Best Music on a Show About Economics & Politics
Village Voice Best of NYC 2005
"incisive, accessible, and engaging" — Pod2Mod.com
— iTunes user rating
latest content added July 9, 2020
Best Music on a Show About Economics & Politics
Village Voice Best of NYC 2005
"incisive, accessible, and engaging" — Pod2Mod.com
— iTunes user rating
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 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 in MP3 format, at 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. Shows are 52–53 minutes long; the 128kbps versions are around 50 megabytes, and the 16kbps versions, around 6 megs. The old streaming option is no longer available; it had stopped working on some browsers and devices.
Thanks to Jordan Hayes of Bitway for hosting the archives.
For shows earlier than January 2017, click here.
FULL SHOWS
| 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] |  |
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| 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 | |
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| 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] | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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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] |
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| 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) | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| October 17, 2019 Jodi Dean, author of Comrade, on the sense of political belonging formed by and essential to common struggle | |
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| October 10, 2019 Corey Robin, author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, on the life and thought of a conservative black nationalist | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| September 5, 2019 Meleiza Figueroa on the ecololgy and people of the Amazon (CNS article here) • Anton Jäger on populism and socialism (article here) | |
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| 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 | |
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| August 22, 2019 Brian Hioe updates us on the Hong Kong protests • Kavita Krishnan on India’s crackdown in Kashmir | |
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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] |
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| 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 | |
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| July 18, 2019 Bernat Tort on Puerto Rico’s economic and political crisis • Sahan Karatasli on Turkey’s economic and political crisis | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| June 20, 2019 Brian Hioe on the Hong Kong mass demonstrations • Ashley Sanders on climate grief | |
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| 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 | |
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| June 6, 2019 Neda Bolourchi on life and politics in Iran • Sean Guillory on Russophobia | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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… | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| March 21, 2019 Tony Wood, author of Russia Without Putin, on those topics | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| February 28, 2019 Melinda Cooper, author of Family Values, on the relationship between “free” market neoliberalism and family values conservatism | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| December 6, 2018 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, on the politics of guns | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| November 1, 2018 Amanda Armstrong on the importance of trans politics • Alfredo Saad-Filho on the prospects for Brazil under the fascist Bolsonaro | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| September 27, 2018 Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, on the win–win business- and plutocrat-friendly philanthropy of today’s nouveau riche | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| September 6, 2018 Joel Schalit on neofascism in Germany and Israel • Heidi Matthews on #metoo (Twitter here) | |
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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] |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| August 2, 2018 Adam Tooze and Leo Panitch, separately, on globalization, Trump, the American empire, declinism, etc. | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| May 24, 2018 Richard Walker, author of Pictures of a Gone City, on what the tech boom has done to the Bay Area | |
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| 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 | |
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| May 10, 2018 Christy Thornton on AMLO and Mexico’s July elections • Richard Florida on the spatial dimensions of inequality | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| March 22, 2018 Jennifer Berkshire, host of Have You Heard?, on teachers’ strikes, WV and beyond • Stan Collender on fiscal follies in DC | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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] | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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!) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| January 4, 2018 Tithi Bhattacharya, editor of Social Reproduction Theory, on capitalism, Marxism, feminism, and society | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| November 30 2017 Corey Robin, whose The Reactionary Mind has just been issued in an updated edition, on the right from Burke to Trump | |
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| November 23, 2017 Kristen Ghodsee, author of Red Hangover, on the traumas of post-Communist life in Eastern Europe | |
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| 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. | |
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| November 9, 2017 Ryan Grim on the GOP and its issues • Rachel Sherman, author of Uneasy Street, on the consciousness of the rich | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| October 12, 2017 Yanis Varoufakis on his new book, Adults in the Room, the story of his surreal negotiations with Greece’s creditors | |
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| 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 | |
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| September 28, 2017 Lukas Hermsmeier on German politics after the election (and AfD’s breakthrough) • Margaret Corvid on the UK Labour Party conference | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| August 31, 2017 Stan Collender on the ludicrous politics of the federal budget • Tim Shorrock on what’s behind North Korea’s apparent “irrationality” | |
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| August 24, 2017 Jodi Dean on class vs. identity, and the online life vs. practice • Jason Wilson on Charlottesville and the far right | |
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| 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 | |
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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! |
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| 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) | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| May 4, 2017 Margaret Corvid on the British election, the Labour Party—and sex work • Emre Öngün on Turkey’s deeper slide into authoritarianism | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| April 13, 2017 Max Sawicky on Republican tax schemes • Vijay Prashad on Syria | |
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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. |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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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! |
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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! |
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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! |
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| 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 | |
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| February 9, 2017 John Ackerman on Trump and Mexico • Art Goldhammer surveys the French political landscape as a presidential election approaches | |
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| 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 | |
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| 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 | |
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| January 19, 2017 Yasha Levine on the politics of encryption • Elayne Tobin on celebrity (bibliography here) | |
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| 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) | |
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For shows earlier than January 2013, click here.