Episodes

Today’s Diglet is not really diminutive at all. Dan has two interviews with two separate guests because too much has happened over the past few weeks and there are too many smart people to analyze it all. First, scholar @marisollebron on how Wall Street-imposed austerity set Puerto Rico up for devastation, and why it will be an obstacle to a just recovery. Then, Twitter expert @BrandyLJensen on recent Republican grotesqueries. Donate to Taller Salud in PR at facebook.com/taller.salud (facebook.c...

Islamophobia is conventionally regarded as racist and bigoted views about Muslims expressed by ignorant individuals, including the one who somehow became president. But legal and critical race scholar @KhaledBeydoun (https://twitter.com/KhaledBeydoun) explains that the reality is more complicated. The War on Terror perpetrated state-backed Islamophobia, which nurtured and bolstered popular anti-Muslim bigotry. Support us at Patreon.com/TheDig (Patreon.com/TheDig). Check out Beydoun's article htt...

For this Diglet, Dan and Eve discuss Hillary Clinton's new book What Happened. Eve also talks about spending time with Jill Stein recently, and argues that it's wrongheaded to blame Stein for Trump. Thanks to our supporters at University of California Press. Check out their new title How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520281912"

Trump is normal in more ways than people care to admit, but he is different in that he parts from the bedrock ideology of American exceptionalism that has governed this country from its violent founding. Foreign policy scholar @stephenwertheim (https://twitter.com/stephenwertheim) makes the case that the Trump Doctrine could reignite extreme nationalism and militarism but also provides the Left with an opening to finally launch a movement against American Empire. Thanks to University of Californ...

The so-called Olympic spirit doesn’t match the reality of a highly-corporatized Games that often leaves taxpayers picking up the tab, engenders abusive policing and justifies the remaking of cities for the rich at the expense of ordinary and poor people. Dan’s guests today are Molly Lambert, a writer and member of Los Angeles DSA, and Jules Boykoff, the author of "Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics" from Verso. Support this pod with your money at patreon.com/thedig

This two-hour episode is a look at inequality in Houston from slavery to the present. First, Dan talks to Tyina Steptoe, historian at the University of Arizona and author of "Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City." Then Robert D. Bullard, professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston and the “father of environmental justice.” Finally, John Henneberger, an expert in equitable disaster recovery and co-director of Texas Housers. Show your...

Immigration law scholar @crimmigration breaks down the lies, misdirections and bigoted absurdities conveyed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he announced that the Trump Administration would cruelly make some 800,000 young people who came to this country as children deportable. Check out César's blog at crimmigration.com Support us at Patreon.com/TheDig

The devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey has made the denial of climate change all the more dangerous. But @KateAronoff says that mainstream liberals and environmental groups, touting cap-and-trade and business-friendly reforms, have put forward an agenda that can’t address the crisis and won’t mobilize the masses. We need a radical and transformative climate agenda. Thanks to our supporters at UNC Press and check out Knocking on Labor’s Door https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469632070/knocki...

New Republic reporter Emily Atkin (@emorwee) talks about why Harvey is already and inherently political thanks to climate change and the potential for petrochemical disaster in Houston. When people criticize “politicizing” the disaster they are being political too: it is a naked effort to defend the destructive status quo of fossil-fueled neoliberal capitalism. Support us at patreon.com/thedig and please donate to homelesshouston.org/take-action/donate

Is the internet good or bad? The debate is more often than not a proxy for one about politics more generally and populism in particular. But the real issue with the internet is this: unaccountable businesses wield oligopoly power over the digital public sphere. Support us with some cash https://www.patreon.com/thedig And check out Adrian’s article http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-fake-news-fallacy

Dan talks to Splinter Politics Editor Alex Pareene about his recent piece “Charlottesville Was a Preview of the Future of the Republican Party” and about why Phoenix is Trump’s happy place. This second weekly episode costs time and money. We can only keep it up if you contribute at patreon.com/thedig Check out Pareene’s article and podcast http://splinternews.com/charlottesville-was-a-preview-of-the-future-of-the-repu-1797988745 http://tarfureport.libsyn.com/

This is the war that never ends. The War on Terror’s permanence should be remarkable. It should be an outrage. But it is precisely because the war has become permanent that it has long since been rendered normal. Dan’s guest is historian Andrew Bacevich. Please note: they spoke before Trump’s recent announcement that the US would double down on the Afghanistan War. And please support the show at Patreon.com/thedig. We can't do it without you.

New Republic writer Sarah Jones joins Dan to talk about Trump's invocation of the "alt-left" and to explain the term's unseemly centrist history. And more. We're gonna try doing two episodes each week now: the regular long Dig on Tuesdays and a shorter, hotter-take Diglet on Fridays. This will take more time and more money. If you listen to and love the show please support us at https://www.patreon.com/thedig

The FARC peace accord is a historic victory for Colombian society. But the struggle to build an urban left strong enough to take on the country's powerful right remains a daunting one. Today's guest is Forrest Hylton, the author of Evil Hour in Colombia. Check out a great article from Forrest here https://www.academia.edu/26907051/The_Experience_of_Defeat_The_Colombian_Left_and_the_Cold_War_that_Never_Ended And also Forgotten Peace: Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Colombia from ...

With Trump, Mexico is the symbol and source of so many things that are wrong with the United States. Oftentimes, these stories told about Mexico in the United States aren’t just wrong but serve to obscure the true source of our shared problems—which, more often than not, are both countries’ ruling classes. Today's guest is Christy Thornton, a professor of history and international studies at Rowan University, and soon to be fellow at the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Transformations at ...

We’re taking a quick break halfway into our four-part series of interviews on Latin America because this week is a big week for the American left: Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, is holding its first national convention since the organization has undergone a massive explosion in size. This episode is long as hell and we apologize that some of the audio quality is a little crappier than normal. But the debate and discussion are great.

Hugo Chávez's rise to power inspired leftists around the world. But today, Venezuela is in a profound economic and political crisis. A huge decline in oil prices gutted the revenue stream that Venezuela depended on to bankroll its social spending. The government led by Chavez’s successor Nicolás Maduro is increasingly turning to repression in response to constant, and often violent, protests from the opposition. NYU historian and NACLA Executive Editor Alejandro Velasco explains what's happening...

In Ecuador, the left won reelection this year, after Alianza PAÍS candidate Lenin Moreno, former President Rafael Correa’s vice president, narrowly won election this year. It was a major victory given the crisis hitting the pink tide of left governments throughout the region. But it was perilously close to a loss. Correa accomplished a lot for the country’s poor majority but did so thanks to a commodity boom that has since gone bust, a strategy that put the left government in conflict with indig...

What Trump has accomplished is spread fear through immigrant communities and, with the Muslim and refugee travel bans, made bigotry the explicit cornerstone of immigration policy. But on immigration, as on other matters, Trump does not emerge from a vacuum. Mainstream Democratic and Republican politicians have for decades built a giant deportation machine. Dan talks to Dara Lind, the immigration reporter at Vox and one of the smartest reporters on the beat to put Trump's deportation campaign and...

Workers have for years faced a neoliberal onslaught administered by a bipartisan establishment of technocratic elites who have ensured the redistribution of wealth into the hands of the rich. This is an elite that has abetted the decimation of labor unions and whose primary disagreement are over how severely those expelled from the labor market should be allowed to suffer. My guest today is journalist Sarah Jaffe. We’re going to talk about the state of work, particularly the manufacturing and re...

Donald Trump appears to many in the guise of a terrifying aberration. But in reality, he is the outcome of trends that are far too normal. We need movements to come together to not only defeat Trump but to take on the system that made him possible. Naomi Klein takes on Trump’s brand, and offers some thoughts as to how to tarnish it, in her new book “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.” Thanks to our sponsors at versobooks.com and at FSG, promoting th...

Mass incarceration controls poor people and populations that have been excluded from the labor market. Politically, tough-on-crime rhetoric has for decades been a tool for politicians to appeal to white voters’ racism. But what’s less discussed is the complicated history of criminal justice politics within black communities and amongst black politicians. Yale Law professor James Forman talks about his new book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Thanks to sponsors at thena...

Bernie would have won. And in the UK, he sort of did last week. The Labour Party, under left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn (full name: Jeremy Bernard Corbyn) came far from behind and stripped Prime Minister Theresa May of her majority in parliament — after the punditocracy had confidently predicted that radicals had doomed Labour to electoral oblivion. Dan speaks to Richard Seymour, the author most recently of Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical politics, and a founding editor of Salvage.

Nothing that so exposes Donald Trump as a snake oil salesman as the fact that he ran a campaign pitched at white working-class anger toward so-called globalism and then stacked his administration with representatives from Big Finance. A decade after Wall Street blew up the global economy, it is now very much in the drivers seat, sucking up as much wealth as possible from regular people and redistributing it upward to the super rich. Thanks to our advertisers at The Nation! Get a deal on magazine...