Behind the News: Doug Henwood's radio archives

latest content added December 6, 2024

(since January 2006)

Best Music on a Show About Economics & Politics
Village Voice Best of NYC 2005

"incisive, accessible, and engaging" — Pod2Mod.com

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Doug Henwood began doing Behind the News on WBAI, New York, in 1995. KPFA, 94.1 FM Berkeley, began broadcasting it in 2009. WBAI’s now-former program director, who seems more interested in hawking miracle cures than political analysis, dropped it 2010, but it lives on at KPFA (Thursdays at noon, Pacific time). Here are the archived shows.

You can get the five most recent shows by visiting the show’s iTunes page. The show is also available via most podcast apps. Here’s the RSS feed.

People often ask about the theme. It’s “Wawshishijay (Our Beginning)” by Odo Addy from Pieces of Africa by the Kronos Quartet. I inherited it from WBAI’s late and much-missed program director, Samori Marksman, who gave me one night of his four-time-a-week show in 1995. After he died, I kept the theme in his memory.

Note that the dates of the shows are links. If you want to direct someone right to a specific show, copy that link.

Thanks to Jordan Hayes of Bitway for hosting the archives.

The show is weekly, so if a week is missing, I was taking a week off.

For shows earlier than January 2017, click here.

December 5, 2024 Larry Bartels, author of this article, on the roots of right-wing “populism” • Sopo Japaridze, co-author of this article, on the Georgian brouhaha
November 28, 2024 Brooke Harrington, author of Offshore, on how and where the mega-rich stash their cash • Mahendran Thiruvarangan on a new leftish government in Sri Lanka
November 21, 2024 Michael Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, on how the government executed his mother despite knowing her innocence (docs here) • Ruth Whippman, author of BOYMOM: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, on the challenges of raising boys
November 14, 2024 Anatol Lieven tries to divine a Trump foreign policy out of unreliable rhetoric and early appointments • Alex Vitale tries similar on Trump and criminal justice
November 7, 2024 DH comments on the Trump victory, especially the role of inflation • Dahlia Scheindlin on Israeli public opinion • James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, authors of this article, on the role of Ukraine in the Western political imagination
October 31, 2024 Laura Jedeed, author of this article, on the right’s war on North Idaho College • Mouin Rabbani on what’s driving Israel’s multiple wars, and on the state of the Axis of Resistance
October 24, 2024 William Hartung, co-author of this paper, on how much aid the US has given to Israel over the last year (plus some wacky stuff on AI weapons) • sociologist Scott Schieman on his surprising research showing that people actually like their jobs
October 17, 2024 Anatol Lieven on the ambitiously aggressive grand design of the Biden/Harris foreign policy • Lily Lynch, author of this article, on the emptying out of the Balkans
October 10, 2024 Paul North and Paul Reitter on their new translation of Marx’s Capital • Nimrod Flaschenberg and Alma Itzhaky, authors of this article, on the political culture of Israel after October 7
October 3, 2024 Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years War on Palestine, talks about Israeli settler-colonialism and its imperial patrons • Aurélie Daher looks at Hezbollah and the challenges it faces after the assassination of its leader
September 26, 2024 Forrest Hylton, author of this article, on wildfires in Brazil and the political impotence of Lula’s administration • Edwin Ackerman on politics in Mexico as AMLO hands over power to Claudia Sheinbaum, having engineered a controversial overhaul of the judiciary (article here)
September 19, 2024 Niobe Way, author of Rebels with a Cause, on the emotional and social lives of boys and what they’re telling us about society • Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality, reviews what economists have said about the topic over the centuries
September 12, 2024 Neil Sehgal, co-author of this paper, on the durability of slaveholder wealth, via a look at Congress • Emily Jashinsky with a conservative’s view of the election • Melissa Lyon, co-author of this paper, on the effects of teachers' strikes
September 5, 2024 Robert Pausch of Die Zeit on the far right’s strong showing in German regional elections • Rob Larson, author of Mastering the Universe, looks at the superrich
August 29, 2024 Naomi Hossain explains the uprising in Bangladesh that deposed PM Shekih Hasina • Sandipto Dasgupta, author of Legalizing the Revolution, examines the transformation of India from colony to nation through constitution-writing
August 22, 2024 Jake Werner on a progressive China policy (paper here) • Gabriel Hetland, author of this article, on the record of Colombian president Gustavo Petro, a leftist trying to govern a deeply conservative country
August 8, 2024 Arielle Klagsbrun of the All Eyes on Yass Campaign on the insufficiently known right-wing funder Jeff Yass • Sohrab Ahmari and Hamilton Nolan debate the existence, real or imagined, of pro-worker Republicans
August 1, 2024 Heidi Matthews analyzes the World Court’s declaration of Israel’s occupations illegal • Molly White on how crypto is spending its money in politics • Nausicaa Renner psychoanalyzes Joe Biden (article here)
July 25, 2024 Cole Stangler on the monumentally inconclusive French elections • David Palumbo-Liu on the Silicon Valley world that launched JD Vance as a politician • a brief bit from Jane McAlevey on power
July 18, 2024 Brandon Mancilla of the UAW looks behind the GOP’s pro-worker facade • Adam Hilton, author of True Blues, on the bizarre nature of the US political party system
July 11, 2024 Richard Seymour discusses the British election (Sidecar article here) • Trita Parsi, the Iranian election • remembering Jane McAlevey with a 2017 BtN interview (catalog of interviews here)
July 4, 2024 Robert Pape on how, despite Israel’s murderous onslaught on Gaza, Hamas is winning (article here) • Wanda Bertram on how US incarceration rates stack up against the rest of the world (massively), and other news on crime & punishment (report here)
June 20, 2024 Steven Simon on Israel and the Arab states’ relations with it • Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of The Education Wars, on the right-wing’s latest educational ploys (and here’s Marcus Brown’s website that I mentioned in the intro)
June 13, 2024 Edwin Ackerman on the Mexican elections, and the reasons for AMLO’s immense popularity (Sidecar piece here) • Joel Whitney, author of Flights, on radical and revolutionaries’ battles with the CIA
June 6, 2024 Siddhartha Deb, author of Twilight Prisoners, on the Hindu right and its poor showing in India’s elections • Sean Jacobs, New School prof and publisher of Africa Is a Country, on the ANC’s poor showing in South Africa’s elections
May 30, 2024 Aziz Rana, author of The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them, on how our founding document constrains democracy but we worship it anyway
May 23, 2024 Mouin Rabbani on the war on Gaza, and the broader context of the Israel–Palestine conflict • Stefanie Stantcheva on why people hate inflation (papers here and here)
May 16, 2024 Annelle Sheline on her resignation from the State Department as a protest against the war on Gaza (her statement is here) • Daniel Bessner, author of this Harper's cover story, on the debasement of screenwriting in Hollywood
May 9, 2024 Derek Seidman looks into the Alabama corporate elite and its terror at the incursion of the UAW (articles here and here) • Quinn Slobodian on Peter Brimelow and the white supremacist wing of neoliberalism (paywalled article here)
May 2, 2024 Adam Federman on the criminalization of protest (article here) • Kay Gabriel on how the right is using the anti-trans panic to make war on public schools and teachers’ unions (article here)
April 25, 2024 Jodi Dean talks about being suspended from teaching at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for writing an article the administration didn’t like • Keri Leigh Merritt on the lingering effects of antebellum Southern society (article here) • excerpts from an interview first broadcast in June 2023 with Samuel Bazzi, co-author of this paper, on the effects of the white migration out of the South after the Civil War on the recipient areas (from a June 2023 interview)
April 18, 2024 Yanis Varoufakis talks about being banned in Germany for supporting the Palestinian cause, and then about the transformation he analyzes in his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
April 11, 2024 Heidi Matthews on the World Court and the cases against Israel pending there • Elijah Wald, author of Jelly Roll Blues, on Jelly Roll Morton and the hidden history of early blues
April 4, 2024 Trita Parsi explains why Israel is trying to expand its war to Iran and Hezbollah • Natasha Lennard analyzes the Zionist appropriation of leftish “safe space” discourse • Stefan Yong explores the structure of the global shipping industry in light of the Baltimore bridge disaster
March 28, 2024 Pankaj Mishra, author of this article, on the propaganda-induced debasement of the Holocaust • Nancy Folbre, one of four authors of this report, on assigning a monetary value to care work
March 21, 2024 David Moore on how AIPAC is using GOP contributors’ money to go after progressive Dems • Meron Rapoport on how Schumer and the ICJ are being received in Israel • Jamieson Webster on the social aspects of mental disorder among the young
March 14, 2024 Robert Fatton explains Haiti’s further descent into poverty and chaos • Steve Fraser, author of this article, analyzes and mourns the death of any sense of a better future
March 7, 2024 Vijay Prashad on how the North American and European bourgeoisies are a spent force, with nothing to offer the world (article here) • Volodymyr Ishchenko, author of Toward the Abyss, on Ukraine during and after the USSR
February 29, 2024 historian Donna Murch, author of Living for the City, takes on some myths about the Black Panther Party • Saadia Toor and Rabia Mehmood on Pakistan
February 22, 2024 Jeet Heer on Indian Americans in politics and society (article here) • Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno, authors of The Fall and Rise of American Finance, on the new finance capital
February 15, 2024 Gerald Epstein, author of Busting the Bankers’ Club, on the finance racket and how to transform it • Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, on our sped-up, unmediated cultural eternal present
February 8, 2024 Ajay Singh Chaudhary talks about his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World • Matt Notowidigdo, co-author of this paper, on how recessions increase life expectancy
February 1, 2024 Sean Jacobs explores why South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel • Eric Blanc (Substack post here) on organizing in a scattered and atomized society • Hassan El-Tayyab on the widening war in the Middle East
January 25, 2024 Shireen Al-Adeimi of Michigan State and the Quincy Institute, on the Houthis • political scientist Aurélie Daher with another view of Hezbollah
January 18, 2024 Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative on electronic monitoring (the ankle bracelet kind) • Joseph Daher, author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God, on that demonized organization
January 11, 2024 political scientist Jacqueline Behrend on Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei • Benjamin Fong, author of Quick Fixes, on Americans’ love/hate relationship with drugs
January 4, 2024 Samuel Moyn, law prof and historian, on the political and legal dubiousness of excluding Trump from the presidential ballot (article here) • labor journalist Alex Press on the year in labor (articles on that topic here and here)
December 21, 2023 environmental journalist Tina Gerhardt on the recently concluded COP28 environmental summit, where limited good intentions were uttered and oil contracts were signed • historian Forrest Hylton on Javier Milei, the new libertarian/authoritarian president of Argentina
December 14, 2023 Joel Schalit, editor of The Battleground, on what it is in Israeli politics and society that’s behind the carnage in Gaza • Amy Schiller, author of The Price of Humanity, on what’s wrong with philanthropy and how to fix it
December 7, 2023 Trita Parsi on the global context of the Gaza war • James Bamford, author of this article, on how Israel spies on US campuses • Alberto Toscano, author of Late Fascism, on the latest iteration of the rough beast
November 30, 2023 Leigh Claire La Berge, author of Marx for Cats, on political economy and the human–feline relationship • Michael Zweig, author of Class, Race, and Gender, on understanding capitalism in order to transform it
November 16, 2023 Christopher Ketcham, author of this Harper's article, looks inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist” • Neve Gordon on what in Israeli society leads to bombing hospitals
November 9, 2023 Anatol Lieven on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and the global standing of US power • Ilyana Kuziemko and Suresh Naidu, co-authors of this paper, on class differences in economic policy preferences (predistributionist vs. redistributionist)
November 2, 2023 Amjad Iraqi on what it’s like to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and what the Israeli state has in mind for Gaza • Georgi Derluguian (author of this article) on how the expulsion of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh is an example of the latest iteration of the new world disorder
October 26, 2023 Rami Khouri, a Palestinian American journalist and scholar, analyzes the war in Gaza • Evelyn McDonnell, author of The World According to Joan Didion, on her life and work
October 19, 2023 Stephanie Ross on the UAW’s innovative strike strategy against the Big Three automakers • Christopher Morten and Amy Kapczynski on how Corporate America profits off publicly funded research and how to stop them from doing that [apologies for lack of Gaza material—plenty due in coming weeks]
October 12, 2023 Vincent Bevins, author of If We Burn, on the decade of protest movements that began with high hopes and ended up with things little changed or worse • Haggai Matar, executive director of +972 Magazine, on the latest horror in Israel–Palestine
October 5, 2023 Two views of Haiti in light of the UN’s approval of the deployment of a Kenyan-led mission to control gang violence there: Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Robert Fatton of the University of Virginia
September 28, 2023 Samar Al-Bulushi on the coup in Niger, political unrest in France’s former colonies in Africa, and the US-led “war on terror” on that continent • Joanna Wuest, author of Born This Way, on the biology of sexuality
September 21, 2023 Aaron Benanav, sociologist and frequent contributor to New Left Review, and Seth Ackerman, an editor at Jacobin and author of this article, discuss the long-term health of capitalism: is stagnation really the problem?
September 14, 2023 Jodi Dean, author of this review, on the postliberalism of Ahmari, Vermeule, Deneen, et al. • Sarang Shidore of the Quincy Institute on the G20, the BRICS, and the erosion of US imperial power
September 7, 2023 Sam Gindin, writer and activist on labor issues, on the shortcomings of the UPS–Teamster deal (original article here, follow-up here) • Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself, on how the Cold War crushed the tendency’s emancipatory side
August 24, 2023 Lisa Corrigan, author of this Nation article, on savage cuts at West Virginia University and what they mean for higher ed • Taylor Lorenz, author of Extremely Online, on the social history of the internet
August 17, 2023 Sohrab Ahmari, author of Tyranny, Inc., on the dictatorship of capital • Erin Reed, aka Erin in the Morning, on the state of trans politics
August 10, 2023 Francisco Pérez of the University of Utah on the CFA franc • Caitlin Chandler, author of this Harper's magazine article, on US interests in Niger
August 3, 2023 Sara Goldrick-Rab on rampant food and housing insecurity among undergrad and grad students • David Broder, author of Mussolini's Grandchildren, on the whitewashing of far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni (NYT article here)
July 27, 2023 Tim Shorrock marks the 70th anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean war as tensions mount across the region • Christopher Morten on how the drug industry uses patents and secrecy to fatten its profits at the expense of patients and the broader public
July 20, 2023 Gabriel Hetland, author of Democracy on the Ground, on contrasts in popular participation between Bolivia and Venezuela • Leigh Cowart, author of Hurts So Good, on seeking out pain for pleasure
July 13, 2023 Harrison Stetler on the riots in France • Peter Turchin, complexity theorist and author of End Times, on why the US is heading for a smashup
July 6, 2023 Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order, explores the links among neoclassical economics, austerity, and fascism • Edwin Ackerman, author of this article, looks at AMLO’s presidency in Mexico
June 29, 2023 Anatol Lieven, Eurasia director of the Quincy Institute, on Prigozhin’s aborted uprising in Russia and Putin’s status • Samuel Bazzi, co-author of this paper, on the effects of the white migration out of the South after the Civil War on the recipient areas
June 22, 2023 slaying sacred cows: M.E. O’Brien, author of Family Abolition, on doing that and “communizing care” • Jane Chung, author of this article, on what’s wrong with our cult of homeownership
June 15, 2023 While other shows are getting applause for interviewing Corey Robin about his excellent book on Clarence Thomas (who is very much in the headlines these days), Behind the News was there first, as it so often is. This is a rebroadcast of a show that first ran in 2019: Corey Robin on The Enigma of Clarence Thomas.
June 8, 2023 Christopher Layne, co-author of the Harper’s magazine article “Why are we in Ukraine?” • Marcus Brown on his augmented reality exhibit that evokes the eighteenth-century Wall Street slave market
June 1, 2023 Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative talks about some underappreciated aspects of the carceral state: probation, parole, and civil commitment • Francisco Pérez of the Center for Economic Democracy on why mainstream economics is so terrible and an online course that can help civilians break through the discipline’s mystifications
May 25, 2023 Tina Gerhardt, author of Sea Change, on the effects of rising oceans on small island nations • Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-Up Capitalism, on libertarian enclaves insulated from democracy
May 18, 2023 Jeff Sharlet talks about his new book, The Undertow, essays on the increasingly violent and authoritarian politics on the right unleashed by Trump • Claire Dunning, author of Nonprofit Neighborhoods, on urban governance by philanthropists
May 11, 2023 Michaela Chen of Foxglove on efforts to unionize the exploited workers who moderate content on social media • Micah Herskind, author of this article, on the political economy of Atlanta that’s behind Cop City
April 27, 2023 Jacobin editor Micah Uetricht explains how Chicago elected a progressive mayor, Brandon Johnson • Lily Lynch, editor of Balkanist and contributor to New Left Review‘s Sidecar blog, on how the Ukraine war destroyed Scandinavian neutrality
April 20, 2023 economist Josh Mason of John Jay College (and author of this Jacobin article) on how we can save the climate before we get to overthrowing capitalism (Dylan Riley article here) • Jen Duggan of the Environmental Integrity Initiative on a lawsuit to get the EPA to enforce the Clean Water Act
April 13, 2023 philosopher Kate Soper talks about her book, Post-Growth Living: For An Alternative Hedonism, just out in paperback: living on less but without the hair-shirtism
April 6, 2023 James Bamford, author of this article in The Nation (and of the just published Spyfail) on Israeli collusion with Donald Trump in 2016 • Donna Murch, associate professor of history at Rutgers and president of the New Brunswick campus’s faculty union, on why the teaching staff is on the verge of a strike and why it matters well beyond that institution
March 30, 2023 writer and political adviser Nimrod Flaschenberg discusses the popular uprising in Israel against Bibi’s reactionary government • software engineer Dwayne Monroe revisits the (useful) hype around ChatGPT
March 23, 2023 Maxine Doogan and Tara Burns, contributors to this report, on how cops are snooping on sex workers, and using what they learn to spy on the rest of us • David Broder, author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren, on the fascist heritage behind Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her party
March 16, 2023 DH comments on the bank failures • Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative on the state of the carceral state • Annelle Sheline on the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran
March 9, 2023 Florida follow-up: historian and union president Paul Ortiz on the DeSantis agenda and resistance to it • human rights lawyer Noa Levy on the far right agenda in Israel and resistance to it (the Ayelet Shaked Fascism ad is here)
March 2, 2023 Judith Levine on moves to defund the Kinsey Institute, and on the trans kids panic • Phil Wegner of the University of Florida on Gov. Ron DeSantis’s moves to quash academic freedom in that state
February 23, 2023 Jamie Webster of BCG on Western Europe’s energy situation • Kari Lydersen, author of this In These Times article, and Ron Kaminkow, locomotive engineer and organizer with Railroad Workers United, talk about the miseries of the industry and why it should be nationalized
February 16, 2023 Anatol Lieven on the slim prospects for peace in Ukraine and growing bellicosity towards China • Jairus Banaji, author of this Phenomenal World article, on the politicized structure of Indian capitalism generally, and the scandal surrounding Gautam Adani (Hindenburg report here)
February 9, 2023 software engineer Dwayne Monroe on the reality behind the hype around ChatGPT (and the sinister implications of AI) • political economist Alfredo Saad-Filho on Brazil’s political landscape as Lula returns to the presidency
February 2, 2023 Ann Neumann, author of this article (sorry, probably paywalled), on the bloody war in Ethiopia • two views on a proposed South American currency arrangement launched by Brazilian president Lula, one from Andrés Arauz, the other from Brian Mier
January 26, 2023 Josh White, author of Goodbye United Kingdom, on that country’s trajectory of decline • Felicia Kornbluh, author of A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life, talks about the fight for abortion rights in the late 60s and early 70s, and how it must be part of a larger struggle for reproductive justice
January 19, 2023 Matthieu Aikins, author of this article (among many), on the situation in Afghanistan with the US gone and the Taliban in control • Christina Dunbar-Hester, author of Oil Beach, on the ecology of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach
January 12, 2023 Emily Jashinsky of The Federalist on the GOP: the meaning of the speaker fight, and what is the base of the Freedom Caucus anyway? • Sohrab Ahmari, co-founder of Compact Magazine, offers a left–right hybrid
December 29, 2022 historian David Roediger, author of The Sinking Middle Class, on the uses of that term in US politics • economist Ellora Derenoncourt, co-author of this paper, on the US racial wealth gap, 1860–2020 [holiday-season encore presentation of interviews first broadcast in June]
December 22, 2022 Kathryn Joyce on the far right and its internal battles • Edward Ongweso Jr on tech, AI, and Luddism
December 15, 2022 Intercept reporter Ryan Grim, author of this article, on the fight between workers and bosses in the rail industry • economist Sanjay Reddy on the fight between adjuncts and bosses in the neoliberal university
December 8, 2022 Natalia Petrzela, author of Fit Nation, on the history of physical culture in the US • Paolo Gerbaudo on the weakness of the Italian bourgeoisie
December 1, 2022 Jennifer Berkshire on the latest version of right-wing school politics (since the last versions haven’t been working for them) • Jodi Dean, co-editor (along with Charisse Burden-Stelly) of Organize, Fight, Win, a collection of black Communist women’s writings from the late 1920s into the early 1950s
November 24, 2022 Tina Gerhardt on the COP27 climate conference • Lyle Jeremy Rubin, author of Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body, on masculinity, the Marines, and imperial violence
November 17, 2022 Jodi Dean on the political landscape in the wake of last week’s election • Tobias Hübinette, author of this article, on the role of immigration the backlash against Swedish social democracy
November 10, 2022 Joel Schalit on the return of Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, now in coalition with the religious right • Mohammad Salemy on the tripartite structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran • Megan Kinch on a labor upsurge in Ontario
November 3, 2022 political economist Alfredo Saad-Filho on the Brazilian elections • Mina Khani and Mohammad Salemy on the women-led uprising in Iran
October 27, 2022 Jamieson Webster, author of this article, examines what severe psychological distress among adolescents is telling us about American society • Raina Lipsitz, author of The Rise of a New Left, looks at the history, personnel, and status of today’s radicalism
October 20, 2022 Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute explains why Saudi Arabia cut its oil production dramatically • James Meadway, former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party and now director of the Progressive Economy Forum, explains why Britain is in economic and political crisis
October 13, 2022 Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass, authors of Half-Earth Socialism, on their scheme to save the world
October 6, 2022 Forrest Hylton on the Brazilian elections • Dorit Geva on why women leaders are prominent on the far right these days (papers here and here)
September 29, 2022 Anatol Lieven on the horror in Ukraine and diminishing chances for peace • Anne Rumberger, author of this article, on the history of the Christian right’s attitudes toward abortion (they weren’t always against it)
September 22, 2022 a memorial to Barbara Ehrenreich, who died at 81 on September 1, featuring three BtN interviews with her from 2004, 2005, and 2009
September 15, 2022 DH on child poverty: how much was it down? • another view of the Chilean constitutional referendum, this from Mario Pino • Arielle Angel, editor of Jewish Currents and author of this article, explores the problems with organizing your politics around grievance
September 8, 2022 Chilean political activist Antonia Atria explains why that country’s voters rejected a proposed new constitution • Juliana Fredman, a public interest lawyer in the Bay Area, analyzes Biden’s student debt relief plan
August 25, 2022 Matt Colquhoun talks about Mark Fisher on the reissue of his essay collection Ghosts of My Life • Matt Huber, author of this review, criticizes the climate austerity camp
August 18, 2022 David Palumbo-Liu on the politics of Stanford University and its infamous alum, Peter Thiel • the political and economic crisis in Sri Lanka, analyzed by the writer Indrajit Samarajiva.
August 11, 2022 Leigh Phillips on why nuclear power has to be part of any serious decarbonization program • Volodymyr Ishchenko on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as part of a bid to consolidate power, and how the ruling classes of both countries are political capitalists of a sort unknown in the West
August 4, 2022 Simon Kuper, Financial Times columnist and author of Chums, on the upper-class caste that’s been ruling Britain for a decade • James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum, on the dispiriting economics of the leader of the Labour Party, the drab Kier Starmer
July 28, 2022 Paolo Gerbaudo on the failure of technocracy and the imminence of right-wing rule in Italy • Chris Bohner on the huge stash unions have but aren't spending (report here, Jacobin summary here)
July 21, 2022 Jennifer Berkshire on Pete Hegseth, Christopher Rufo, and the right’s latest fronts in their war on public education • Peter Korotaev looks at the political economy of Ukraine, before, during, and after the war
July 14, 2022 Erik Baker, author of this piece, takes another look at a recent BtN obsession: post-leftism • José Sanchez, author of this critique of Afropessimism, looks at the school of thought and its contradictions
July 7, 2022 Jenny Brown of National Women’s Liberation (and author of Without Apology and Birth Strike) on the early struggle for abortion rights that led to Roe and what we can learn from it for today • David De Jong, author of Nazi Billionaires, on how respectable German businessmen became loyal Nazis
June 30, 2022 George Maher on police/prison abolition • Tariq Fancy, BlackRock alum and author of these articles, on the scam that is ESG
June 23, 2022 David Roediger, author of The Sinking Middle Class, on the uses of that term in US politics • Paisley Currah, author of Sex Is as Sex Does, on trans politics
June 16, 2022 Ellora Derenoncourt, co-author of this paper, on the racial wealth gap, 1860–2020 • David Gelles, author of The Man Who Broke Capitalism, on Jack Welch, CEO of GE from 1981–2001
June 2, 2022 Forrest Hylton on the first round of the Colombian presidential election, which was bad news for the leftist Petro • Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, author of Elite Capture, on how the ruling class has debased identity politics, and how we could reconstitute it
May 26, 2022 Heather Berg, author of Porn Work, on relations of production in sex work • Kevin Young and Leonard Seabrooke, co-authors of this paper, on the contrasting collegial styles of the Chicago and Charles River schools of economics
May 19, 2022 Molly White, keeper of the Web3 Is Going Just Great blog, on the pointless and scam-ridden world of cryptocurrencies • Kathleen Belew, a scholar of white power, on that movement’s obsessions and unusual organization
May 12, 2022 Matthew Huber, author of Climate Change as Class War, explains why the environmental movement needs to take class and production more seriously • Adam Kotsko explores why evangelicals are so obsessed with abortion
May 5, 2022 James Pogue, author of this article in Vanity Fair, reports on the the National Conservatism conference, gathering spot for authoritarians and monarchists • Anatol Lieven returns with an update on the war in Ukraine, and the US’s escalation of the conflict
April 28, 2022 David Adler of the Progressive International on an impending debt crisis, with an emphasis on the role of the IMF (Guardian article here) • Sudip Bhattacharya on the Asian American population: its diversity, its unity, its politics
April 21, 2022 Donna Murch, author of Assata Taught Me, on black radical politics from the Panthers to the Movement for Black Lives • Kyle Shybunko, author of this piece, on Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a hero to many on the American right
April 14, 2022 Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative on the demographics of the million people in state prisons (with a coda on the fight around cash bail in New York) • historian James Chappel, author of this article, on postliberalism, notably the reactionary Catholic law prof Adrian Vermeule (a contributing editor of the would-be left–right hybrid magazine, Compact)
April 7, 2022 Vijay Prashad on the reconfigurations of global power prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine • Charles Komanoff, author of this Nation article, on why it’s a bad idea to shut nuclear power plants
March 31, 2022 Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute, author of this policy brief on the Yemen war, on the reasons behind Saudi Arabia's brutal war on that country • Natalia Petrzela, author of this column, on how we went from Muscle Beach to gender neutral cosmetics products
March 24, 2022 Richard Seymour, author of this article, on the cultural politics of the war in Ukraine • Emily Drabinski on the war against libraries [she won!] • Annie Levin on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Cold War fiction [info on Current Affairs]
March 17, 2022 Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind, on the market-friendly New Democrats, from the 1970s into the 1990s and beyond • Barry Eichengreen on the role of the dollar and threats to its pre-eminence.
March 10, 2022 Alexander Zaitchik, author of Owning the Sun, on how the pharmaceutical industry became such a high-priced racket • Zongyuan Zoe Liu, co-author of this article, on sanctions and the global pre-eminence of the US dollar
March 3, 2022 Anatol Lieven on Russia's invasion of Ukraine [transcript here] • Alyssa Giachino and Derek Seidman, among the authors of this report, on private equity and fossil fuels
>February 24, 2022 Christopher Leonard, author of The Lords of Easy Money, on the damage done by over a decade of hyper-easy monetary policy from the Fed • Lea Ypi, a political philsopher and author of Free, on growing up in the last days of Communist Albania and the early days of its neoliberal successor
February 17, 2022 Toronto-based activist and organizer John Clarke on the politics and personnel behind the Ottawa convoy • Dave Zirin on racism in the NFL (and Brian Flores’s lawsuit over it) • Justine Medina on working at Amazon and trying to unionize it
February 10, 2022 Thomas Sugrue and Caitlin Zaloom, authors of The Long Year: A 2020 Reader, on the common and varied impacts of the pandemic around the world • Laura Kipnis, author of Love in the Time of Contagion, on the challenges of living together, a steep climb even in the best of times
February 3, 2022 Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative on how prison sickens and kills people • Terry Kupers, from a 2013 interview, on the effects of solitary confinement on mental health • refinery worker and union VP BK White talks about worker safety and health at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California
January 27, 2022 Peter Goodman, author of Davos Man, on plutocrats and their pretensions • Vijay Prashad, director of The Tricontinental, outlines a plan to save the world, essentially from Davos Man
January 20, 2022 Erin Thompson, author of Smashing Statues, on the politics of public art • John Huntington, author of Far-Right Vanguard, on the history of the far right and its often close relations with the “respectable” right
January 13, 2022 The new Cold Wars: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Russia • Tim Shorrock on China and North Korea
January 6, 2022 William “Sandy” Darity, co-author along with A. Kirsten Mullen, of From Here to Equality, on reparations for black Americans
December 30, 2021 Ben Burgis, author of Christopher Hitchens, on why he still matters • Patrick Blanchfield, author of this article, on the death drive
December 23, 2021 Two interviews on Chile: Antonia Mardones Marshall on the recent presidential election and its winner, Gabriel Boric • Antonia Atria, in an interview from October 2020, on that country's constitutional referendum
December 16, 2021 Sam Adler-Bell, author of this article, on the young counterrevolutionary new right • Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica on how the very rich can pay no taxes
December 2, 2021 Matt Kierkegard and David Adler of the Progressive International on the Honduran and Chilean elections • Sarah Lustbader, author of this article, on why trials are no substitute for politics
November 25, 2021 Alex Vitale, just out with an updated edition of The End of Policing, on what cops really do and how we can get rid of them • Barry Eichengreen, co-author of In Defense of Public Debt, on the very long history of public borrowing
November 18, 2021 Tina Gerhardt on the COP26 climate summit • Mike Lofgren on the dangers of Steve Bannon's war on the administrative state (article here)
November 11, 2021 Lisa Graves on the right-wing funding and strategy network around school protests • Natalia Mehlman Petrzela on the cultural politics around schools
November 4, 2021 Sheryll Cashin, author of White Space, Black Hood, on the origins, mechanisms, and effects of residential segregation, mostly by race but also by class • Peter Victor and Robert Pollin debate the virtues of “degrowth” in avoiding climate catastrophe
October 28, 2021 Samuel Moyn, co-author of this article, on the reactionary history of the Supreme Court and how to democratize it • Deepak Bhargava, one of the editors of Immigration Matters, on immigration policy, historical, current, and future
October 21, 2021 Mona Fawaz on the dire economic and political crises in Lebanon • Mark Dery, author of this article, on conspiracy theories, with special emphasis on Mark Crispin Miller
October 7, 2021 Nancy MacLean, author of this paper, on how Milton Friedman’s war on public education fit nicely with Southern massive resistance to desegregation • Klaus Jacob, a geophysicist, on how we can live with rising seas and heavier rains
September 30, 2021 Patrick Wyman, author of this article (and this earlier Substack version) on provincial elites • Duc Hien Nguyen on queerness, social reproduction, and capitalism
September 23, 2021 Algernon Austin on the plight of black men in the job market (with an excerpt from a 2005 BtN interview with Devah Pager on discrimination) • Susie Bright on pegging the patriarchy
September 16, 2021 Dave Zirin, author of The Kaepernick Effect, on how taking a knee spread across the country (and why leftists shouldn’t hate sports) • Dwayne Monroe, cloud data architect and author of this piece, disassembles the hype around artificial intelligence
September 9, 2021 Clyde Barrow on how Texas, a diverse, urbanized, sophisticated state, is run by a bunch of reactionary white would-be cowboys • Anatol Lieven, author of this article, on the US–China rivalry and the meaning of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan
September 2, 2021 Paul Passavant, author of Policing Protest, on the change in how cops treat protesters since the 1960s • Marisol Cantú and Shiva Mishek (co-author of this article) on how activists won a shift of public funding from cops to social services in Richmond, California
August 26, 2021 Helen Yaffe, author of We Are Cuba!, on the country's economic history since the 1959 revolution generally, and on the recent “pro-democracy” demonstrations specifically
August 12, 2021 Mia Jankowicz, author of this article, on anti-vaxxers, notably Sherri Tenpenny • Sanford Jacoby, author of Labor in the Age of Finance, on unions’ weird alliance with Wall Street during the shareholder revolution
August 5, 2021 Sean Jacobs and William Shoki of Africa Is a Country on riots in South Africa and the long trajectory of the ANC • Max Krahé, author of this report for the Belgian sovereign wealth fund, on the need for central planning to cope with the climate crisis (FT article here)
July 29, 2021 Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, authors of Inflamed, on the social and ecological causes of disease • Robert Pollin, co-author of this article, on the role of giant bailouts in neoliberalism and the greatness of Hyman Minsky
July 22, 2021 Robert Fatton, author of The Guise of Exceptionalism, on the assassination of Haiti’s president and the long history that led to this sorry pass
July 15, 2021 Christian Parenti, author of a chapter in this book, on carbon dioxide removal • Kareem Rabie, author of Palestine Is Throwing a Party and the Whole World Is Invited, on real estate development and the Palestinian national project
July 8, 2021 Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy, on Chinese economic reform debates and how the country dodged post-Soviet-style collapse
July 1, 2021 Joseph Darda, author of How White Men Won the Culture Wars, on the role of the Vietnam vet in establishing white identity • Joshua Adams, author of this article, on the critical race theory controversy
June 24, 2021 Sam Gindin, author of this review, on competition, labor, and solidarity • Leslie London, director of the Observatory Civic Association, on the fight against Amazon in Cape Town, South Africa • Tana Ganeva, author of this article, on the prevalence and horrors of solitary confinement
June 10, 2021 Matt Kierkegaard, coordinator of the Progressive International’s delegation to observe the Peruvian election, on the apparent very narrow victory of the socialist, Pedro Castillo • Ross Barkan, author of The Prince, on the dark, evil Andrew Cuomo
June 3, 2021 Alex Hochuli, author of this article, on what “Brazilianization” means • Neda Bolourchi on the upcoming Iranian presidential election
May 27, 2021 Khaled Hroub on the history, structure, and politics of Hamas • Pablo Abufom, author of this article, on the Chilean elections, a victory for the left
May 20, 2021 Joel Schalit and Orly Noy (separately) on the politics of Israel: what are the internal dynamics that make it so bellicose and repressive?
May 13, 2021 Forrest Hylton on protest and crackdown in Colombia • Jules Gill-Peterson on the reactionary theocratic politics behind the anti-trans bills (Jewish Currents article here)
May 6, 2021 Adam Hilton, author of True Blues, on the history and structure (or rather lack of structure) of the Democratic party
April 29, 2021 Donna Murch on why this is a fruitful moment for labor organizing (Guardian article here) • Ben Burgis, author of Canceling Comedian While the World Burns, on why cancel culture is bad
April 22, 2021 Jasson Perez, anti-cop organizer in Chicago, defends the defund/abolish agenda • Bill Moyer of the Solutionary Rail project on upgrading the US railroad system
April 15, 2021 Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht, authors of Bigger than Bernie, just out in paperback, on the legacy of the Sanders campaigns • Jane McAlevey, author and organizer, on why the union lost to Amazon in Alabama (Nation article here)
April 8, 2021 Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, on teachers’ unions and school reopenings • Helen Yaffe on Cuba’s handling of COVID-19 and their impressive vaccine development (Counterpunch article here)
April 1, 2021 Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and Trade, on the murky side of the shipping business that got lost in the Ever Given coverage • LaDonna Pivetti on subsidizing employment
March 25, 2021 Güney Isikara on why Turkish president Recep Erdogan is getting even more authoritarian • Keenan Korth on how the left took over the Nevada Democratic party.
March 18, 2021 Sochie Nnaemeka, director of the New York Working Families Party, on the awfulness of Andrew Cuomo • Susie Bright, the original sexpert, on what the pandemic is doing to our libidos
March 11, 2021 Brianna Rennix on the condition of migrants at the US–Mexico border • Gianpaolo Biocchi on creating a social housing authority in the US (paper here, NYT article here)
March 4, 2021 Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains and of a chapter cut from that book now published here, on the right’s reaction to Obama and what it portends for Biden • Tom Athanasiou on what the US return to the Paris climate agreement means, and what Biden means for the climate (Nation article here)
February 25, 2021 Mike Lofgren on the cultural devolution of the right (article here) • Gustavo Gordillo and Brandon Tizol of DSA’s public power campaign on socializing electricity
February 18, 2021 Forrest Hylton on Bolsonaro's Brazil: disease, chaos, and creeping military dictatorship • Luis Feliz Leon on organizing Amazon workers in Alabama (Gainesville article here; Bessemer, here)
February 11, 2021 Noreena Hertz, author of The Lonely Century, on what loneliness is doing to our minds, bodies, and societies • Rossana Rodríguez, Chicago city council member, puts in a word in favor of mutual aid
February 4, 2021 Katya Kazbek looks behind all the shiny stories about Russian dissident Alexei Navalny • Marianela D'Aprile offers a socialist critique of mutual aid (older article here)
January 28, 2021 Sarah Beuhler, a British Columbia-based climate activist, on the Keystone Pipeline and Biden’s climate policy • Chris Maisano, author of this article, on the work of Leo Panitch
January 21, 2021 Réka Juhász, co-author of this paper, on the shift from home to factory as a precedent for the shift from office to home today • Vanessa Williamson, author of this article, on the roots of “taxpayer” discourse in Southern elites’ successful attempt to disenfranchise black citizens and reverse Reconstruction
January 14, 2021 Jodi Dean on Trump and American fascism • Quinn Slobodian, co-author of this article, on Querdenken, the eclectic German anti-mask movement that joins hippies and petty capitalists
January 7, 2021 Vijoo Krishnan on the Indian farmer strikes • Yannet Lathrop, author of this report, on state and local minimum wage increases • Alex Peterson on the Alphabet Workers Union [if you’re interested in organizing a union at your tech workplace, contact the CWA’s tech worker project]
December 31, 2020 Vijay Prashad on farmer and worker strikes in India • Sarah Leonard and Natalie Adler on Lux, a new feminist magazine they're editors at
December 24, 2020 a memorial to a great thinker, comrade, friend: Leo Panitch (1945–2020): two interviews, one with him and Sam Gindin from 2012, and on with him alone in 2018
December 17, 2020 Walter Olson on why Republican judges voted against Trump’s ridiculous election lawsuits • Lindsay Beyerstein, author of this article, on a brutal pre-release program for prisoners
December 10, 2020 Rodrigo Nunes, author of this article, on Bolsonaro, the appeal of pseudo-populism, and the lure of denialism • Frances Gill on progressive electoral victories in New Orleans
December 3, 2020 Thomas Sugrue, author of this essay, on COVID-19’s impact on cities • Kristin Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, on gender, especially the masculine kind, in evangelical Christianity
November 26, 2020 Jamie McCallum, author of Worked Over, on overwork • Jeff Stein, proprietor of SpyTalk, on Biden’s natsec team
November 19, 2020 Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, on ed reform, mostly from the right • Kate Sykes of People First Portland on some major left ballot victories in Maine’s largest city
November 12, 2020 Andrew Bacevich on Biden’s likely foreign policy • Alyson Spurgas, author of Diagnosing Desire, on female desire
November 5, 2020 Vijay Prashad and Jodi Dean (separately) on the election’s long-term meaning: where Trump(ism), came from and why it’s probably here to stay, especially if weaklings like Biden are the opposition
October 29, 2020 Kat Pecore, a public defender in NYC, on the injustice of sex offender registries • Antonia Atria, a student and socialist activist, on Chile's vote to rewrite its Pinochet-era constitution
October 22, 2020 Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel, editors of Voices from the Valley, on workers in the tech industry • Paul Street, author of Hollow Resistance, on the dismal post-presidency of Barack Obama
October 8, 2020 Kathleen Belew, author of Bring the War Home, on the history of the white power movement • Billy Fleming and AL McCullough on The 2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal
October 1, 2020 Max Sawicky, author of this report, on the postal service's problems and what could be done about them • Kelly Grotke on college endowments and selective austerity (janitors lose, portfolio managers win)
September 24, 2020 Frederik deBoer, author of The Cult of Smart, on dethroning academic “excellence” as the distributor of rewards in this society • Matthew Snyder on building a community land trust in the Inland Empire of California (that CLT, CLTs in general)
September 10, 2020 Samuel Moyn, author of this article, on why calling Trump a “fascist” is neither accurate nor helpful • Juliet Schor, author of After the Gig, on the sharing economy and how to get beyond it
September 3, 2020 Mike German on cops and white supremacists (Guardian article; Brennan paper) • Hadas Thier, author of A People's Guide to Capitalism, on Marx’s economics
August 27, 2020 Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and Trade, on the role of shipping in the development of capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula • Kayla Popuchet on what’s been going on in Belarus
August 20, 2020 Christian Parenti, author of Radical Hamilton, on appropriating the state-led developmentalism of the Founding Father for the left
August 13, 2020 Elizabeth Wrigley-Field on race and mortality: years lost to police violence and how many white people would have to die of COVID-19 to equal a “normal” year of black death? (paper here, NYT article here) • Tom Philpott, author of Perilous Bounty, on the ecological crises facing US agriculture
August 6, 2020 Edwin Ackerman on Mexican president AMLO • Marcia Chatelain, author of Franchise, on the impact and role of black McDonald’s franchisees
July 30, 2020 Tobita Chow on the roots and dangers of Sinophobia in the US • Donna Murch, author of Living for the City, on the emergence of the Black Panther Party out of early 1960s campus study groups
July 23, 2020 Jason Wilson on the protests and storm troopers in Portland • Forrest Hylton on COVID-19, repression, corruption, and drug gangs in Latin America
July 16, 2020 Claire Potter, author of Political Junkies, on how our politics got so divided • Sonia Shah, author of this article, thinks about the pandemic in more than biomedical terms
July 9, 2020 Erin Thompson on art crime and the history of toppling statues • Jennifer Cohen on gendering the health and economic crises [back after another brief vacation break]
June 25, 2020 Nikhil Pal Singh on race, class, policing, protest • Michael Kinnucan of Brooklyn DSA’s electoral committee on left victories in the NYC primary elections
June 18, 2020 Eric Reinhart on jails as COVID-19 spreaders (article here, AER article on pretrial detention here) • Erin Hatton on “coerced” workers, from prisoners to grad students [back after a brief vacation break]
June 4, 2020 Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, on why cops are being so brutal and what should be done with them • Ben Tarnoff, co-founder of Logic magazine, on tech worker organizing (essay here)
May 28, 2020 Excerpts from a virtual panel sponsored by Red May, Seattle: Jodi Dean, Leo Panitch, and Asad Haider on the current crisis, with lots about how socialists should engage with the state (full session, with video, here)
May 21, 2020 Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method, on the US-sponsored strategy of mass murder during the Cold War • Kyle Beckham, lecturer in education at the University of San Francisco, on schooling during the pandemic
May 14, 2020 Thea Riofrancos, co-author of this book, on why the Green New Deal is more urgent than ever • Alexander Zaitchik, author of this article, on how the profit-driven drug industry is an obstacle to developing a vaccine
May 7, 2020 Jodi Dean on The Crisis and its implications for the Communist horizon • James Pogue, author of this article (and this book), on guns, the left, and collective self-defense
April 30, 2020 Lauren Sandler, author of This Is All I Got, on homelessness in NYC • Cathy Cowan Becker, author of this review of the Jeff Gibbs–Michael Moore documentary Planet of the Humans, on why it’s so bad
April 23, 2020 Vijay Prashad on China (and Sinophobia), Kerala, and the crucial importance of social organization • Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht, authors of Bigger than Bernie, on Sanders, socialism, electoralism, and where it all goes from here.
April 16, 2020 Yanis Varoufakis talks about life under COVID-19, the economic crisis, vultures stripping Greece, and democratizing the EU (includes bonus audio clip of Jim Cramer recalling his Trotskyist past)
April 9, 2020 Jeb Sprague on CV19 in Haiti and the DR • Rossana Rodríguez- Sánchez on CV19 in Chicago and Puerto Rico • Josh White on the new leader of the UK Labour Party, Kier Starmer
April 2, 2020 Dania Rajenda of Athena on the walkouts at Amazon • Lauren Kaori Gurley on the walkouts at Whole Foods and Instacart • J.W. Mason on the World War II economic mobilization as a model for a Green New Deal
March 26, 2020 James Meadway on the economic dimensions of the coronacrisis (article here) • David Quammen on zoonotic diseases like covid-19, which leap from animal to human and wreak havoc
March 19, 2020 David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program and CUNY on how US health policy got us to this desperate pass • Helen Yaffe on Cuban interferon and COVID-19, and the country’s biotech industry and health system (YUP article here)
March 12, 2020 Kali Akuno on why black voters like Joe Biden • Dibyesh Anand on the belief system of India’s Hindu Fascists (book here)
March 5, 2020 Andrew Bacevich, historian and president of the Quincy Institute, on the history and structure of the US permanent war mobilization (Harper’s article, The Age of Illusions) • Chris Brooks on the UAW bribery/embezzlement scandal (articles: ITT, Intercept)
February 20, 2020 Colleen Eren, author of Bernie Madoff and the Crisis, on why the Ponzi schemer deserves release from prison (op-ed here) • Jamieson Webster psychoanalyzes money and left melancholy (interview with Fiona Alison Duncan here)
February 13, 2020 Yasha Levine on Chrystia Freeland, Ukrainian Nazis, and the proxy war against Russia • Lizzie O’Shea, author of Future Histories, on fake techno-utopianism and imagining a better future
February 6, 2020 Sofia Japaridze on Congressionally protected wage theft in the libertarian paradise of post-Soviet Georgia • Margaret Kimberley, author of Prejudential, on the long, oppressive relationship of presidents to black people
January 30, 2020 John Clegg, co-author of this article, on the economic roots of mass incarceration • Tobita Chow & Jake Werner, authors of this paper, on the US–China trade war
January 23, 2020 Jessica Whyte, author of The Morals of the Market, on the relations between neoliberalism and human rights politics • Michele Masucci and Joanna Warsza, editors of Red Love, on Alexandra Kollontai and her views on love, comradeship, and the family (open access copy here)
January 16, 2020 James Meadway, former economic advisor to the UK Labour Party, on the British election, how to fight political cynicism, and ideas for reindustrializing busted regions • Katherine Moos on the costs of social reproduction and who pays them (paper here)
January 9, 2020 Jeff Sparrow on the Australian fires • Stuart Schrader, author of Badges Without Borders, on counterinsurgency and policing (his music site with the FCC-unfriendly name is here)
December 26, 2019 Adam Kotsko, author of “The Evangelical Mind,” on the life and thought of that tendency • Shailja Sharma on India’s new citizenship law and protests against the country’s drift into fascism
December 19, 2019 Aditya Chakraborty on the British election, BoJo, Brexit, the state of the Labour Party • Nathan Robinson, author of Why You Should Be a Socialist, on that very topic [back after KPFA fundraising break]
December 5, 2019 Leslie Salzinger, a contributor to Mutant Neoliberalism, on gendering Homo economicus (article here) • Forrest Hylton on the coup in Bolivia and popular rebellions against neoliberalism in Chile and Colombia (Jacobin and LRB articles)
November 21, 2019 Ryan Grim, author of We've Got People, on the long fight between insurgents and establishment in the Democratic party • Jenny Brown, author of Without Apology, on the history and politics of abortion in the US (check out National Women’s Liberation and Redstockings)
November 14, 2019 Quinn Slobodian makes a return appearance to talk about neoliberals: their opposition to the EU (essay in Mutant Neoliberalism), their hatred of the 1960s, their embrace of racial and culturalist politics
November 7, 2019 Grace Blakeley, author of Stolen, on where financialized capitalism came from and how we could get out of it • Emmanuel Saez, co-author of The Triumph of Injustice, on how the rich got richer while paying less of their income in tax than the working class (Tax Justice website here)
October 31, 2019 René Rojas, author of this article, on the social explosion in Chile • Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, author of this article, on the little problems, little answers approach of this year's economics Nobelists
October 24, 2019 Gabriel Winant, author of this article, on the professional–managerial class and its decomposition (the 1977 Ehrenreich papers are here and here; their 2013 follow-up is here) • Alan Beattie, author of this paper, on the US-led global order and its decomposition
October 17, 2019 Jodi Dean, author of Comrade, on the sense of political belonging formed by and essential to common struggle
October 10, 2019 Corey Robin, author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, on the life and thought of a conservative black nationalist
October 3, 2019 Samuel Moyn (author of this article and this) on the political snares of impeachment • Tom Athanasiou on the Sanders climate plan and the need for a global Green New Deal (article here)
September 26, 2019 Joel Schalit, co-founder and editor of The Battleground, on the Israeli election • Martin Lukacs, author of The Trudeau Formula, on that slippery Canadian PM
September 19, 2019 Sam Gindin on the UAW’s strike against GM, and the possibilities for the green repurposing of a plant GM is abandoning • Robin Einhorn on the role of slavery in shaping tax politics in the early US (article here)
September 12, 2019 Margaret Corvid, city councilor in Plymouth, England, on BoJo and the Brexit madness • John Clegg, author of this article, on slavery’s profound effects on the US political structure
September 5, 2019 Meleiza Figueroa on the ecololgy and people of the Amazon (CNS article here) • Anton Jäger on populism and socialism (article here)
August 29, 2019 Yasha Levine on the “democracy” demos in Moscow: for a flossier neoliberalism • Maria Luisa Mendonça on the Amazon fires: who’s setting them, why, and what can be done
August 22, 2019 Brian Hioe updates us on the Hong Kong protests • Kavita Krishnan on India’s crackdown in Kashmir
August 15, 2019 Andrew Sernatinger on the recent DSA convention (see article here; mine is here) • Margaret Kimberley on Elijah Cummings, the black misleadership class, Trump, white supremacy, and gun violence [back after summer vacation and KPFA fundraising break]
August 1, 2019 Derek Seidman of Litlle Sis on the sleazy ties between Big Enviro and Big Carbon • Marshall Auerback on what happened with all those tax cuts for corporations that already have more money than they know what to do with
July 18, 2019 Bernat Tort on Puerto Rico’s economic and political crisis • Sahan Karatasli on Turkey’s economic and political crisis
July 11, 2019 [back after holiday break] David Adler, policy director at DiEM25, on Syriza’s loss in Greece (Guardian article here) • Joel Whitney, author of this article, on Pablo Neruda and his flight from the CIA
June 27, 2019 Natalie Shure, author of this article, on what the skyrocketing price of insulin is doing to diabetics • Aaron Medlin, co-author of this paper, on young adults in the job market • Ken Silverstein, proprietor of Washington Babylon, on the reeking worlds of DC journalism and think-tankery
June 20, 2019 Brian Hioe on the Hong Kong mass demonstrations • Ashley Sanders on climate grief
June 13, 2019 Rune Møller Stahl on the Danish elections, which the left won but partly by going anti-immigrant • Heidi Matthews, author of this article, on Canada’s genocidal treatment of its indigenous people
June 6, 2019 Neda Bolourchi on life and politics in Iran • Sean Guillory on Russophobia
May 30, 2019 Tim Shorrock (Nation page here) on the U.S. conflict with North Korea • Vijay Prashad, director of the Tricontinental Institute, on Modi’s victory in India
May 23, 2019 Jeff Sparrow on the right’s electoral victory in Australia (article here) • Andrew Cockburn, author of this article, on the spectacular waste in US military spending
May 16, 2019 [back after KPFA fundraising hiatus] Eric Blanc, author of Red State Revolt, on the teachers' strikes • Catherine Kaiman, environmental lawyer, on community-based reparations (paper here)
May 2, 2019 David Palumbo-Liu on the culture of Stanford University, and why it wants to shut its press • Natasha Lennard, author of Being Numerous, on protest, rights, the state, social media, privacy, individuality…
April 25, 2019 Yasha Levine on Ukrainian politics in light of its recent presidential election • Two views on Extinction Rebellion: Rupert Read in Britain and Ashley Sanders in New York
April 18, 2019 Rossana Rodriguez on her successful campaign as a socialist for the Chicago city council, joining five other socialists • Benjamin Fogel, author of this and this, on the lunacy of Bolsonaro's early months as president of Brazil
April 11, 2019 Raj Patel and Jim Goodman, authors of this article, talk about agriculture under a Green New Deal • Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, authors of The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism, revive the idea of socialist planning
April 4, 2019 Jason Wilson on how cops are more interested in surveilling the left than the right (article here; Will Parrish article here) • Todd Chretien reflects on the 42-year history of the International Socialist Organization, which dissolved itself at the end of March
March 28, 2019 Jessie Sage, writer, podcaster, and sex worker, on sex work and myths around “trafficking” • Jenny Brown, author of Birth Strike, on efforts to control women’s reproductive powers
March 21, 2019 Tony Wood, author of Russia Without Putin, on those topics
March 14, 2019 Cinzia Arruzza and Tithi Bhattacharya, authors (along with Nancy Fraser) of Feminism for the 99%, on a truly transformative feminism • Sam Stein, author of Capital City, on bourgeois urban planning, with an emphasis on NYC
March 7, 2019 Richard Walker, geographer and director of the Living New Deal project, on what the original can teach the Green one • Aziz Rana, author of this article, on the need for a left internationalism
February 28, 2019 Melinda Cooper, author of Family Values, on the relationship between “free” market neoliberalism and family values conservatism
February 21, 2019 Daniel Aldana Cohen, author of this article, on the role of housing in a Green New Deal • Joel Whitney, author of this article, on the CIA's history as a purveyor of fake news
February 14, 2019 Noah Kulwin, staff writer with Jewish Currents, on why Ilhan Omar’s AIPAC tweets aren't anti-Semitic • Thea Riofrancos, one of editors of Jacobin's Green New Deal series, on the agenda's scope and politics
January 31, 2019 Jamieson Webster, author of this article, on what we miss when we muffle our symptoms with psychiatric drugs • John Patrick Leary, author of Keywords, on the language of contemporary capitalism
January 24, 2019 Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the Los Angeles teachers’ union, and Jane McAlevey, author and organizer, on the union’s great victory in their LA strike, protecting public education against the plutocrats’ attacks
January 17, 2019 Andrew Bacevich tries to make sense of Trump’s foreign policy • Steven Maher (author of this article) on the rise and fall of GE
January 10, 2019 Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, on the history, theory, and practice of the doctrine
January 3, 2019 Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough, on the paradox of human rights discourse arising alongside great inequality, and on the difference between poverty reduction and income compression
December 27, 2018 Wilson Sherwin, a grad student at CUNY writing on the welfare rights movement, on that and its relation to anti-/post-work politics • Marta Silva Cabral and Forrest Hylton look at Brazil on the eve of Bolsonaro’s inauguration
December 13, 2018 Robert Pollin, lead author of this paper, on how to pay for Medicare for All—covering everyone and saving money • Anton Jäger, author of this article, on the problems with the anti-/post-work position
December 6, 2018 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, on the politics of guns
November 29, 2018 Adam Kotsko, author of Neoliberalism’s Demons, on the doctrine’s theology • Kristen Ghodsee, author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, on how socialist–feminism will make us better and happier
November 22, 2018 Kelly Happe, author of The Material Gene, on the uses and misuses of genetics • Mark Dery, author of Born To Be Posthumous, on the art and life of Edward Gorey
November 8, 2018 Natasha Lennard, author of this article, on cops & white supremacists • Forrest Hylton on Colombian university protests and a potential alliance with Brazil to topple Maduro
November 1, 2018 Amanda Armstrong on the importance of trans politics • Alfredo Saad-Filho on the prospects for Brazil under the fascist Bolsonaro
October 25, 2018 Kevin Skerrett, co-editor of The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism, on what they do with all that money and why we don’t need giant pension funds at all • Liza Featherstone and Jane McAlevey on #metoo, one year later, and why Hands Off Pants On would be a good model
October 18, 2018 Leandros Fischer on German politics, with an emphasis on refugees (Jacobin page here) • Samuel Moyn, author of this article, on why the Supreme Court sucks and what can be done about it
October 11, 2018 Julia Posca on the new right-wing CAQ government in Quebec • Alfredo Saad-Filho on the probable next president of Brazil, the frighteningly right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, and the global strong man phenomenon
October 4, 2018 Shamus Khan on the culture of entitlement at elite schools (op-ed here) • Thea Riofrancos on the fraying legitimacy of the ruling class and its possibilities for the left
September 27, 2018 Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, on the win–win business- and plutocrat-friendly philanthropy of today’s nouveau riche
September 20, 2018 Two socialist women run for office and win: Margaret Corvid, city council, Plymouth, England, and Julia Salazar, New York state senate, Brooklyn
September 13, 2018 George Joseph, a staff reporter with The Appeal, on how being a violent cop is the way to get promoted (article here) • Daraka Larimore-Hall on the rise of the right in Sweden
September 6, 2018 Joel Schalit on neofascism in Germany and Israel • Heidi Matthews on #metoo (Twitter here)
August 30, 2018 Raven Rakia, a journalist with The Appeal, on the nationwide prison strike (more here and here) • Asad Haider, author of Mistaken Identity, on race and class [the source of the info on the Shostakovich quartet is here]
August 23, 2018 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
August 16, 2018 Christina Gerhardt, author of Screening the Red Army Faction, on the RAF’s history and artistic reception in the context of the German 1960s and 1970s
August 2, 2018 Adam Tooze and Leo Panitch, separately, on globalization, Trump, the American empire, declinism, etc.
July 19, 2018 Rebecca Gordon explains why Nicaraguans are protesting the Ortega government (article here) • Alex Gourevitch on how the workplace is authoritarian, and why strikes are essential (article here)
July 12, 2018 Jason Wilson on the Hammond pardons and the right-wing riot in Portland • Christy Thornton analyzes AMLO’s victory in Mexico’s election
July 5, 2018 Chris Maisano, author of this article, on the effect of the Supreme Court’s Janus decision on public employee unions • Forrest Hylton, co-author of this article, on Colombian politics after the June presidential election
June 28, 2018 Leo Panitch on Doug Ford, Ontario’s Trump • Cordelia Fine, author of Testosterone Rex, dispenses with all the nonsense about biological differences between the sexes (back after two-week hiatus because of a major writing deadline)
June 7, 2018 Adam Gaffney (see link for articles) on how to get prescription drug prices down • Barry Eichengreen, author of The Populist Temptation, on the nationalist/xenophobic turn (Trump, Brexit, etc.), and on the future of the U.S. dollar
May 31, 2018 Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson on why black Americans should resist gun control • Sabri Oncu on Turkey—the currency panic, the political and economic troubles
May 24, 2018 Richard Walker, author of Pictures of a Gone City, on what the tech boom has done to the Bay Area
May 17, 2018 Carol Graham (papers here, here, and here) on failing health and declining prospects among poor white people • Kristen Ghodsee, co-author of this article, on the vile uses of anti-communism
May 10, 2018 Christy Thornton on AMLO and Mexico’s July elections • Richard Florida on the spatial dimensions of inequality
May 3, 2018 Alejandro Velasco on Venezuela • Jessica Blatt, author of Race and the Making of American Political Science, on the racist origins of the discipline
April 26, 2018 Corey Pein, author of Live Work Work Work Die, on the dark side of the Silicon Valley • an anonymous sex worker on the legal dangers of SESTA/FOSTA
April 19, 2018 Kate Doyle Griffiths on teachers’ strikes and the crisis in social reproduction • Thea Riofrancos and Daniel Denvir on Yascha Mounck and liberal derangement syndrome (their review is here)
April 5, 2018 Sean Jacobs, founder of Africa Is A Country, on Winnie Mandela’s legacy • Forrest Hylton on Colombian politics in the run-up to May’s presidential election
March 29, 2018 Sean Guillory, host of the Sean’s Russia Blog Podcast, on Putin and Russophobia • Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, on school shootings and what (not) to do about them (and why it’s bad to label school shooters as terrorists)
March 22, 2018 Jennifer Berkshire, host of Have You Heard?, on teachers’ strikes, WV and beyond • Stan Collender on fiscal follies in DC
March 15, 2018 John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty on what's wrong with a Universal Basic Income • Isabel Hilton on Xi Jinping becoming China’s president for life and all-around supremo
March 8, 2018 Jason Wilson on dwindling numbers on the far right • Tim Shorrock on the relations among the two Koreas and the U.S.
March 1, 2018 Liza Featherstone, author of Divining Desire, on the history and meaning of focus groups [disclosure alert: Featherstone is the host’s wife]
February 22, 2018 Marcie Smith, adjunct econ professor at John Jay College (CUNY), on the recently departed Gene Sharp, revered but problematic theorist of nonviolence and friend of the intelligence services
February 15, 2018 Max Sawicky on Trump’s budget • Edward Luce, Financial Times columnist and author of The Retreat of Western Liberalism, on the crisis of the American class system
February 8, 2018 DH on stock market madness (longer version is here) • Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley, on the military/intelligence roots of the internet, which live on today (hi NSA!)
February 1, 2018 David Palumbo-Liu on the right-wing attacks on him and on academic freedom (the Stanford Politics article on the Thiel network is here) • Jodi Dean on how to think about Trump
January 25, 2018 Vijay Prashad on Syria, Trump, and the state of the global left • Jennifer Cohen of Miami University on feminism and economics (the NYT article is here)
January 18, 2018 Sandra Cuffe on Honduras after a stolen election and waves of official violence • Alexander Main on U.S. policy towards Latin America under Trump • Janet Capron, author of Blue Money, on drugs and prostitution (without regret) in 1970s NYC
January 11, 2018 Kaveh Ehsani on the reasons behind the protests in Iran • Franklin Zimring, author of The City That Became Safe, on the reasons behind the record-breaking decline in crime in NYC
January 4, 2018 Tithi Bhattacharya, editor of Social Reproduction Theory, on capitalism, Marxism, feminism, and society
December 21, 2017 DH on bitcoin • Yanis Varoufakis ties up some loose ends on Adults in the Room, and then discusses the need for a progressive internationalism
December 7, 2017 Jane McAlevey on power, strange alliances, and serious threats to workers • Jane McAlevey and Liza Featherstone on sexual harassment, capitalism, and power
November 30 2017 Corey Robin, whose The Reactionary Mind has just been issued in an updated edition, on the right from Burke to Trump
November 23, 2017 Kristen Ghodsee, author of Red Hangover, on the traumas of post-Communist life in Eastern Europe
November 16, 2017 Brooke Harrington, author of Capital Without Borders, on the offshore wealth racket and the Paradise Papers • Kali Akuno, co-editor of Jackson Rising, on building a green municipal socialism in Jackson, Miss.
November 9, 2017 Ryan Grim on the GOP and its issues • Rachel Sherman, author of Uneasy Street, on the consciousness of the rich
November 2, 2017 Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell on those abominable things • Donna Minkowitz, author of this article, reports on her visit to the genteel white supremacists of AmRen
October 26, 2017 Benjamin Opratko on the rise of the far right in Austria (his Jacobin articles) • Steven Teles, author of The Captured Economy, launches a hybrid liberalitarian attack on rent-seeking
October 19, 2017 Isabel Hilton on the Chinese Communist Party Congress • Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, on how to cure ourselves of the cop sickness
October 12, 2017 Yanis Varoufakis on his new book, Adults in the Room, the story of his surreal negotiations with Greece’s creditors
October 5, 2017 Joel Schalit on the rise of the right in Germany • Marisol LeBrón on debt, austerity, and hurricane damage in Puerto Rico • Shawna Potter of War on Women on being a feminist punk rocker
September 28, 2017 Lukas Hermsmeier on German politics after the election (and AfD’s breakthrough) • Margaret Corvid on the UK Labour Party conference
September 21, 2017 Michael Lighty of CNA/NNU on Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, and on Sanders’ single-payer bill • Natasha Lennard, author of this article, on felony prosecution of Standing Rock protesters
September 14, 2017 Andrew Cockburn, author of this article, on the Saudi involvement in 9/11 • Asad Haider, author of this article, on identity, Mark Lilla, and Ta-Nehisi Coates
September 7, 2017 Christo Sims, author of Disruptive Fixation, on school reform and techno-fetishism • Christian Parenti, author of this article, on climate change and the threat to coastal cities
August 31, 2017 Stan Collender on the ludicrous politics of the federal budget • Tim Shorrock on what’s behind North Korea’s apparent “irrationality”
August 24, 2017 Jodi Dean on class vs. identity, and the online life vs. practice • Jason Wilson on Charlottesville and the far right
August 17, 2017 Kristen Ghodsee, author of this article, on sex and gender in the former socialist world (the documentary about East Germany is here, and the Dissent article, here) • Roger Lancaster on prison reform and the problems with the abolition movement
August 10, 2017 [return after KPFA fundraising break] Chris Brooks looks at the reasons for the UAW’s defeat in Mississippi • Cedric Johnson, author of this article, evaluates the lessons of the Black Panthers for politics today If you like Behind the News and want to keep it coming, please support KPFA, its home station. If you do, please mention BtN!
July 13, 2017 Alex Kotch (articles here and here) on the Koch campus network • Alfredo Saad Filho on the economic and political crisis in Brazil (Temer’s indictment, Lula’s sentencing)
July 6, 2017 James Forman, Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own, on race and mass incarceration • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, in a reprise of her June 2016 interview, on a political response to mass incarceration and racist cop violence
June 29, 2017 Robert Pollin works out the economics of single-payer in California (paper here) • Michael McCarthy, author of Dismantling Solidarity, on the history of pension funds in the U.S.
June 22, 2017 Kate Gordon of the Paulson Institute on climate, the Paris Accords, and China • Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, on right-wing scheming, particularly James Bucahan and Charles Koch
June 15, 2017 Tim Shorrock (his Nation articles are listed here) on the two Koreas, North and South • Margaret Corvid on the aftermath of the surprise British election results
June 8, 2017 Yasha Levine, author of the forthcoming Surveillance Valley, on Russia, the NSA, and the Intercept election hacking leak • Angela Nagle, author of Kill All Normies, on the alt-right
May 25, 2017 James Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model, on the U.S. origins of Nazi race law • Alex Gourevitch, contributor to this Boston Review roundtable, on strikes and their challenge to bourgeois law
May 18, 2017 Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of Body Horror, on homeownership, chronic illness, getting revenge on rapists, and the working conditions of models • Greg Kaplan, co-author of this paper, on the (stagnating) course of lifetime incomes
May 4, 2017 Margaret Corvid on the British election, the Labour Party—and sex work • Emre Öngün on Turkey’s deeper slide into authoritarianism
April 27, 2017 Sebastian Budgen on the French election: the neoliberal vs. the neofascist • Sofia Japaridze on how foreign NGOs turned Georgia (the country) into a broke libertarian paradise
April 20, 2017 Thea Riofrancos on Ecuador, where the pink tide has not gone out • Harrison Fluss and Landon Flim (authors of this and this) on the philosophy of the alt-right
April 13, 2017 Max Sawicky on Republican tax schemes • Vijay Prashad on Syria
April 6, 2017 Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of Inventing the Future, on getting beyond folk politics to a world where robots work more and people (supported by a basic income) work less Here’s an Indiegogo site to raise money for a documentary about the book.
March 30, 2017 Jodi Dean on why the temptations of populism should be resisted (article here) • Jane McAlevey, author of No Shortcuts, on real organizing, not fake organizing
March 23, 2017 Chris Arnade on his travels through the busted heartland of America (Guardian author page) • James Livingston, author of No More Work, on how jobs suck and we should all get free money
March 16, 2017 Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program on Ryancare, Obamacare, and the prospects for single-payer • Cinzia Arruzza on the women's strike
March 9, 2017 Yanis Varoufakis back on BtN for the first time in over two years! He discusses the interminable eurocrisis, austerity, Brexit, the nationalist international (Trump, Le Pen, etc.), and DiEM25, among other things. The full Varoufakis–Ali–et al. debate is here. The version of this show that ran on KPFA was truncated because the station is fundraising. Please donate and keep this worthy enterprise going. If you do, please mention Behind the News!
March 2, 2017 Mark Blyth on neoliberalism and global Trumpism (the Guardian/Observer article on Mercer and Cambridge Analytica he talks about is here) The version of this show that ran on KPFA was truncated because the station is fundraising. Please donate and keep this worthy enterprise going. If you do, please mention Behind the News!
February 23, 2017 Angela Nagle, author of this and the forthcoming Kill All Normies, on the alt-right • Laleh Khalili on Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s new national security advisor This show didn’t run on KPFA because the station is fundraising. Please donate and keep this worthy enterprise going. If you do, please mention Behind the News!
February 16, 2017 Sean Guillory (author of this) on the rich history of Western Russophobia • Larry Bartels, co-author of Democracy for Realists, on the prospects for democracy with a detached, ill-informed electorate
February 9, 2017 John Ackerman on Trump and Mexico • Art Goldhammer surveys the French political landscape as a presidential election approaches
February 2, 2017 Mae Ngai and Avi Chomsky (separately) on Trump’s immigration decree • Joel Whitney, author of Finks, on the CIA, the cultural Cold War, and particularly the Paris Review
January 26, 2017 Asad Haider, author of this, on the problems of “white privilege” discourse • Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of the new novel Class, on race and class in the world of Brooklyn public schools
January 19, 2017 Yasha Levine on the politics of encryption • Elayne Tobin on celebrity (bibliography here)
January 12, 2017 Nancy Fraser on “progressive neoliberalism,” feminism, Trump, and a way out of all this (see here, here, here, and here for more)

For shows earlier than January 2013, click here.