Episodes

Featuring Michael Denning on Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, collectively authored by Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Hall’s method of Marxist conjunctural analysis applied to the generalized crisis that paved the way for neoliberalism’s rise; a model for how we should ask questions about our world that will provide us with knowledge we need to change it. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/The...

Featuring Michael Denning on Stuart Hall’s Marxism—a Marxism without guarantees. This is a comprehensive introduction to Marxism as a method to analyze historically specific, complex and contradictory capitalist social formations, and what that means for making, rather than assuming the existence of, a working-class socialist politics. Next week Dan interviews Denning on Policing the Crisis, a 1978 book collectively authored by Hall and his colleagues; it’s a remarkable project that anticipates ...

Featuring Bassam Haddad on the historical and geopolitical origins of Assad’s rise and fall—and what might happen next. We think through the contradictions: honoring the joy felt by Syrians at Assad’s ouster while simultaneously taking stock of a truly bad geopolitical outcome. Want to learn more? Listen to Thawra, our series on the 20th century political history of the Arab East thedigradio.com/Thawra Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Palestine in a World on Fire at Haymarketbooks.com...

Featuring Patrick Blanchfield on assassination and political violence: from the routine to the extraordinary; authored by the state, capital, the left, the right, the unwell and alienated; as an anxiety, in our fantasies, as a morbid symptom and repetition compulsion; and as expressing distinctively American logics of domination and human disposability. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Listen to the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast at ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/ Read Patrick’s essay o...

Featuring Quinn Slobodian and Wendy Brown on Trump’s triumphant return to power and the freakish, obscene, billionaire-dominated, capitalist reactionary, Christian nationalist, contradiction-ridden MAGA movement that surrounds him. A comprehensive early assessment of what is going on, where it’s coming from, and where it all might be heading. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Share Thawra with a friend thedigradio.com/Thawra Use code “DIG” for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com Subs...

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar in the final installment of a three-part series on Central America. This episode picks up with Nayib Bukele’s authoritarian crypto enthusiasm in El Salvador; Daniel Ortega’s perversion of Sandinismo’s revolutionary legacy in Nicaragua; anti-mining movements in Panama; Honduras and Guatemala, where popular social movements have elected left presidents to confront entrenched power structures. We conclude by discussing mass migration from the region tha...

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend & Jorge Cuéllar in the second of a three (not two!) part series on the history and present of Central America. This interview picks up our discussion of revolutionary armed struggles against brutal US-backed military-oligarchic regimes in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Then, the peace accords and postwar transitions accompanied by the imposition of neoliberal economic restructuring. Finally, the rise of mass migration, new transnational gangs, and the regime o...

Featuring Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Trump’s decisive victory, Harris’s catastrophic loss, multi-racial working-class dealignment, and where the left might go from here. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig We now have a special feed dedicated entirely to our Thawra series. Listen and spread the word: thedigradio.com/Thawra Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin Buy Solidarity is the Political Version of Love at haymarketbooks.com

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar on the history of Central America. This is the first episode in a two-part series covering the late-19th and early-20th century rise of export-crop oligarchies and constant US intervention, the US-backed separation of Panama from Colombia to take control of the Canal, the CIA’s 1954 Guatemala coup, the rise of armed revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and the US-backed dirty wars that were prosecuted in response—that and...

Featuring Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix on their book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea. Guest hosted by Micah Uetricht. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Get 40% off The Years of Theory with code “DIG” at Versobooks.com Buy Our History is the Future at Haymarketbooks.com

Featuring Naomi Klein on how the pandemic turbocharged a far-right conspiracist politics that’s sweeping into power. This strange new world, however, is a product of an old contradiction: the need to disavow and deny a long history and awful present; the inability to make sense of the extreme violence and oppression that makes everyday Western capitalist society possible. We discuss Klein’s book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World and her Guardian essay “How Israel has made trauma a weap...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the third and final part of the epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our epic series on the history of revolutionary Arab politics. This episode takes us from Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative elections, through the siege on Gaza, to October 7, the Gaza genocide, the Axis of Resistance, and Israel’s attempt to draw Iran into a massive regional war with the US. Share Thawra with a friend thedigradio.com/Thawra Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy ...

Featuring Jake Werner on how the US and China entered into a New Cold War and why the whole world urgently needs an alternative international order that fosters great power cooperation. Read Jake’s report A Program for Progressive China Policy quincyinst.org/research/a-program-for-progressive-china-policy/#executive-summary Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Our History is the Future at Haymarketbooks.com Use code “DIG” for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com

Featuring Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana on the history of left-wing internationalism from the Third Worldist currents that powered decolonization and struggles against neocolonialism through today’s renewed politics in solidarity with the Palestinian national liberation movement. Recorded in New York at Jewish Currents Live. Support The Dig now at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Center of the World at UCPress.edu Buy Abolish Rent at Haymarketbooks.com

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second of what has become a three-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. This episode takes us from the disastrous Oslo Accords through the 2000 Camp David Summit and the eruption of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Then the 9/11 attacks, the War on Terror, the US destruction of Iraq, the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of Islamic State. A century of Western imperialism had undermined Ar...

Featuring Amna Akbar, Gabe Winant, and Thea Riofrancos on the American political conjuncture: the centrality of Palestine, the contradictions of left electoralism, renewed liberal militarism, the return of Obama-ism, the state of the labor and climate movements—and more. Recorded live at Socialism 2024 in Chicago. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Unbuild Walls at haymarketbooks.org Subscribe to Jacobin in print for $15/yr at bit.ly/digjacobin and Catalyst in print for $20/yr at bit.ly/...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first of a two-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the Iranian Islamic Revolution’s huge impact across the Arab East alongside Saudi and Egyptian efforts to foster religious conservative movements in an effort to supplant and suppress the secular nationalist left. Plus the Iran-Iraq War, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the First Intifada, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the first...

Featuring Sunaura Taylor on her book Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation. What does it mean to rethink socialism and Marxism through the frameworks of disability liberation and animal liberation? How do we relate to human difference and also to non-human animals? Where does the struggle against industrial agriculture fit into the fight against capitalism? Sunaura is interviewed by her sister, Dig guest host Astra Taylor. Read about Daniel Denvir and The Dig in The Guardian thegua...

Featuring Jeremy Corbyn and Laleh Khalili on internationalism and left-wing politics. A special Dig co-hosted with the Verso Podcast in front of a live London audience. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 – Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org Buy Twilight Prisoners at Haymarketbooks.com

Dan just did a live Dig in London with Jeremy Corbyn and Laleh Khalili. It was part of a podcast doubleheader that included this recording of the economics podcast Macrodose featuring Asad Rehman, James Meadway, and Thea Riofrancos. The live Dig with Corbyn and Khalili on internationalist and anti-imperialist politics will be posted in a few days. Subscribe to Macrodose at linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or wherever you get podcasts Support Macrodose at patreon.com/Macrodose The Socialism ...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTEENTH and final episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment traces a massive defeat for the Palestinian Revolution: Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and brutal siege of Beirut. Under severe pressure and isolated in the wake of Egypt’s normalization with Israel, the PLO evacuated its headquarters. What followed was a giant massacre of Palestinian civilians and the end of the decades-long er...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment addresses the Palestinian Revolution’s project in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan—leading up to the 1970 conflict with the Jordanian state and the violent expulsion of PLO guerrillas during Black September. Then, Egypt and Syria checked Israel’s power in the October War of 1973—only for Anwar Sadat to lead Egypt into Kissinger’s plan to pacify Ar...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the rise of the Palestinian Revolution and then its explosion after the Arab defeat in the June War of 1967 with Israel. Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation and Palestine, and other factions launched an armed guerrilla struggle against Israel, engaging the Palestinian people in a full-scale mobilization for their liberation. ...

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the armed left-wing revolutionary movements that challenged British imperial power across Southern Arabia, with the National Liberation Front taking over South Yemen and Dhufari rebels in Oman waging a liberation war against the Sultan. Today’s alliance of reactionary Gulf monarchies was not inevitable; they were made by colonia...