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Doug Henwood's radio archives
(since January 2006)

For fifteen years, LBO editor Doug Henwood did a radio show on WBAI, New York, covering economics and politics. When the interim program director, a mediocrity named Tony Bates, wanted to cut it back to every other week, he quit. For more on all this, see here and here. Fortunately, the show is still broadcast on KPFA, 94.1 FM Berkeley, Thursdays at noon. Here are the archived shows.

iPhone users: the links used to work—not sure why they don’t anymore. But you can get the five most recent shows by visiting the show’s iTunes page or by clicking on one of the old white iPods below (left for hi-fi, right for low-fi).

The show is also available via Stitcher (web, iPhone, and Android).

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.

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.) Shows are also available in two levels of fidelity - high (FM radio quality), at 128kbps (as of the December 20, 2012 show—before that they were 64kbps), and low (telephone quality), 16kbps. Streaming hi-fi requires a broadband connection; low-fi is within the capacity of a dialup. Shows are about 56 minutes long; the 64kbps versions are around 25 megabytes, and the 16kbps versions, around 6 mb.

Thanks to Jordan Hayes of Bitway for hosting the archives.

For shows earlier than January 2006, click here.

To subscribe to the podcast, copy the URL from the appropriate icon below and paste it into your podcasting software. Or click here to go to the show's iTunes page.

FULL SHOWS

June 13, 2013 Alan Finlayson on the ideology of Bonoism (which is the ideology of hip capitalists) • Betsy Hartmann on the durable toxic appeal of Thomas Malthus
June 6, 2013 Sungur Savran on the Turkish uprisings • Slavoj Zizek on the limits of spontaneity (excerpt from a conference talk—full video here) • Lee Badgett on LGB poverty (paper here)
May 30, 2013 Harry Browne, author of Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power), on the dreadfulness that is Paul Hewson • Eamonn Fingleton on how Japan isn’t as bad off as they’d like you to think
May 23, 2013 David Cay Johnston, columnist for Tax Analysts, on the IRS scandal • Richard Katz, editor of The Oriental Economist Report, on the long Japanese slump and the prospects for Abenomics
May 16, 2013 Barbara Garson, author of Down the Up Escalator, on how people are coping with the Great Recession, its aftermath, and 40 years of general decline (updates to the book here)
May 9, 2013 Corey Robin, political scientist at Brooklyn College and author of The Reactionary Mind, on how the right thinks (with additional discussion of this essay on Nietzsche, Hayek, etc.)
May 2, 2013 Mark Blyth, author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, on just that
April 25, 2013 Alex Vitale on the militarization of police forces • Josh Eidelson on spreading worker actions against Walmart and fast food
April 18, 2013 Minqi Li on the Chinese economy • George Ciccariello-Maher, author of We Created Chavez, on the social movements that allowed for Hugo Chavez’ emergence and he in turn stimulated
April 11, 2013 Tom Mills (author of this article) and Richard Seymour (author of this one) on the dreadful Margaret Thatcher
April 4, 2013 Kate Losse, who spent five years at Facebook and wrote about it in The Boy Kings, on Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean-in” corporate feminism (which she reviewed here) • Ahmad Shokr, historian and journalist, on Egypt’s economic troubles
March 28, 2013 Terry Kupers on the psychological effects of prison • Haley Sweetland Edwards, author of this article, how Wall Street took over Dodd-Frank
March 21, 2013 Yanis Varoufakis on the economies of Australia, Cyprus, and Greece • Jonathan Westin of Fast Food Forward on organizing fast food workers in NYC
March 14, 2013 Özgür Orhangazi, author of this paper, on the economics of Venezuela under Hugo Chávez • George Ciccariello-Maher, author of the imminently forthcoming We Created Chavez, on the politics of Venezuela under Hugo Chávez
March 7, 2013 Robert Gordon on the end of growth (paper here) • Adolph Reed, author this review essay, on some recent “race” movies (Django Unchained, etc.)
February 14, 2013 Barbara Fields, professor of history of Columbia and co-author (with her sister Karen Fields) of Racecraft, on the ideology of race in the U.S. and its relation to material practice The KPFA version of this show was a fundraiser for the station. If you like these podcasts, please contribute to KPFA. No KPFA, no “Behind the News.”
February 7, 2013 Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute makes the corporate libertarian case for immigration (paper here) • Joel Schalit on the complexities of a cultural boycott of Israel, and the rise of theo-fascism there
January 31, 2013 Helaine Olen, author of Pound Foolish, on the personal financial advice racket • Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, co-author of this paper, on what’s driving wage polarization
January 24, 2013 Natasha Lennard, author of this article, on the Aaron Swartz case and prosecutorial abuse of power • Nikihil Goyal, fresh out of high school, on the education “reform” agenda
January 17, 2013 Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, authors of The Making of Global Capitalism, on U.S. imperial power, etc. [rerun of September 27, 2012, show, with some music added]
January 10, 2013 Sarah Jaffe, author of this article, class angles feminism • Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at NYU, on Chavez, Venezuela, and social democracy in Latin America
January 3, 2013 Brad DeLong on fiscal follies (apologies for the wretched audio quality—damn cell phones) • Seth Ackerman, author of this article, on a possible socialism
December 27, 2012 Michael Dorsey on the Doha climate conference • Yanis Varoufakis on the perpetual Eurocrisis, with an emphasis on Greece
December 20, 2012 Sasha Lilley, editor of Catastrophism, on why basing politics on disaster scenarios isn’t such a good idea • Mark Ames, author of Going Postal and co-editor of NSFWCorp, on rampage shootings, the politics of gun control, and the reactionary worldview of the NRA
December 13, 2012 Jamie Webster of PFC Energy on the U.S. oil boom • Yasmin Nair of Against Equality on Gay Inc. and what’s wrong with same-sex marriage, DADT, and hate crimes legislation
December 6, 2012 Jane McAlevey, author of Raising Expectations (And Raising Hell), on how to revive the U.S. labor movement The KPFA version of this show was a fundraiser. If you like these shows and want to keep them coming, please consider contributing to KPFA. If you do, mention “Behind the News”!
November 29, 2012 Frank Bardacke, author of Trampling Out the Vintage, on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers
November 22, 2012 James Galbraith on the fiscal cliff • Walter Benn Michaels, author of this and this and this, on the election and the victory of left neoliberalism
November 8, 2012 [return after being blown off course by Hurricane Sandy] Sarah Jaffe on Occupy Sandy • Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of Hip Hop Apsara, on Cambodia
October 25, 2012 Jodi Dean, professor of political science at Hobart & William Smith and author of The Communist Horizon, on how we need to reclaim that cuss-word and stop fetishizing “democracy”
October 18, 2012 Josh Eidelson on the Walmart strikes (his Salon stories are here) • Ethan Pollack of the Economic Policy Institute on green jobs
October 11, 2012 David Cay Johnston, author of The Fine Print, on how Corporate America rips us off [This show was a fundraiser for KPFA; this is an edited version for the web, without the pitching. Please support KPFA if you want to keep these coming.]
October 4, 2012 Matt Kennard, author of Irregular Army, on the neo-Nazis, gangbangers, and sad/broken people who populate our military, and the damage they’ve done and will do. [This show was a fundraiser for KPFA; this is an edited version for the web, without the pitching. Please support KPFA if you want to keep these coming.]
September 27, 2012 Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, authors of The Making of Global Capitalism, on U.S. imperial power, etc. [This show was a fundraiser for KPFA; this is an edited version for the web, without the pitching. Please support KPFA if you want to keep these coming.]
September 20, 2012 Bruce Bartlett on his scary former GOP comrades • Jared Bernstein on income, poverty, and the 47%
September 13, 2012 Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute on the State of Working America • Melissa Gira Grant, author of this fine piece, on sex workers and their self-appointed saviors
September 6, 2012 Christian Parenti talks about the politics of climate change on the occasion of the publication of the paperback version of Tropic of Chaos
August 30, 2012 Joel Schalit on a militarized, post-democratic Israel • David Cay Johnston on Romney's taxes
August 23, 2012 Keith Hampton on Facebook etc. is not turning us into alienated oddballs • Hugo Bonin of CLASSE (the union of provincial student unions) on the Québec student strikes
August 16, 2012 Michelle Goldberg on Paul Ryan • Charles Juntikka, Manhattan’s leading personal insolvency attorney, on bankruptcy (and why it makes sense to file)
August 9, 2012 Partial conservative renegade and former Bush speechwriter David Frum on the right, and his roman à clef about Washington, Patriots. [The text of the intro, in which I recount my history on the right in condensed form, is here. The headnote includes links to longer versions of the story.]
July 19, 2012 Art Goldhammer of Harvard’s Center for European Studies on the political economy of Hollande’s France • Liza Featherstone, Report Card columnist for the Brooklyn Rail, on neoliberal school reform
July 12, 2012 Enrique Diaz-Alvarez of Ebury Partners on the Spanish crisis (and the German mind) • Michael Dorsey, professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth, on Rio+20
July 5, 2012 Adolph Reed, author of one of the pieces on this Nation thread, on the crisis in labor • Yanis Varoufakis, now economist in residence at Valve Software, talks about the economics of gaming, and the anarcho-syndicalist organization of the firm
June 21, 2012 Yanis Varoufakis, now economist in residence at Valve Software, on the Greek elections and the reasons for German Sturheit • Amber Hollibaugh, co-director of Queers for Economic Justice, and Kenyon Farrow, former director of QEJ, on the New Queer Agenda
June 14, 2012 Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report on the right-wing roots of Newark mayor Cory Booker • John Nichols of The Nation (and author of Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest) on how the Wisconsin uprising got turned into an electoral campaign • Sam Gindin, now of York U but once of the Canadian Auto Workers, on the crisis in labor (transcript here; another great interview with Sam here)
June 9, 2012 Adam Davidson, host of NPR’s Planet Money and columnist for the New York Times Magazine, on finance, innovation, bourgeois ideology, journalism, and being mean on the Internet (a conversation that was prompted by this piece of mine) [Davidson columns discussed include: Wall Street, Bain dude, Honduras] • full conversation (unedited, except to remove some patter at the beginning and to suppress several volume spikes) is here
June 2, 2012 DH on Bob Fitch (an abbreviated aural rendition of this) • Ben Jacobs on the Wisconsin recall • Stan Collender on the fiscal cliff
May 26, 2012 Vijay Prashad, author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, on the topics implied by the book title • Mark Dery, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, on pop culture, beheading, David Bowie
May 19, 2012 Chase Madar, author of The Passion of Bradley Manning, on Manning, WikiLeaks, secrecy, and mass solitary confinement (truncated fundraiser edition: please contribute to KPFA and keep these shows coming!)
May 5, 2012 James Galbraith, author of Inequality and Instability, talks about inequality and instability
April 28, 2012 James Livingston, author of Against Thrift, speaks up in favor of the consumer culture as a liberatory thing
April 21, 2012 Gar Lipow, author of Solving the Climate Crisis through Social Change, on the politics of averting climate change • Edward Luce, author of Time To Start Thinking, on American decline
April 7, 2012 Joel Schalit, co-editor of Souricant, on anti-minority violence in Europe 8 Saadia Toor, author of The State of Islam, on the history and politics of Pakistan
March 31, 2012 Dan Lazare on the awfulness of the Supreme Court (excerpt from a 2005 interview) • Jamie Webster of PFC Energy, on the state of the oil market • Peter Frase, author of this, on the problem with sex work: work
March 24, 2012 Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research on the Argentine model of default • Madhusree Mukerjee, author of Churchill’s Secret War, on Churchill, Britain, India, and famine during World War II
March 17, 2012 Alan Beattie, international economics editor of the Financial Times and author of the Kindle-only Who’s in Charge Here?, on botched policy responses to the crisis • Steingrímur Sigfússon, former finance minister and current Minister of Economic Affairs of Iceland, on that country’s unorthodox strategy towards the crisis
March 10, 2012 Vijay Prashad on Syria, Libya, and why not to give up hope on the Arab Spring • Sean Jacobs on that Kony nonsense, African reality, and imperial designs
March 3, 2012 Trudy Lieberman on health care reform so far • Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek debt deal and economic collapse
February 25, 2012 back after KPFA fundraising hiatus—if you like this show, please support the station now!and mention Behind the News if you do—there's a best of BtN premium, consisting of 26 of my best interviews of the last decade, available for a pledge of $75 Gary Weiss, author of Ayn Rand Nation, on her cult and influence • Adolph Reed on Black History Month, the return of the ghoulish Charles Murray, and politics in gloomy times
January 28, 2012 Kevin Gray on South Carolina • Catherine Liu, author of American Idyll, on education, testing, anti-intellectualism, and the bogus politics of “anti-elitism”
January 21, 2012 Erin Siegal, author of Finding Fernanda, on adoption tragedies • David Cay Johnston on why Mitt is lightly taxed
January 14, 2012 Lane Kenworthy, author of this paper (PDF), on just how much economic growth trickles down, and why (spoiler: U.S. does very badly) • Enrique Diaz-Alvarez, chief strategist for Ebury Partners, on the eurocrisis, with an emphasis on Spain
January 7, 2012 Michael Taft on the Irish depression • Jodi Dean, co-author of this, on the vexing question of OWS & “demands”
December 31, 2011 Christopher Jencks on inequality
December 24, 2011Christine Ahn & Tim Shorrock on North Korea • Aaron "Zunguzungu" Bady on Occupy Oakland
December 17, 2011 Christopher Hitchens (from 2002) on Orwell • Andrew Ross on student debt repudiation (sign up or endorse here!) • Phil Mattera on job subsidies
December 3, 2011 Michael Dorsey, professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth, on the Durban climate summit • Bélen Fernández, author of The Imperial Messenger, on that egregious blowhard Thomas Friedman
November 26, 2011 Greg Graffin, lead singer of Bad Religion and author of Anarchy Evolution, on evolution and punk rock • Jeffrey Sachs, the economist formerly known as Dr Shock, on the mess that is the USA, a topic he explores in The Price of Civilization (see my review of his last book here)
November 19, 2011 Frances Fox Piven of the CUNY grad center—whose greatest hits are collected in Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?—on the history of social movements and Occupy Wall Street
November 12, 2011 Yanis Varoufakis on the latest developments in the Eurocrisis • Ramsey Kanaan, co-founder of PM Press, on the theory and practice of anarchism
November 5, 2011 Erica Seifert of Greenberg Quinlan Rossner Research on the public mood: pissed off about Wall Street and inequality • Dorian Warren of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs on Occupy Wall Street as politics and social movement
October 28, 2011 back after three-week fundraising hiatus! sociologist Alex Vitale on cops and protest • journalist Sarah Jaffe on OWS, mostly
October 1, 2011 Corey Robin, political scientist at Brooklyn College and author of The Reactionary Mind, on how the right thinks
September 24, 2011 I visit the Occupy Wall Street demos (my report in words and pictures is here) • Rohit Malpani, Oxfam advisor, on land grabs (see here for report) • Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics, debunks economics
September 17, 2011 DH on the income, poverty, and health insurance numbers • Margaret Flowers of PNHP on the health insurance mess and the state of single-payer • Maria Armoudian, author of Kill the Messenger, on the media and its relation to armed chaos
September 10, 2011 Mike Lofgren, former Congressional staffer and author of this spirited farewell to his long-time party, describes the furious insanity of the GOP • Jonathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers, and Kathy Olmsted, UC–Davis prof and author of Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, on conspiriacism, esp the 9/11 kind
September 3, 2011 David Cay Johnston on how corps and the megarich get away with paying almost no taxes (his Reuters column on GE is here) • Adolph Reed on the Dems, the inflated threat of the Tea Party, and the diminishing usefulness of race as a political cateogry
August 27, 2011 Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes, reflects on the state of labor as Labor Day approaches • Alexander Cockburn, occasional Nation columnist and co-editor of Counterpunch, on the media and the media criticism racket
August 20, 2011 Max Ajl, the Jewbonics blogger, on why Israelis are in the streets and how talk of the Occupation is not welcome • Yanis Varoufakis updates the eurocrisis as it spreads westwards
August 13, 2011 Dacher Keltner of UC–Berkeley on the psychology of class and social interactions • David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, provides an anthropologist’s POV on money and debt
July 30, 2011 Joel Schalit on Brevik, the European right, its attitude towards Israel, and Israel’s own right • Brad DeLong on the political economy of austerity
July 23, 2011 James Galbraith on deficit hysteria and the single-volume collection of four books by his father, John Kenneth Galbraith, published by the Library of Amerca
July 16, 2011 Amber Hollibaugh, interim director of Queers for Economic Justice, on the limits of same-sex marriage (see here for more) • Jeff Madrick, author of The Age of Greed, on the emergence of today’s icky economic order
July 2, 2011 Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos, talks about the effects of climate change amidst state collapse, plentiful weaponry, and neoliberalism
June 25, 2011 Abe Sauer, writer for The Awl, on what’s been going on in Wisconsin since the great February upsurge • Abby Rapoport of The Texas Observer on Texas gov Rick Perry • Jon Bakija, co-author of this paper, on how and why the rich have gotten richer
June 18, 2011 Ken Morris, co-author of Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin, on that overexposed curiosity • Julia Ott, author of When Wall Street Met Main Street, on big finance’s attempts to appear democratic
June 11, 2011 Vincent Reinhart at the Council on Foreign Relations on Greece and the political trick of austerity (thanks to the CFR for allowing broadcast; full event here) • Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia, on all the great political developments in South America
June 4, 2011 Another Hoover interview: Morris Fiorina on American public opinion and the nonexistence of the “culture war” • And in non-Hoover content, Yanis Varoufakis updates the Greek and EU crises
May 28, 2011 Hoover Institution special. Two interviews from my week as a Hoover media fellow. Paul Gregory on Russian politics (Putin vs. Medvedev) • Terry Moe on school “reform” (i.e., charters, testing, unionbusting, etc.)
May 14, 2011 Deepa Kumar, author of this article, on political Islam [The last 20 minutes of the broadcast version of this show was devoted to fundraising for KPFA. This has been excised for the web version. But if you like what you hear, please donate.]
April 23, 2011 James Galbraith on deficit hysteria • Matt Taibbi, author of this article (and this one too), on where all that Fed bailout money went, and how no one went to jail for the financial meltdown
April 16, 2011 Joel Schalit, author of this piece, on Israeli identity and the problems with saying that the country may be turning “fascist” • Michael Heaney, co-author of this paper, on how Obama demobilized the antiwar movement • Roger Lowenstein, author of The End of Wall Street, on the financial crisis and its aftermath
April 9, 2011 Carrie Lane, author of A Company of One, on how unemployed tech workers see themselves (as heroic, self-reliant questers, mostly) • Adolph Reed on the uselessness of TV liberals, the limits of spontaneity in politics, and the sponginess of race as a politlcal and analytical category
March 26, 2011 Gilbert Achcar of SOAS (and author of this article, and this one too) on Libya • Joel Beinin on the labor roots of Egypt’s uprising, and the modern political economy of the country since Nasser (see his report on the subject here)
March 19, 2011 Abe Sauer, who’s been covering Wisconsin for The Awl, on Walker, the protests, privatization • Steve Early, author of The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor, on the fights in & around Andy Stern’s SEIU
March 12, 2011 Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus, on the spurious and destructive fantasy of a link between vaccines and autism • reprise of a 2006 interview with the splendid Robert Fitch, who died on March 4, about his book Solidarity for Sale and the role of corruption in the sad decline of American unions (and a brief memoir of his work)
March 5, 2011 Jodi Dean, keeper of the I Cite blog and author of Blog Theory, interviewed in December on what digital culture is doing to us, returns to tell us how events in Cairo and Madison may have changed her mind • Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin on that state and its labor uprising
February 5, 2011 Lance Lochner, author of this NBER paper, on the social returns to education (lower crime, better health) • Vijay Prashad of Trinity College on the Egyptian revolution
January 29, 2011 Mark LeVine of the University of California–Irvine (and author of Heavy Metal Islam) and Gilbert Achcar of SOAS (and author of The Arabs and the Holocaust) talk (separately) about the popular uprisings in the Middle East • Bhaskar Sunkara on the new magazine he edits, Jacobin
January 22, 2011 Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, on what the web is doing to our brains and minds • Robert Fatton, author of Haiti’s Predatory Republic, on Baby Doc’s return, the failure to recover from earthquake, the horrid class system
January 15, 2011 Mark Ames, author of Going Postal and editor of The Exiled, on Tucson and how the U.S. is like a decaying Russia • Jefferson Cowie, author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, on the politics of that unfairly maligned decade
January 8, 2011 (return after holiday reruns) Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen on the state of energy and climate politics in DC • Lucia Green-Weiskel, author of this Nation piece, on Cancún and Chinese energy and climate politics
December 18, 2010 Lucas Zeise, columnist with Financial Times Deutschland, on why Germany is taking such a hard line on the eurocrisis • Jodi Dean, keeper of the I Cite blog and author of Blog Theory, on what digital culture is doing to our minds, our politics, and our society
December 11, 2010 Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, author of Starstruck, on celebrity today • Joshua Holland, author of The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy, talks about several of those lies (for the rest, buy the book)
December 4, 2010 Rebecca Thiess of the Economic Policy Institute on “progressive” deficit reduction (see her issue brief here) • Kyle Ash of Greenpeace on the climate negotiations in Cancún
November 27, 2010 Paul Street on the Tea Party, the dismalness of the Dems, and Obama’s elegant personal fit with that dismalness • Cordelia Fine, author of Delusions of Gender, on how all those claims of biological roots to differences between men & women are nonsense
November 20, 2010 Monica Potts, author of this article, on (the lack of) green jobs • Yanis Varoufakis, author of this article, on a better way to do a eurozone bailout
November 13, 2010 Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters on the nomination of Cathie Black to run NYC’s public schools, and the whole education reform scam • Richard Walker on California’s crises
October 30, 2010 David Cay Johnston on the dismal state of incomes in the USA (see important update here) • Michael Hudson, author of The Monster, on the subprime beast
October 23, 2010 (KPFA only) Michael Taft on the Irish crisis • Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek and broader eurozone crises
September 30, 2010 Robert Paul Wolff on Harvard’s honoring of the odious Martin Peretz (and Harvard itself) • Antonia Juhasz, director of the energy program at Global Exchange, on the filth of oil, with an emphasis on Chevron
September 23, 2010 Eric Garris, founder of Antiwar.com, on the antiwar movement, the libertarian perspective on it, and the effort to unite opponents across the spectrum • Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story, on life amidst anxious imperial decline
September 16, 2010 Stephen Mihm, co-author of Crisis Economics, on The Crisis in historical perspective • Two segments on Cuba: Julia Sweig in an excerpt from a Council of Foreign Relations conference call (full audio here) about her conversation with Fidel, and consultant Kirby Jones on the Cuban economy and U.S. companies doing business there
September 9, 2010 Liz McNichol of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on the fiscal crisis of the states • Yanis Varoufakis of the University of Athens fact-checks Michael Lewis Vanity Fair article on Greece
September 4, 2010 (KPFA version) Jesse Eisinger talks about how banks flipped CDOs to each other, made billions, stuck us with the bill (article here) • Michael Yates talks about the miserable mood out there in the Real America
August 26, 2010 (back after long fundraising break) Paul Street, author of The Empire’s New Clothes, on the sorrows of Brand Obama • Christian Parenti, author of this article, on how the gov can kickstart the adoption of green technologies by the way it buys
July 29, 2010 Michael Lind on infrastructure, who’s behind the parties, and the USA’s evolution into an oligarchy • Astra Taylor on digital serfdom
July 22, 2010 Yves Smith, keeper of the Naked Capitalism blog and author of Econned, on the contribution of the dismal science to the financial crisis, and how Wall Street is worse than ever (rerun of March interview) • Rob Weissman, president of Public Citizen, on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill
July 15, 2010 Corey Robin on Ayn Rand (see his review here) • Alyssa Katz, author of Our Lot (just out in paperback!), on the state of the housing market
July 8, 2010 Sean Keenan, proprietor of the indie label Blanco Music and author of this great rant, on how music is faring in the Internet era • Ruy Teixeira, author of this paper, on how demographics favor the Dems (for what that’s worth) • Bill Hartung on military spending today
July 1, 2010 Cynthia Enloe, splendid analyst of gender and the militarization, on the McChyrstal affair • Richard Seymour, author of The Meaning of David Cameron, on the new British government
June 24, 2010 Matthew Lasar on Pacifica governance • Max Fraser, author of this Nation article, on Andy Stern & SEIU • Keith Gessen and Hedge Fund Man, collaborators on Diary of a Very Bad Year, talk about the wacky bubble days
June 17, 2010 Gary Rivlin, author of Broke USA, on how sleazy businesses make bundles by lending to the poor • Sarah Ellison, author of War At the Wall Street Journal, on Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of Dow Jones
May 29, 2010 (KPFA only) Norman Finkelstein, author of This Time We Went Too Far, talks about Israel’s invasion of Gaza in late 2009, and about changing U.S. public opinion towards that country
May 8, 2010 (KPFA version) DH on conspiracism (cont.) • Emily Gould, blogger and author of The Heart Says Whatever, on the new media world, kids today, etc. • Rob Weissman, president of Public Citizen, on how Wall Street gets its way in DC
April 29, 2010 DH on conspiracism • Enrique Diaz-Alvarez, hedge fund trader, on the Eurocrisis • Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace USA, on climate politics and the oil spill
April 22, 2010 Mark Weisbrot of CEPR on Latin America • Steve Early on the departure of Andy Stern from SEIU
April 15, 2010 Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute on how China’s currency manipulation kills American jobs (paper here) • Matt Taibbi on how Wall Street ripped off Jefferson County, Alabama, and the U.S. government
April 8, 2010 Diane Ravitch, former conservative educational reformer turned critic of the privatization agenda and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, on the awfulness of the now-bipartisan scheme of testing, charters, union-busting, etc.
April 3, 2010 (KPFA version) Ann Harrison, labor economist at Berkeley, on the effects of the anti-sweatshop campaign on Indonesian footwear workers (paper here) • Steven Hill, author of Europe’s Promise, on the Old World as an economic model for the U.S.
March 25, 2010 Tom Athanasiou of EcoEquity on the science and politics of climate change • Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program on the health care abomination
March 18, 2010 Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch of York University, authors of In and Out of Crisis, on the current economic mess: origins, consequences, possibilities
March 13, 2010 Yves Smith, keeper of the Naked Capitalism blog and author of Econned, on the contribution of the dismal science to the financial crisis, and how Wall Street is worse than ever • Robert Pollin of UMass on how to create 18 million new jobs (see article here)
March 4, 2010 David Cay Johnston on the Austin IRS suicide pilot and how the rich have largely given up on paying taxes • Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek economic crisis (and Germany’s designs)
February 6, 2010 (KPFA version) Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes, on the state of the working class today (not so great, actually) • Bill Fletcher, executive editor of The Black Commentator, on the need for the left to “get serious”
January 28, 2010 Dan La Botz on what happened to the working class • Stephanie Coontz, professor of history at Evergreen State and director of research and education for the Council on Contemporary Families, on the state of the family and gender relations today
January 21, 2010 Robert Fatton on the history and social structure of Haiti, and how it's compounded the misery of natural disaster
January 14, 2010 Robert Fatton on the history and social structure of Haiti (excerpts from 2004 interviews—originals here and here) • Tom Geoghegan on the evil thing known as the Senate filibuster • Alyssa Katz, author of this piece (and the excellent book of Our Lot) on the state of the housing market and what good things we can do with all the see-through condos left over from the bubble
January 9, 2010 (KPFA version) Michael Rose of the Bureau of National Affairs on the BNA’s survey of economists’ projections for 2010 • Cyrus Bina of the University of Minnesota–Morris on Iran
December 31, 2009 David Himmelstein on the emerging Democratic health reform schemes • Dennis Brutus on South Africa (repeat of July 2008 interview in memory of the great poet and activist who died on December 26)
December 24, 2009 Sam Gindin, former economic advisor to the Canadian Auto Workers union, on bringing the working class back into politics (see his article here) • Lucia Green-Weiskel of the Beijing-based NGO Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation on the Copenhagen climate conference and China’s role in climate politics
December 17, 2009 Gar Lipow on the Copenhagen climate conference and the technological path to a post-carbon future (download his book and other stuff here) • Kevin Alexander Gray on South Carolina, white supremacy, and Obama and black America
December 10, 2009 Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia, on Honduras and other Latin American hotspots • Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bright-Sided, on enforced good cheer in the USA
December 5, 2009 (KPFA version) Letitia James of the New York City Council and Dana Berliner of the Institute for Justice on the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn and the depredations of eminent domain across the U.S. • Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute on EPI's jobs program
November 28, 2009 (KPFA only) DH on financial regulation • Bob Meister, professor of political science at the UC–Santa Cruz, on the crisis in the University of California system (his articles on the topic are here and here)
November 19, 2009 Curt Ellis, co-producer of Big River (and King Corn), on the toxic evils of agribusiness • Joel Schalit, author of Israel vs. Utopia, on the Israeli politics and identity, and the country's relations with the U.S.
November 14, 2009 (KPFA version) David Arkush and Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen on what's going on with financial regulation (for LBO’s take, see here) • Monty Neill of FairTest on education policy, testing, charter schools, etc.
October 31, 2009 (KPFA only) Former Reagan advisor Bruce Bartlett, author of The New American Economy, pronounces supply-side economics dead and embraces a VAT • Lauren Weber, author of In Cheap We Trust, praises tightfistedness
October 8, 2009 Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek elections and the economy’s troubles • Greg Grandin on the coup in Honduras
October 3, 2009 (KPFA version) Susan Marks, author of Aqua Shock, on the water crises • Walter Benn Michaels, author of this and this and this, on neoliberalism’s use of “diversity”
September 17, 2009 Kari Lydersen, author of Revolt on Goose Island, on the Republic Doors and Windows worker takeover • Lee Badgett, author of When Gay People Get Married, on what happens to people and societies when same-sexers tie the knot
September 10, 2009 Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah, on the takeover of the GOP by the fundie nuts • Michael Yates, author of In and Out of the Working Class, on the working class, teaching economics, and the UFW (see his LBO piece on César Chávez here)
September 5, 2009 (KPFA version) Wallace Shawn, just out with this collection of Essays, on bourgeois guilt and the contradictions of privilege • Bruce Dixon, managing editor of the Black Agenda Report, on black and liberal confusion over that corporate shill Obama
August 27, 2009 Ned Sublette, author of The Year Before the Flood and The World That Made New Orleans, on that city, its culture and music, and the aftermath of Katrina (plus the radio premiere of his song, “Between Piety and Desire”) • Adolph Reed on the dismal state of the left and the waning usefulness of “race” as a category
August 20, 2009 Tariq Ali on Pakistan and the ridiculous election in Afghanistan • Astra Taylor, director of the documentary Examined Life (and editor of the book made from the interviews for the film) on talking with contemporary philosophers (with some sound from Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, and Sunny Taylor)
August 15, 2009 (KPFA version) Drawn from the original programming material in a WBAI fundraiser (please contribute if you like what you get here—don’t be a free-rider!): Sandy Cioffi, director of the documentary Sweet Crude, talks about oil and resistance in Nigeria • Christian Parenti, journalist, talks about Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, a film about his friend and colleague who was kidnapped and killed by the Taliban
August 1, 2009 (KPFA version) Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Instute on the weak expansion and killer recession • labor journalist Steve Early, author of Embedded With Organized Labor, on covering the union movement (program contains ten minutes of musical and other filler because Bivens didn’t answer his phone at the appointed time)
July 23, 2009 Ervand Abrahamian on the Iranian elections and their aftermath • Michael Thomas, author of Love and Money, on money and love (and Goldman Sachs)
July 16, 2009 Katha Pollitt on her new book of poetry, The Mind–Body Problem • Len Rodberg of PNHP and Queens College on the awfulness of health care reform, DC-style
July 9, 2009 Matthew Lasar, author of Uneasy Listening, on Pacifica governance (all Pacifica producers were required to do a 15-minute segment on the network elections) • Sam Gindin, now of York University and formerly of the Canadian Auto Workers, on the crisis in auto (more in this piece) • Matt Taibbi, author of this hit piece, on the crafty bloodsuckers at Goldman Sachs
July 2, 2009 Leo Panitch, author of this cover story in Foreign Policy, on why the bourgeoisie is interested in Marx (and, of course, why they should be) • Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920, on American regeneration (mainly through violence) after the Civil War
June 25, 2009 Alyssa Katz, author of Our Lot, on the homeownership fetish and the housing bubble/bust • Liza Featherstone (author of this article, and, it should be disclosed, wife/beloved of the host) and Adolph Reed on the burdens of college tuition and how the problem can be solved by making it free
June 18, 2009 Dan Fleshler, author of Transforming America's Israel Lobby, on the exaggerated power of the lobby and what can be done about it • Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University on the Iranian election and its aftermath
June 11, 2009 Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, on Mexican drug gangs on both sides of the border • Justin Fox, author of The Myth of the Rational Market, on the loopy notion of market efficiency and its toxic political effects
June 6, 2009 (KPFA version) Steffie Woolhandler on the (very high) contribution of medical costs to personal bankruptcy (article here) • Bethany Moreton, author of To Serve God and Wal-Mart, on Christian free enterprise and the Behemoth of Bentonville
May 30, 2009 (KPFA only) Daniel Geary, author Radical Ambition, on the life and thought of C. Wright Mills • Claudia Goldin on the labor market penalty suffered by women who have a kid
May 23, 2009 (KPFA only) Vijay Prashad of Trinity College on the Indian elections (see his Counterpunch article here) • David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania Law School on how bankruptcy (rather than trillion dollar checks) could be used to deal with the financial crisis
April 30, 2009 Andrew Ross, author of Nice Work If You Can Get It, on life and labor in precarious times • Michael Yates, author of Why Unions Matter, just out in a second edition, on just that topic
April 23, 2009 William Robinson, UCSB sociology prof under attack by the Zionist lobby, on his case (more, with links, here and here) • Richard Seymour, keeper of the Lenin's Tomb blog and author of The Liberal Defense of Murder, on the U.S. left, and imperialism under Obama • Paul Mason, author of Meltdown, on The Crisis
April 16, 2009 Deborah Meier, progressive educator, on the awfulness of Bush's No Child Left Behind, which Obama is likely to retain • Adolph Reed on genes and politics, and politics without politics
April 9, 2009 Kat Long, author of The Forbidden Apple, on the history of sex in NYC • Misha Glenny, author of McMafia, on the global criminal underground
April 4, 2009 (KPFA version) David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania Law School on a possible GM bankruptcy • Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Invisible Hands, on business opposition to the New Deal and the long recovery of the right
March 26, 2009 Max Fraad Woolf and Nomi Prins on The Crisis, The Bailout, etc. • Steve Early on the weird SEIU–CNA reconciliation
March 19, 2009 Caitlin Macy, author of Spoiled, on life in & around the American upper class • Teresa Ghilarducci, author of When I'm Sixty-Four (as well as this paper) on pensions
March 12, 2009 Joel Magnuson, author of Mindful Economics, on the economics of capitalism and beyond • Aurora Meneghello and Serge Bakalian, who are making Default, a doc about student debt
March 7, 2009 (KPFA version) Rob Weissman (author of this report) on Wall Street's political contributions & the disastrous dereg agenda they bought • James Horney of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on Obama's budget
February 28, 2009 (KPFA only) Jeff Madrick on The Crisis • David Himmelstein on Obama's health plans and the awfulness of the Massachusetts model
February 21, 2009 (KPFA only) Pratap Chatterjee, author of Halliburton's Army, on how Pentagon contracting makes it easier to go to war • Susie Bright, editor of X: The Erotic Treasury, on sex and politics
January 29, 2009 James Howard Kunstler, author most recently of World Made By Hand, on the decline of oil-based civilization, the horrors of suburbia, and the sickness of tattooing • Jeffrey Perry, biographer of Hubert Harrison, on the forgotten black radical who should be remembered
January 22, 2009 Stephen Mihm, author of A Nation of Counterfeiters, on the giant role of fakery and fraud in American financial history • Sean Jacobs (his blog is here) on South Africa and the ANC's fall from grace
January 15, 2009 Michael Lighty of the California Nurses Association on the economic impact of health care and a wished-for transition to single-payer (report here) • Nomi Prins and Max Fraad Wolff on the economic crisis
January 10, 2009 David Bacon, author of Illegal People, and Michelle Wucker, author of Lockout (and director of WPI) on immigration • Sara Roy on the horrors of Gaza (KPFA version, includes commentary on December employment)
2008
December 11, 2008 Charlie Komanoff on a plan to make NYC transit nearly free (by soaking cars) • Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek riots and Greek neoliberalism (This show was patched together from a two-hour WBAI fundraiser. Please contribute.)
December 4, 2008 Preston Smith on "racial democracy" vs. social democracy, in 1940s Chicago and Obama's America • Anthony D'Costa on the Mumbai bombings and Indian neoliberalism
November 27, 2008 Richard Seymour, keeper of the Lenin's Tomb blog and author of The Liberal Defense of Murder, on liberal imperialism • Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days and Barack Obama's old pal, on revolution, education, and social change
November 20, 2008 Dan La Botz (author of this article) on the crisis in the auto industry - and the UAW • Reihan Salam, co-author of Grand New Party, great hope of the right, on the conservative movement's future
November 13, 2008 Forrest Hylton on Obama's likely Latin American policy (and his top advisor on the area, Dan Restrepo) • Kate Gordon, co-director of the Apollo Alliance, on green jobs
November 6, 2008 Adolph Reed on Obama's election • Maliha Safri on immigrants in the U.S. labor market - especially one that's shrinking
October 30, 2008 Bryant Welch, author of State of Confusion, puts American politics on the couch • Glenn Hurowitz of Greenpeace USA on financial crisis and climate change
October 23, 2008 Richard Portes of the London Business School on the Icelandic crisis • Patrick Cockburn, Iraq correspondent for The Independent and author of Muqtada (just out in an expanded paperback edition), on the Muqtada al-Sadr, the surge, and the future of the U.S. in Iraq
October 16, 2008 Ögmundur Jónasson, head of the Left Green delegation in the Icelandic parliament, on that country's financial crisis • Martin Wolf, Financial Times columnist and author of Fixing Global Finance, on The Crisis
October 9, 2008 David Smick, economic consultant and author of The World Is Curved, on The Crisis • Sarah Ludwig of NEDAP on foreclosures
October 4, 2008 (KPFA only) Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin on the financial crisis, neoliberalism, and the American empire - the end of what, if anything, exactly? (Their paper on the topic is here.)
September 18, 2008 This program was devoted to fundraising for WBAI and KPFA. The content was this interview with Tariq Ali. If you like Behind the News, please consider a contribution to WBAI and/or KPFA.
September 13, 2008 (KPFA only) Robin Mills, author of The Myth of the Oil Crisis, on why peak oil is a crock • Bracken Hendricks of the Center for American Progress (and co-author of Apollo's Fire), on a green jobs program
August 28, 2008 Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute on The State of Working America • Mark Ames on Russia, the closure of The eXile, and his depressing return to the USA
August 21, 2008 Dennis Perrin, author of Savage Mules, on the Dems as bloodthirsty imperialists • John Gulick on Russia, China, and the new configuration of imperial power
August 14, 2008 Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?, on being young and Arab in paranoid America • Christian Parenti, author of this Nation piece, on capitalism and class struggle in China
August 7, 2008 John Talbott, author of The Coming Crash in the Housing Market and Obamanomics, on the housing bust and Obamanomics • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, contributor to Red State Rebels, on radicals in the heartland and the snobbery of the coastal left
July 17, 2008 Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies on the myth of clean coal • Adolph Reed (author of this from the BAR) on Obama, etc.
July 10, 2008 The outrageous case of Fahad Hashmi: in deep confinement for having allegedly transferred rainwear to somone who passed it on to al Qaeda: Sean Maher (his laywer), Faisal Hashmi (his brother), and Jeanne Theoharis (former professor of his, and activist on his behalf) • Dennis Brutus, South African activist and poet, on the suit for apartheid reparations, the state of SA, and the bizarre joining of Nelson Mandela and Cecil Rhodes (interview includes two poems)
July 3, 2008 Danielle Allen on those "Obama is a Muslim" emails, and the effects of the Internet on political discourse • Patrick McCully of International Rivers on carbon offsets and other climate issues (his evisceration of Sebastian Mallaby is here) • Vicki Smith, co-author of The Good Temp, on contingency today
June 26, 2008 Greg Smith of the Pew Forum on religious fluidity in the USA • Gary Gates of the Williams Institute on same-sex coupling, some of it married • David Kirsch of PFC Energy on the oil market
June 19, 2008 Corey Robin (of Brooklyn College) and Reihan Salam (of The American Scene and The New American Foundation) on the state of the right: power-napping or on the ropes? • Thomas Mackell, chair of the Richmond Fed and author of When Good Pensions Go Away, on how most of us aren't ready for retirement
June 12, 2008 Yuval Elmelech, author of Transmitting Inequality, on the transmission of inequality across generations • Larry Bartels, author of Unequal Democracy, on inequality and politics (mainly of the partisan kind)
June 7, 2008 David Holben on food security and hunger in the USA • Adolph Reed on the creation of a homeowners' republic in New Orleans (KPFA version; includes DH analysis of May U.S. employment report, released on June 6)
May 24, 2008 Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland, on the life and times of Tricky Dick, and how he's still with us (originally broadcast on KPFA only)
May 3, 2008 Joel Kovel, editor of Capitalism Nature Socialism and author of The Enemy of Nature, talks about why capitalism will destroy the earth unless we destroy capitalism. (This show was broadcast on KPFA only. Though the show usually originates on WBAI on Thursday evenings and is re-broadcast on KPFA the following Saturday, the May 1 edition was pre-empted because station management thought that only Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg could handle the complex issue of Mayday. Here's what they did with the hour.)
April 24, 2008 Tony Hendra, editor in chief of My Wall Street Journal, on the parody of the Murdochized daily • Kevin Phillips, author of Bad Money, on the gloomy future of the USA
April 10, 2008 Aaron Woolf, director, and Ian Cheney, born-again farmer, on their movie King Corn, and the grotesqueries of big agribiz • Anatol Lieven on NATO expansion, Russia, McCain, etc.
April 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn, author of Muqtada, on the Mahdi Army, its leader, and Iraqi politics (apologies for the poor audio quality) • Miriam Greenberg, author of Branding New York, on the reinvention of NYC as the neoliberal city
March 27, 2008 Jerry Lembcke on conspiracism • John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group of mutual funds, on the credit crisis and the money management business as a "giant scam" • Dean Baker on the housing bust, and an exchange with DH on whether Northern Rock is a model of anything but disaster
March 20, 2008 Jim Ledbetter on the collection of Marx's journalism that he edited • Nomi Prins on Bear Stearns
March 13, 2008 Adolfo Gilly on Latin America and his revolutionary pessimism • NYU's Elayne Tobin on the political economy of celebrity (like, who's making money off Britney?)
March 6, 2008 Joseph Stiglitz, co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War, on the costs of the invasion of Iraq - and the gloomy prospects for the U.S. economy
February 7, 2008 The bulk of this show was devoted to fundraising for WBAI (and if you can, please drop some cash in their jar). The substantive content was an interview with Noam Chomsky, which is what the files to the right are. Chomsky talks about how Bush is alike and different from his predecessors, and the general state of the empire.
January 31, 2008 Martin Wolf of the Financial Times on the credit crisis, and the financial system's propensity for disaster • Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto, recaptures the radicalism of that venerable document
January 24, 2008 A broad and splendid discussion of the current financial and housing crisis with economist/writer Max Fraad Wolff; former investment banker/journalist Nomi Prins, and mortgage analyst/activist Josh Zinner
January 17, 2008 Thomas Schaller, author of Whistling Past Dixie, on winning the presidency without the South • Phoebe Damrosch, author of Service Included, on luxury cuisine at Per Se
January 10, 2008 Tariq Ali on Pakistan • Lize Mogel and Trevor Paglen on their atlas and radical cartography
January 3, 2008 Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report on the particular awfulness of Barack Obama • Max Fraad Wolff on wreckage in the housing market and its broader meaning
December 27, 2007 David Graeber, author of Lost People and Possibilities, on Yale, imperialism, and anthropology • Forrest Hylton, co-author of Revolutionary Horizons, on Bolivia and the roots of the Evo Morales revolution
December 20, 2007 Charlie Komanoff on a radical reworking of Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan: soak cars for free transit • Adolph Reed, author of this article, on why he's sitting out this election
December 13, 2007 Tom Geoghegan, author of See You In Court, on how the right is responsible for litigiousness • Greg Grandin on the constitutional referendum in Venezuela and the state of Hugo Chavez
December 6, 2007 Peter Lavelle on Putin and the state of political play in Russia • Patrick Cockburn, correspondent for The Independent and author of The Occupation, on whether The Surge is really working
November 15, 2007 Julia Isaacs on inequality (big) and economic mobility (not so big) in the U.S. • Kevin Gallagher, author of The Enclave Economy, on Mexico's crummy experience with foreign investment • Laura Agustín, author of Sex at the Margins, on migration, trafficking, desire, and fundamentalism
November 8, 2007 Devah Pager, author of Marked, talks about race and the stigma of a criminal record when applying for a job • Tariq Ali on Pakistan, Iraq, and Latin America
October 4, 2007 Katha Pollitt, author of Learning to Drive, deftly mixes the personal & the political • Greg Grandin, NYU prof and author of Empire's Workshop, talks about the spreading neoliberal rebellion in Latin America
September 27, 2007 Elizabeth Currid, author of The Warhol Economy, on the urban economics of art, fashion, and nightlife • John Bowe, author of Nobodies, a good book about slave labor today, was supposed to be on but didn't show up, so I took listener calls instead
September 20, 2007 David Himmelstein, co-founder of PNHP, on Hillary Clinton's health care scheme (and what she told him almost 15 years ago) • Bret Benjamin, author of Invested Interests, does a cultural angle on the World Bank
September 13, 2007 Bart Jones, author of Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution, on Chavez and his 21st century socialism • Ervand Abrahamian on Iranian politics
September 6, 2007 James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute on The State of Working New York • Desmond Lachman of AEI on why Wall Street needs a bailout
August 30, 2007 Arloc Sherman & Leighton Ku of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on the Census income, poverty, and health insurance figures for 2006 • Nikitra Bailey and Sarah Ludwig on how subprime scamsters have been conning people out of their houses
August 23, 2007 DH on the financial crisis (an audio version of this article) • Eleanor Huffines, Alaska director for the Wilderness Society, on the Arctic oil rush • Clive Thompson (author of this article) on why New Yorkers are living longer than other Americans
August 16, 2007 Sungur Savran on Turkey (read a good piece of his here) • Dean Baker on the housing bust (latest take here)
August 9, 2007 Peter Spiegelman, editor of Wall Street Noir, and Lawrence Light, one of the contributors, on finance & crime fiction • Andrew Beveridge on women earning more than men in NYC, and other demographic curiosities (like who can afford all that luxury housing?)
July 5, 2007 Audacia Ray, author of Naked on the Internet, on women, the net, and sex • Len Rodberg rebuts the attacks on Michael Moore's tremendous movie, SiCKO
June 28, 2007 Robert Frank, author of Richistan, on today's neo-Gilded Age rich • Camilo Mejia, author of Road from ar Ramadi, on the army, Iraq, and deserting from the army in Iraq
June 21, 2007 Tara McKelvey, author of Monstering, on the stories behind the infamous Abu Ghraib photos • Lee Badgett on the economics of same-sex marriage and adoption, and on workplace discrimination against LGBTs
June 14, 2007 Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, on the psychopolitics of Zionism and the possibilites of a single-state solution in Israel/Palestine • Christian Parenti on Afghanistan
June 7, 2007 Adolph Reed on Obama, the toxic grip of foundations, and how presidential campaigns are like running for Prince of the Fourth Grade • Anatol Lieven on Putin's Russia and U.S.-Russian relations
May 31, 2007 Raj Nayak of the Brennan Center and Rajani Adhikary of the Restaurant Opportunities Center on restaurant work in NYC • Saadia Toor and Kourosh Shemirani on how Western leftists should think about the abuse of women and same-sexers in Iran and other Muslim countries (and for Toor's critique of Arundhati Roy et al, see here)
May 3, 2007 Joel Schalit on Israeli politics and the (weakening?) hold of the Zionists in the U.S. • Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent of the Financial Times, and Kevin Smith, author of The Carbon Neutral Myth, on carbon offsets: something promising, or a dangerous racket?
April 26, 2007 Rachel Sherman, author of Class Acts, on the production of class and consciousness in luxury hotels • Elizabeth Economy on China's contribution to climate change • Christian Parenti, guest editor of The Nation's special issue on climate change, on green power • Doug Henwood, contributor to that issue, on elite attitudes
April 19, 2007 Nicholas Stern, lead author of the 700-page Stern Review, talks more concisely about the economics of climate change (highlights from a panel held at Columbia University, April 11, 2007, organized by the Committee on Global Thought)
April 12, 2007 Hamid Dabashi, professor in the Middle Eastern studies department at Columbia and author of Iran: A People Interrupted, on the history of that complex, consequential country
April 5, 2007 Peter Eisner, co-author of The Italian Letter, on how the Bush administration used a forged letter to push the war in Iraq • Julia Vitullo-Martin on eminent domain and Columbia University's push into Harlem
March 29, 2007 Mark Levitan on work and poverty in New York (report here) • Dean Baker on the housing bust
March 22, 2007 Michael Yates, author of Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate, on his travels across the U.S., and their daily evidence of polarization and environmental ruin • Chris Fox of Ceres, on Investors and Business for US Climate Action, a $4 trillion consortium
March 15, 2007 Doug Henwood on the American ruling class today, whoever that is • Ian Bone, author of Bash the Rich, on anarchy in the UK (not the debased Sex Pistols kind, either)
March 1, 2007 Evelyn McDonnell, author of Mamarama, on music and motherhood • Omar Lizardo (paper here) on how globalization is not homogenizing culture
February 22, 2007 Aimee Liu, author of Gaining, on the biology and politics of eating disorders • Sam Gindin, author of this article in MRZine, on why the US is not a sinking ship
February 15, 2007 Eric Klinenberg, author of Fighting For Air, on the new media landscape and fighting back against it • Steve Duncombe, author of Dream, on fantasy in politics, and how "progressives" should learn to work with it
January 11, 2007 Steffie Woolhandler on Schwarzenegger's fraudulent health scheme • Amiri Baraka, author of Tales of the Out & the Gone, on Newark, being a Marxist in the U.S., and the ambiguous, complex value of bourgeois art (concludes with excerpts from this 1978 program at Naropa, with Baraka reading "Against Bourgeois Art," intro'd by a choked-up Allen Ginsberg)
January 4, 2007 Gilbert Achcar on Israel's defeat in Lebanon and the gathering defeat of the U.S. in Iraq • Charles Komanoff on carbon taxes (and check out the new Carbon Tax Center that Charlie & his colleagues have started)
2006
December 21, 2006 Ian Williams talks about the Kofi Annan-Ban Ki-moon transition at the UN, and the political economy of rum (with some tasting advice too) • Robin Blackburn, author of Age Shock, talks about the pensions crisis and a backdoor route to the socializing the means of production
December 14, 2006 Nomi Prins (briefly) on those eye-popping Goldman Sachs numbers • Patrick Cockburn, author of The Occupation, on the disaster that is Iraq • Hamid Dabashi on Iran
December 7, 2006 Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations on how the Cuban regime will live on beyond Fidel • Ken Sherrill, co-author of an NGLTF analysis of the recent election, on how same-sex marriage initiatives don't skew the results (and how demographics run against the Christian right)
November 30, 2006 Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, on the suit against the EPA over global warming • Melissa Hope Ditmore, editor of The Encyclopedia of Prostitution, along with two contributors, Jo Weldon and Jeffrey Escoffier, on sex work [if this two-book set is too expensive, ask your library to get one!]
November 16, 2006 (added out of sequence) Algernon Austin, author of Getting It Wrong, on how black public intellectuals are missing the point(s) • Jim Gerstein of the Democracy Corps on the midterm elections
November 9, 2006 Lewis Lapham, author of Pretensions to Empire, on the criminal folly of the Bush administration • Caitlin Zaloom, author of Out of the Pits, on the anthropology of the futures markets
November 2, 2006 Tariq Ali, author most recently of Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, on Iraq, Israel's defeat in Lebanon, and Hugo Chavez and his challenge to neoliberal economics and U.S. domination
October 5, 2006 George McGovern and William Polk, authors of Out of Iraq, on how to accomplish that quickly. Most of this show, part of WBAI's fall marathon, was taken up with pleas for contributions; this interview was the substantive content. If you like these shows, and want to keep them coming, please pledge to WBAI.
September 28, 2006 Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen, on the misuses of Chile as a neoliberal model (his paper is here) • Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy Institute, co-author of the State of Working America, in a return appearance to talk about U.S. inequality and poverty in comparison to other countries
September 21, 2006 Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler, founding editors of Bitch, on Bitchfest, the anthology of articles gathered from that magazine • Nomi Prins, author of Jacked, on how the right-wing has ripped us off
September 14, 2006 Tony Judt, professor of history at NYU, on wimpy liberals • Moazzam Begg, author of Enemy Combatant, on his three years as an unwilling guest of the U.S. government in Gitmo and elsewhere
September 7, 2006 David Dunbar, co-editor of Debunking 9/11 Myths, on how the conspiracists are wrong • George Galloway comments briefly on the same topic • Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy Institute on the State of Working America (apologies for the technical glitch that resulted in 7 minutes of live on-air confusion which were mercifully excised from this archived version)
August 31, 2006 Betsy Reed, editor of Unnatural Disaster: The Nation on Hurricane Katrina, and Gary Younge, a contributor to that volume, on the politics of the storm one year later • John Mueller on how the terrorism threat is vastly overblown (the title of his forthcoming book)
August 17, 2006 Afshin Rattansi on Middle Eastern crises and Britain's Muslims • Val Moghadam on politics and gender relations in Iran
August 10, 2006 Rasha Salti from Beirut on war, politics, and daily life • Anne-christine d'Adesky, author of Moving Mountains and co-creator of the film Pills Profits Protest, on AIDS and the movement around AIDS
August 3, 2006 Harold Meyerson on the disappointments of Change to Win • Judith Kipper of the CFR on the Middle East wars, and a cramped vision of a Palestinian state • Jonathan Nitzan on the political economy of Israel, oil, and war
July 27, 2006 Joel Schalit on Israel's motives for going to war • Adolph Reed on Katrina, race, class
July 6, 2006 James Howard Kunstler on oil, waste, ugliness, death • Katha Pollitt, author of Virginity or Death, on feminism and politics
June 29, 2006 Laura Rozen of Warandpiece and author of this on mysterious doings in Rome over Iran • David Feige, author of Indefensible, on his career as a public defender and the horrors of the criminal justice system
June 22, 2006 Economist Julio Huato on immigration as well as the Mexican presidential election • to observe Pride Week, Hunter poli sci prof Ken Sherrill on same-sex marriage and other aspects of gay politics (plus some lesbian bands, too!)
June 15, 2006 Gary Younge, Guardian correspondent and author of Stranger in a Strange Land, on being a black Brit writing about the USA • Michele Wucker, author of Lockdown, on immigration
June 8, 2006 Ned Sublette, musician and music historian, on New York, Cuba, New Orleans, and politics in music (plus a lot of music too)
June 1, 2006 Ervand Abrahamian on Iran • Michelle Goldberg, author of Kingdom Coming, on the Christian right's lust for theocracy
May 11, 2006 MARATHON SPECIAL This was a two-hour fundraising edition of Behind the News. Much of the program was devoted to fundraising; the substantive content was excerpts from the soundtrack of the excellent film Occupation: Dreamland and an interview with its co-director, Ian Olds. The film is the product of embedding with the 82nd Airborne in Fallujah in the winter of 2004; it's a brilliant and complex view of why people join the army, how they think and feel, and the forces compelling their loyalty. This is only the interview with Olds. Additionally, everyone should pledge to WBAI and also buy a copy of the DVD of O:D.
May 4, 2006 Tom Hertz, author of this paper, on economic mobility in the U.S. • Matthew Lasar, author of Uneasy Listening, on the recent history of Pacifica radio ("corporatization," "coup," restoration, and current governance)
April 27, 2006 Pratap Chatterjee, director of CorpWatch and author of Iraq Inc., on who's making money on the war, and why reconstruction is such a disaster • Andrew Ross, professor of American Studies at NYU and author of Fast Boat to China, on his year studying the IT industry in Shanghai
April 20, 2006 Nadxieli Mannello & Ellen Moynihan on the NYC counter-recruitment guide • Jose Vasquez of Iraq Veterans Against the War • Kevin Phillips on his new book, American Theocracy: The Peril & Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century
April 13, 2006 Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations on the downside of China's boom (like massive inequality and pollution) • Sociologist Douglas Massey on Mexican immigration to the US
April 6, 2006 Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program, on the hoax of universal coverage in Massachusetts • Jeff Faux, founder and ex-president of the Economic Policy Institute, on The Global Class War
March 30, 2006 Robin Hahnel, author Economic Justice and Democracy, on imagining life after capitalism • Peter Kwong, co-author of Chinese America, on our oldest "new" minority
March 23, 2006 Judith Levine, author of Not Buying It, on giving up overconsumption for a year • Marie Trigona, author of this article, on worker-run businesses in Argentina (and check out her collective's new video site)
March 16, 2006 Ruy Teixera on Bush's dismal poll numbers • Christian Parenti on Afghanistan (with some additional material on Iraq and the contradictions of empire)
February 9, 2006 Truncated fundraiser edition. About a third of the broadcast show was taken up with begging for money to support WBAI (and please consider making a pledge here!). Here's the substance minus the pleas: an interview with Robert Fitch about his book Solidarity for Sale, about the role of corruption in the sad decline of American unions.
February 2, 2006 Isaac Shapiro of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on the U.S. wealth distribution and Bush fiscal policy • Steve Kretzman of Oil Change International on Bush's surreal comments on getting over our oil addiction
January 26, 2006 Stephenie Hendricks, author of Divine Destruction, on the anti-environmentalist Wise Use movement and the Christian right • Ron Arnold, Wise Use guru and a prime target of Hendricks' book, responds • Alex Gourevitch and Aziz Rana of the Against the War on Terror blog, on problems with both the WoT and its critics
January 19, 2006 Dan Lazare, author most recently of The Velvet Coup, on the Supreme Court and our dysfunctional "democracy" (partial rebroadcast of September 8 interview) • Dean Baker of the Center for Economic & Policy Research on the housing bubble.

For shows earlier than January 2005, click here.

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