crusade became…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: My Orwell Left or Right
George Orwell's popularity is at a new high in the post-Trump era, and he's been claimed by both the left and right. We discuss NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1984)…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Trans Kids Panic w/ Judith Levine
Doug interviews Judith Levine about the trans kids panic and moves to defund the Kinsey Institute. Phil Wegner of the University of Florida discusses Ron…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: American Militarism w/ Nadia Abu El-Haj
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. How the civil-military divide makes troops into super…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: I Am Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Abbas Kiarostami's masterpiece CLOSE-UP (1990) used the true story of a poor man who impersonated a famous filmmaker to meditate on class, identity, and the…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Railroad Workers w/ Ron Kaminkow & Kari Lydersen
Doug speaks with Jamie Webster of BCG about western Europe’s energy situation. Then Kari Lydersen, author of a recent In These Times article, and Ron Kaminkow…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Combat Trauma w/ Nadia Abu El-Haj
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological…
Jacobin RadioLong Reads: Pakistan's Political Crisis w/ Ayyaz Mallick
Since the late 1990s, Pakistan has experienced several rounds of intense political turbulence. But the crisis unfolding today may be the most dramatic episode…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: Empire Records w/ Meagan Day & Branko Marcetic
Some topics are too vast, too vital for us to cover on our own. Today, we address one such topic. We invited Jacobin's Meagan Day and Branko Marcetic for a…
Jacobin RadioBehind the News: Indian Capitalism w/ Jairus Banaji
Anatol Lieven discusses the slim prospects for peace in Ukraine and growing bellicosity towards China. Jairus Banaji, author of an article for Phenomenal…
Jacobin RadioThe Dig: Higher Ed Industrial Unionism w/ Donna Murch and Todd Wolfson
Featuring Donna Murch and Todd Wolfson on Rutgers University workers' industrial unionism strategy. The second in a two-part series on the crisis in American…
Jacobin RadioMichael and Us: Fully Automated Luxury Centrism
The amateur documentary MY YANG GANG DIARY (2021) gives us opportunity to look back on the presidential candidacy of Andrew Yang. We discuss how the "not left…
Jacobin RadioJacobin Radio: Dealignment? w/ Robert Brenner & Dylan Riley
Suzi talks to Robert Brenner and Dylan Riley about their “Seven Theses on American Politics” in New Left Review, an analysis of the 2022 midterm election…