Episodes

From The Dig archives: Dan interviews Melinda Cooper about her book, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, which makes the case that neoliberalism and social conservatism have been consistent collaborators in creating an economy that redistributed wealth ruthlessly upwards with a risk-absorbing family at its privatized center. We’ll be back next week with a new episode. Listen to Antibody thedigradio.com/antibody Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Join a ...

A big-picture interview with Tobita Chow and Jake Werner on China that puts today’s geopolitical conflict and repression into the context of global capitalism. Join a Dig Book Club thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at patreon.com/TheDig

What happened to social democratic politics? Dan interviews sociologist Stephanie Mudge on her book Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism. Join a Dig Book Club thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at patreon.com/TheDig

Prevailing identity politics norms call on people “listen to the most affected” or “centre the most marginalized.” But this often works out quite badly in practice. Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on his brilliant essay “Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference.” It’s The Dig’s four-year anniversary. Support us at Patreon.com/TheDig and take a moment to post something to social media about why you listen to The Dig and how it has shaped your politics.

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews Thomas Frank about his book The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism. From The Dig archives on populism: Universalizing American Liberty with Aziz Rana Populism’s Power with Laura Grattan and Thea Riofrancos Worker Freedom with Alex Gourevitch Join a Dig Book Club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews political scientist Megan Ming Francis about the NAACP’s struggle against racist violence in the teens and 20s and how it remade the criminal justice system and the civil rights movement alike. Join a Dig book club! Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/ Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Mike Davis on what the election reveals about this US political moment and the way forward for the Left. Support this podcast at www.patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig book club! Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/

Dan interviews Cornel West on how to think about and act upon the world that this week presented to us. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

What else to talk about right now other than everything about right now? Election, pandemic, BLM, climate, and how the left should think about and struggle with it all. Dan interviews Naomi Klein and Nikhil Pal Singh. Support this podcast on Patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig Book Club. Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club

Political theorist Wendy Brown on how neoliberalism attacked society and democracy and in doing so laid the foundation for right-wing authoritarianism and nihilism. Episodes from the archives on neoliberalism: A History of Neoliberalism with Quinn SlobodianFamily Values with Melinda Cooper

Roberto Lovato on Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas. Growing up Salvadoran-American in The Mission, fighting with the FMLN in El Salvador, making sense of MS-13, weaving back together the pieces of a transnational history severed by borders and violence. Lovato retells El Salvador and US history through his family’s story. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Join The Dig book club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/

Dan interviews legal scholars Aziz Rana and Amna Akbar, and Movement for Black Lives lawyer Marbre Stahly-Butts, on SCOTUS, liberal RBG and court veneration, and other big questions on the law and politics facing the left. Join a Dig book club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Bathsheba Demuth on her monumental book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. From the 19th century through today, governments and capitalists on the Russian, Soviet, and American Arctic borderlands extract energy from a natural world whose reproductive cycles they don’t comprehend and strive to convert Indigenous people into national subjects. Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews tech organizer and scholar Meredith Whittaker on the political economy of the tech leviathan that’s remaking capitalism, empire, and the carceral state. FYI: Whittaker mentioned this interview with Sarah T. Hamid on carceral technologies logicmag.io/care/community-defense-sarah-t-hamid-on-abolishing-carceral-technologies/ Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews historian Paul Renfro on his book Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State. Stranger Danger is also this month’s Dig Book Club book. Read and discuss it with fellow listeners, and then on Zoom with Paul by signing up here: thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/ A relevant Dig ep from the archives: Melinda Cooper on her book Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism thedigradio.com/podcast/family-values-with-melinda-cooper/ Plea...

Dan interviews Tithi Bhattacharya, Daniel Bessner, Simon Torracinta on the manifold crises engulfing higher ed as covid exposes and exacerbates decades of austerity and neoliberal iniquity. “House of Cards: Can the American university be saved?” by Daniel Bessner thenation.com/article/society/gig-academy-meritocracy-trap-universities-crisis “Extinction Event: Given what is to come, schools of every kind are now at risk” by Simon Torracinta nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/extinction-even...

Dan interviews historian Matthew Countryman on his book Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Join a Dig Book Club reading group and discuss Up South with Countryman on September 12. Sign up here thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan’s recent live event with Yanis Varoufakis on how 2020 revealed that 2008 had changed capitalism forever. Also: we had some pod feed issues last week. If you missed Dan’s interview with brilliant organizers Andres Celin and Rapheal Randall—and this is a must-listen for everyone interested in organizing—check it out: www.thedigradio.com/podcast/organize-to-win-with-andres-celin-and-rapheal-randall/

A must-listen conversation on organizing to win with two extraordinary organizers from Philadelphia’s Youth United for Change. Download their book Y’all Tryna Win or Nah?! https://www.youthunitedforchange.org/y_all_tryna_win_or_nah Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Kelly Lytle Hernández on MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. Dan’s 2017 interview with Lytle Hernández on City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965: thedigradio.com/podcast/a-history-of-human-caging-with-kelly-lytle-hernandez Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan’s 2018 interview with Matthew Frye Jacobson on Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America. With a new intro from Dan on the Columbus myth and the politics of white ethnicity. Support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Our police system is a product of Cold War US imperialism too. Dan interviews Stuart Schrader on Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. Support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

This is an incredible moment to learn about the Young Lords from historian Johanna Fernández, the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History. Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan talks to @loggins__ and @MuseWendi about why people are reading White Fragility and ten books about racism, capitalism, and Black radicalism that you should read instead. Check out Left POCket Project @LeftPOC Blacks In and Out of the Left by Michael C Dawson Dig interview with Michael Dawson Democracy Remixed by Cathy Cohen Dig interview with Cathy Cohen, Jasson Perez, Malaika Jabali Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil by Patricia de Santana Pinho Racecraft: The Soul...