Behind the News – May 22, 2025
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.
Upcoming Episode
Behind the News
12:00 PM (Noon) Pacific Time: Thursdays
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.
Fundraising special: wobbly dollar, perpetual wars
Fundraising special: Barry Eichengreen on why the gyrations in the value of the US dollar matter • Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan, hosts of Always at War, on why the US is always buying more weapons and bombing people
Fundraising special: Trumpian ideology
A look at Trumpian ideology: Kristin Du Mez on theology, Quinn Sloboidan on the latest iteration of neoliberalism (both rebroadcasts of interviews from February)
The US empire, the state of the working class, and things need to be bigger
Vijay Prashad, executive director of Tricontinental, on the state of the US empire and the state of the global working class • Becca Rothfeld, author of All Things Are Too Small, speaks up for bigness
How constitutional fetishism gave us Trump
Aziz Rana, author of The Constitutional Bind, on how the system crafted by the US Constitution, led to Donald Trump and has constricted our ability fight him
Hayek’s bastards: the second, cruder generation of neoliberals
Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards, talks about the IQ- and race-obsessed goldbugs of second generation neoliberalism
Financiers and universities, approaches to the climate crisis
Charlie Eaton and Alina Gibadulina on the increasing prominence of hedge fund and private equity titans on elite university boards (paper here) • Malcolm Harris, author of What’s Left, on a trio of political approaches to the climate crisis
Tariff extravaganza: the UAW’s view, a critical view
Jason Wade of the UAW explains the union’s endorsement of Trump’s auto tariffs • Sam Gindin, author of this article and former long-time adviser to what used to be known as the Canadian Autoworkers Union, on what issues the tariff controversy obscures
Trump and the courts, class and politics, hipster nihilism
Samuel Moyn on Trump and the courts • Chris Maisano, author of this article, on class and politics • Evgenia Kovda on hipster nihilism (article here)
Professional class liberalism
Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer, editors of Mastery and Drift, on professional class liberalism • a brief reprise of a 2019 interview with Gabriel Winant on the PMC
Marx’s ethics, and what did the BLM protests do to police budgets?
Vanessa Wills, author of Marx’s Ethical Vision, on the morality behind Marxian “science” • Mathis Ebbinghaus on the effects of the summer 2020 anti-cop protests on police budgets (paper here)