the late and severely missed former program director of WBAI, who bequeathed me the time slot, and decided to keep the theme in his memory.
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LBO editor Doug Henwood does a radio show on WBAI, New York, covering economics and politics. It's on most Thursdays, 5-6 PM NYC time. WBAI is at 99.5 on the FM dial - and also, via RealPlayer, on the web. Here are some archived shows, as well as some individual interviews.
Note the dates of the shows are links. If you want to direct someone right to a specific show, copy that link.
A number of people have asked about the theme music. It's the Kronos Quartet performing "Wawshishijay (Our Beginning)," written by Obo Addy, from the album Pieces of Africa. I inherited it from Samori Marksman, the late and severely missed former program director of WBAI, who bequeathed me the time slot, and decided to keep the theme in his memory.
TECHNICAL NOTES The files are available in two flavors of MP3 - streaming and downloadable. (Streaming means you listen to it online in real time without transferring a file to your computer; downloadable means you transfer the file to your computer and listen offline. In either case, you'll need a program that can play MP3-format files.) Initially, only 48kbps versions were posted, but many people don't have the bandwidth to handle it. So, as of September 2002, shows were also made available is 16kbps as well, which offers lower sound quality, but should be well within the capacity of most dialups. And starting with the November 14, 2002, show, hi-fi files are encoded at 64kbps (rather than 48kbps), for superior sound quality.
Shows are about 56 minutes long; the 64kbps versions are around 26 megabytes; 48kbps versions, around 20 megabytes; and the 16kbps versions, around 7 mb.
Thanks to Jordan Hayes of thinkbank.com for hosting the archives.
For shows from January 2006 onwards, click here.
FULL SHOWS
In some early cases, the original introductions to the shows were lost, and were re-recorded. Otherwise, the programs are as originally broadcast, without any editing, except to shorten the opening theme and to balance volume between segments.
| December 15, 2005 truncated 27-minute mini-marathon semi-special Much of this hour was taken up with begging and a rebroadcast of excerpts from an August interview with David Roediger. Fresh content was mainly an interview with Leslie Harris, co-editor of Slavery in New York. Bonus audio: classic WBAI clips from Julius Lester and Samori Marksman. For the full Roediger interview, click here. Contribute to WBAI here. |  |
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| December 8, 2005 Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, on how women are not opting out of employment * Jonathan Tasini on his primary challenge to Sen. Hillary Clinton | |
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| December 1, 2005 Anatol Lieven on why decadent America must renounce its empire * Heather Rogers, author of Gone Tomorrow, on garbage and capitalism | |
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| November 17, 2005 Historian Bethany Moreton, contributor to Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism, on the role of Ozark culture in the emergence of Wal-Mart (and The Nation's amazing switch on chain stores over the last 70 years) * Bruce Lawrence, editor of Messages to the World, a collection of Osama bin Laden's writings, on the ogre's thinking and prose style | |
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| November 10, 2005 Sarah Stillman of Manifesta, a feminist magazine published at Yale, on feminism among the young * Sam Gindin, long-time Canadian Auto Workers economic advisor, on the crises at GM and Delphi | |
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| November 3, 2005 Ashaki Binta & Raymond Sanders of United Electrical Workers local 150 on the ban on collective bargaining for North Carolina public sector workers * Leo Panitch on the state of the American empire | |
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| October 13, 2005
MARATHON SPECIAL: Broadcast as a three-hour special, part of WBAI's fundraising marathon, half the show was taken up by begging for money, something web listeners wouldn't want to endure. Here are the three interviews that accounted for the show's content (listed in order of broadcast). Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities on post-hurricane finances (cut spending for the poor, cut taxes for the rich) * Beverly Wright, director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, on the social structure of New Orleans & race and the distribution of floodwater and toxins * George Galloway, MP, author of Mr Galloway Goes to Washington and scourge of Norm Coleman in a "very serious conversation" about Iraq, imperialism, Saddam's Anglophilia, and the "preposterous rubbish" of 9/11 conspiracism If you've got the cash and the inclination, please visit the WBAI website and make a pledge. |
Greenstein stream (hi/low) download (hi/low) |
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| September 29, 2005 Kurt Davies, research director at Greenpeace, on climate change and the insurance industry's "response" * Larry Bartels, professor of political science at Princeton, on how the white working class isn't moving right, how social issues aren't getting it to vote against its economic interests, and how there may be nothing the matter with Kansas after all (full paper here) | |
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| September 22, 2005 George Galloway on postcolonial self-hatred and conspiracism (teaser from an interview to be broadcast in full on October 13) * Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, on the raunch culture * Richard Gott, author of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, on where Chavez came from and what he's up to | |
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| September 8, 2005 Dan Lazare, author most recently of The Velvet Coup, on the Supreme Court and our dysfunctional "democracy" * Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch, on the insecurities and indignities of the white-collar world | |
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| September 1, 2005 Heather Boushey on the latest Census numbers on income and poverty in 2004 (not so good), and the fate of women in the current economy (not so good either) * Tom Athanasiou, co-author of Dead Heat and a principal of EcoEquity, on Hurricane Katrina, climate change, and class | |
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| August 25, 2005 Seth Kleinman on the oil market * Jennifer Gordon, author of Suburban Sweatshops, on organizing immigrant workers on Long Island (rebroadcast of March 17, 2005, interview) | |
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| August 18, 2005 Barbara Ehrenreich on the state of organized labor * Iain Boal, one of the posse known as Retort that wrote Afflicted Powers: Capital & Spectacle in a New Age of War, on Iraq, 9/11, and the imperial conjuncture | |
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| August 11, 2005 David Roediger, author of the classic Wages of Whiteness discusses his latest, Working Towards Whiteness, the story of the whitening of "new immigrants" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries | |
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| August 4, 2005 Periel Aschenbrand, proprietor of BodyAsBillboard and author of The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own, on fashion, advertising, sex * Michael Yates, author of Why Unions Matter and associate editor of Monthly Review, on MR, MR's new webzine, and his post-retirement travels across the USA | |
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| July 28 2005 highly truncated emergency fundraiser edition Most of this show was taken up with begging, since WBAI is in dire financial straits. This week's content was devoted to an interview with Chip Berlet of Politlcal Research Associates on 9/11 conspiracy theories, and conspiracism in general. |
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| July 14, 2005 Gary Indiana, author of Schwarzenegger Syndrome, on the strangeness that is Arnie * Susan Willis, author of Portents of the Real, on the cultural politics of post-9/11 America | |
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| July 7, 2005 Laura Carlsen of IRC (and frequent Counterpunch contributor) on the Zapatista's new tack * Bill Fletcher of TransAfrica on Bush and aid and Africa in the world (and a bit about the AFL-CIO) | |
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| June 30, 2005 Devah Pager, a sociologist at Princeton, reports on experiments showing a white ex-con has an easier time in the job market than a black who's never done time * Jonathan Tasini, keeper of the Working Life blog, on the possible split in the AFL-CIO | |
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| June 23, 2005 Michael Eric Dyson, author of Is Bill Cosby Right?, on class tensions among black Americans * Christian Parenti on Bolivia and the state of the empire | |
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| June 9, 2005 Moustafa Bayoumi on the misunderstood, misnamed "cedar revolution" in Lebanon (which he wrote about in the LRB) * Joel Kovel, editor of Capitalism Nature Socialism, on the psychology and politics of Israel and Zionism | |
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| May 19, 2005
MARATHON SPECIAL: Broadcast as a two-hour special, part of WBAI's fundraising marathon, a third of the show was taken up by begging for money, something web listeners wouldn't want to endure. Here are the two interviews that accounted for the show's content (listed in order of broadcast). Rock & roll sociologist Donna Gaines and "Athena" on the campaign to save CBGBs * Biju Mathew, author of Taxi!, and Rizwan Raja, on organizing cabbies in NYC. If you've got the cash and the inclination, please visit the WBAI website and make a pledge. |
CBGBs stream (hi/low) download (hi/low) |
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| May 5, 2005 Eesha Pandit of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, Hampshire College, on broadening the reproductive rights debate beyond "choice" * journalist Ian Williams on the UN (and the British election) | |
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| April 28, 2005 Rahul Mahajan, author and blogger, on the U.S. empire * Stephanie Thayer and Ward Dennis on Brooklyn redevelopment (with an introductory piece produced by LBO reporter/researcher Laura Starecheski) | |
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| April 14, 2005 Tariq Ali (latest book: a set of interviews done by David Barsamian) on empire, U.S. power, Israel, and the bellicose, pious, and ill-read Tony Blair * Matt Taibbi, author of Spanking the Donkey, on covering the 2004 campaign, and the dismal state of American politics and media | |
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| April 7, 2005 Laura Flanders, author of Bushwomen (just out in paperback) on masculinity, femininity, identity politics, and the Bush administration * Christian Parenti, author of The Freedom: Shadows & Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, on Chavez and his revolution in Venezuela (see his Nation article on the topic here) | |
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| March 31, 2005 Carlos Mejia, who deserted from his unit in Iraq, on war, resistance, and his year in jail * Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaughlin, authors of Citizen Girl and The Nanny Diaries, on gender, work, and the satiric novel | |
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| March 24, 2005 Simon Head, author of an excellent roundup-on Wal-Mart in the New York Review of Books (which prompted a two-page rebuttal ad from Wal-Mart!) and of The New Ruthless Economy, on what's wrong with Wal-Mart * three staffers from $pread magazine (Mary Christmas, Eliyanna, and Mercedes) on sex work | |
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| March 17, 2005 Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong, on Wolfowitz, "democracy," and Bush II * Jennifer Gordon, author of Suburban Sweatshops, on organizing immigrant workers on Long Island | |
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| March 10, 2005 Artist and writer Sunny Taylor on art, disability, and being censored by NPR * Naila Kabeer, author of The Power to Choose, on women, development, and the unwisdom of labor standards in trade agreements [Musical note: about halfway into the show is an excerpt from "Democracy Suspends Relevance," by "Jed Whitaker," a piece that includes samples from the interview with Slavoj Zizek broadcast in April 2003. Music here; original interview here; print version of interview here.] | |
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| March 3, 2005 Tamara Draut of Demos on debt * Steve Fraser, author of Every Man a Speculator, on the cultural and political history of Wall Street in American life | |
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| February 24, 2005 Michael Perelman, author of The Perverse Economy, on how markets misvalue everything * Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School on bankruptcy (especially the medical contribution - paper here) | |
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| February 17, 2005 Jennifer Washburn, author of University Inc., on the corporatization of higher ed * Jon Wiener, author of Historians in Trouble, on academic scandals (and Ward Churchill) | |
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February 10, 2005 Broadcast as a two-hour special, part of WBAI's fundraising marathon, a third of the show was taken up by begging for money, something web listeners wouldn't want to endure. Here are the three interviews that accounted for the show's content (listed in order of broadcast). Each is about 30 minutes long. Esther Kaplan, author of With God on Their Side, on the Christian right * Tariq Ali, author of Bush in Babylon, on the Iraq election and Bush's re-election * Noam Chomsky on the state of things If you've got the cash and the inclination, please visit the WBAI website and make a pledge. |
Kaplan |
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| January 13, 2005 Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert of Karmabanque on their new hedge fund, which will target especially nasty companies with overvalued stocks * Lew Rockwell of the Mises Institute: a libertarian view of red-state fascism | |
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2004
| December 30, 2004 Leslie McCall, professor of sociology & women's studies at Rutgers, on inequality in the U.S. (Her papers for Demos are here and here; her book is Complex Inequality.) | |
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| December 23, 2004 Maya Rockeymoore of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, on Social Security privatization's risk to black Americans (her piece for The Black Commentator is here) * Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill, on the Vioxx recall and related matters | |
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| December 9, 2004 Bertha Lewis, co-chair of the Working Families Party, on their major role in raising the New York State minimum wage and lowering maximum drug sentences * Jamie Galbraith on the U.S. dollar and such (his TomPaine.com piece is here) | |
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| November 18, 2004 Nomi Prins, author of Other People's Money, on Wall Street & corporate American in the 1990s * Anatol LIeven, author of America Right or Wrong, on American nationalism | |
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| November 11, 2004 Christian Parenti, author of The Freedom: Shadows & Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, on his reporting in Afghanistan and Iraq | |
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October 28, 2004 Broadcast as a two-hour special, part of WBAI's fundraising marathon, a third of the show was taken up by begging for money, something web listeners wouldn't want to endure. Here are the two interviews that accounted for the show's content (listed in order of broadcast). Each is about 30 minutes long. Frances Fox Piven, author of The War at Home, on Bush's domestic agenda: repression, fundamentalism, and freeing capital from taxation * Tariq Ali, author of Bush in Babylon on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the U.S. election I you've got the cash and the inclination, please visit the WBAI website and make a pledge. |
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| October 14, 2004 Sebastian Mallaby, author of The World's Banker, on James Wolfensohn and the institution he heads, The World Bank * Patrick McCully of the International Rivers Network responds to Mallaby's claims about IRN and NGOs in general | |
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| October 7, 2004 Njoki Njehu of the 50 Years is Enough campaign on the World Bank/IMF meeting and the state of the global justice movement * Corey Robin, author of Fear, on the political uses of anxiety | |
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| September 30, 2004 Seth Kleinman of PFC Energy on $50 oil and the production peak a decade or two in the future * DH on presidential economics and an early version of this piece on Gallup's Republican bias * Glen Ford of The Black Commentator on the importance of beating Bush even though the Dems are awful | |
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| September 23, 2004 Michael Hardt, co-author with Antonio Negri of Multitude, on their follow-up to the international smash hit Empire | |
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| September 16, 2004 Mark Levitan of the Community Service Society on poverty in New York City * Carol Brightman, author of Total Insecurity, on war, empire, and the myth of American omnipotence | |
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| September 9, 2004 Anatol Lieven on the Beslan massacre and the Chechen crisis * DH on green GDP accounting in China & Bloomberg's smoking ban * Sylvia Allegretto of EPI on The State of Working America | |
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| August 19, 2004 CEPR's Heather Boushey on next week's income & poverty numbers, and her own research on jobs & earnings * DH on green GDP accounting in China & Bloomberg's smoking ban * Dennis Loy Johnson, co-publisher at Melville House Publishing, on his own The Big Chill: The Great Unreported Story of the Bush Inaugration Protest, and also on two other MHP books, Mark Danner's on the Florida vote, and Renata Adler's on the Supreme Court decision that gave us Pres W | |
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| August 12, 2004 Deborah James, director of the Venezuela Information Office, on Chavez and the August 15 referendum * Robert McChesney, author of The Problem of the Media and one of the founders of freepress.net, on the corporate media and alternatives to it | |
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| August 5, 2004 Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup and author of Polling Matters, on the public opinion trade and the 2004 election polls * Tariq Ali, author most recently of Bush in Babylon, on the importance to the whole world of defeating Bush, and the maddening wrongness of the "no difference" position | |
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| July 22, 2004 Judith Levine, author of Do You Remember Me? , on her father's Alzheimer's, and the social meanings of the disease * Ian Williams, author of Deserter!, on George W's military career | |
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| July 15, 2004 Nomi Prins, investment banker turned journalist and t-shirt designer, on Martha's sentencing, Ken Lay's indictment, and sex discrimination on Wall Street * Charlie Komanoff, car-hater, on why we use so much oil, and how we could use less of it | |
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| July 8, 2004 Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycles Research Institute and co-author of Beating the Business Cycle, on cycles in general, this odd one specifically, and the likely slowdown by yearend * Norman Kelley, author of The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome on the crisis in black politics | |
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| July 1, 2004 Phyllis Bennis, lead author of Paying the Price, on the human, economic, and environmental costs of the war on Iraq * Joe Garden, Mike Loew (both of The Onion), and Randy Ostrow, authors of Citizen You!, a manual of patriotic duty (some of the original audio was lost - details at the top of the show) | |
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| June 24, 2004 Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, on the state of the empire in the light of the Iraq war * Stonewall segment: Julie Abraham, professor of LGBT studies at Sarah Lawrence, on why she's no fan of same-sex marriage | |
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| June 17, 2004 Jomo, the Malaysian economist, on the Asian economies and their recoveries from the 1997 crisis * Seth Kleinman of PFC Energy on the state of the oil market | |
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| June 10, 2004 DH on the demise of Reagan * Rick Perlstein, historian of conservatism and author of a bio of Goldwater, on the emergence of the right & the role of Ronnie * Ralph Nader, talking to the ruling class at the Council on Foreign Relations (20 minutes out of a one-hour appearance), about foreign policy, globalization, and his contribution to electing George Bush (full transcript at the CFR) | |
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May 20, 2004 Broadcast as a two-hour special, part of WBAI's fundraising marathon, a third of the show was taken up by begging for money, something web listeners wouldn't want to endure. Here are the three interviews that accounted for the show's content (listed in order of broadcast). Gary Younge, New York correspondent of The Guardian, on U.S. reactions to the torture photos, comparisons with British and other European imperialisms, and race in the U.S. vs. the UK * Cynthia Enloe of Clark University, famous for her feminist analyses of the military (see her book Maneuvers) talks about masculinity in the Bush administration, the oil industry, and military prisons * George Monbiot, author of Manifesto for a New World Order, on offshoring as reparations, the WTO, the limits of localism, and the democratization of global governance I you've got the cash and the inclination, please visit the WBAI website and make a pledge. |
Younge |
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| May 6, 2004 Heather Boushey talks about child care, in anticipation of Mother's Day * Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill, talks about drug development, and why medicines are so damned expensive | |
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| April 29, 2004 Sean Jacobs, one of the organizers of the Ten Years of Freedom film festival, talks about the festival and South African politics * Richard Burkholder, Gallup's director of international operations, talks about the firm's polling in Iraq * Aimee Liu, author of the novel Flash House, talks about the CIA in Asia and trafficking in women | |
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| April 15, 2004 Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia and author of In Defense of Globalization, talks about trade, capital flows, poverty, and development | |
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| April 8, 2004 Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire, talks first about the political economy of Japan (recovery for real? rightward move among the elite?) and then the evil effects of the U.S. empire on the outside world and on our democracy | |
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| April 1, 2004 Carlos Mejia, who left his national guard unit in Iraq to protest the war, and who faces desertion charges, talks about the war and his prospects * In a return engagement, Robert Fatton, author of Haiti's Predatory Republic, talking about the social structure of Haiti and the forces behind Aristide's rise, fall, rise, and fall | |
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| March 25, 2004 DH on outsourcing - as big a deal as they say? * Leo Panitch, co-editor of The Socialist Register 2004, on the American empire | |
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| March 18, 2004 Luciana Castellina on Italian politics - government, parties, popular movements * Ruth O'Brien, editor of Voices from the Edge: Narratives About the Americans With Disabilities Act, on the ADA, the workplace, and the courts, and Leonard Kriegel, one of the contributors to the collection, on getting around NYC in a wheelchair | |
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| March 11, 2004 Robert Fatton, author of Haiti's Predatory Republic, on the roots of Haiti's current predicament * Hilary Wainwright, editor of Red Pepper and author of Reclaim the State, on how popular movements can engage with state power without losing their innocence | |
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| March 4, 2004 Corey Robin on the militarized worldview of the neocons (article available here) * Laura Flanders on her new book on the women of the Bush administration, Bushwomen | |
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| February 26, 2004 Susie Bright on sex, politics, and her new book, Mommy's Little Girl * Frida Berrigan on who's making money from the war in Iraq (report available here * Mark Levitan on the crisis of employment in New York City (report available here) | |
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