French riots, US social collapse
Harrison Stetler on the riots in France • Peter Turchin, complexity theorist and author of End Times, on why the US is heading for a smashup
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.
Austerity, economics, and fascism • AMLO’s presidency in Mexico
Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order, explores the links among neoclassical economics, austerity, and fascism • Edwin Ackerman, author of this article, looks at AMLO’s presidency in Mexico
The Wagner uprising, the Confederate diaspora
Anatol Lieven, Eurasia director of the Quincy Institute, on Prigozhin’s aborted uprising in Russia and Putin’s status • Samuel Bazzi, co-author of this paper, on the effects of the white migration out of the South after the Civil War on the recipient areas
Family abolition, the cult of homeownership
Slaying sacred cows: M.E. O’Brien, author of Family Abolition, on doing that and “communizing care” • Jane Chung, author of this article, on what’s wrong with our cult of homeownership
Corey Robin on Clarence Thomas
While other shows are getting applause for interviewing Corey Robin about his excellent book on Clarence Thomas (who is very much in the news these days), Behind the News was there first, as it so often is. This is a rebroadcast of a show that first ran in 2019.
Why are we in Ukraine?, and using art to stimulate consciousness about slavery
Christopher Layne, co-author of the Harper’s magazine article “Why are we in Ukraine?” • Marcus Brown on his augmented reality exhibit that evokes the eighteenth-century Wall Street slave market
Varieties of correctional control and how to get around the mystifications of economics
Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative talks about some underappreciated aspects of the carceral state: probation, parole, and civil commitment • Francisco Perez of the Center for Economic Democracy on why mainstream economics is so terrible and an online course that can help civilians break through the discipline’s mystifications
Islands in a rising sea, and libertarian enclaves
Tina Gerhardt, author of Sea Change, on the effects of rising oceans on small island nations • Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-Up Capitalism, on libertarian enclaves insulated from democracy
Fundraising special: Jeff Sharlet talks about his new book, The Undertow, a look at the dark political forces afoot in the Trumpocene
Jeff Sharlet talks about his new book, The Undertow, a collection of essays on the increasingly violent and authoritarian politics on the right unleashed by Trump
Unionizing the content moderators, and what’s behind Atlanta’s Cop City?
Michaela Chen of Foxglove on efforts to unionize the exploited workers who moderate content on social media • Micah Herskind, author of this article, on the political economy of Atlanta that’s behind Cop City