How China avoided shock therapy
Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy, on Chinese economic reform debates and how the country dodged post-Soviet-style collapse [reprise of a show from July 2021]
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.
Progressive victory in Chicago and the Ukraine war ends Scandinavian neutrality
Jacobin editor Micah Uetricht explains how Chicago elected a progressive mayor, Brandon Johnson • Lily Lynch, editor of Balkanist and contributor to New Left Review‘s Sidecar blog on how the Ukraine war destroyed Scandinavian neutrality
Economist Josh Mason of John Jay College on how we can save the climate before we get to overthrowing capitalism • Jen Duggan of the Environmental Integrity Initiative on a lawsuit to get the EPA to enforce the Clean Water Act
Post-growth living: Kate Soper on an alternative hedonism
Philosopher Kate Soper talks about her book, Post-Growth Living: For An Alternative Hedonism, just out in paperback.
Israeli collusion with Trump, why the Rutgers faculty is on the verge of a strike
James Bamford, author of this article in The Nation (and of the just published Spyfail) on Israeli collusion with Donald Trump in 2016 • Donna Murch, associate professor of history at Rutgers and president of the New Brunswick campus’s faculty union, on why the teaching staff is on the verge of a strike and why it matters … Continued
Follow-ups on Israel and AI
The writer and political adviser Nimrod Flaschenberg discusses the popular uprising in Israel against Bibi’s reactionary government • software engineer Dwayne Monroe revisits the hype around ChatGPT
Snooping on sex workers (and the rest of us), varieties of fascism in Italy
Maxine Doogan and Tara Burns, contributors to this report, on how cops are snooping on sex workers, and using what they learn to spy on the rest of us • David Broder, author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren, on the fascist heritage behind Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her party
Bank drama, carceral state gets back into action, the Saudi-Iran deal
DH comments on the bank failures • Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative updates us on the state of the carceral state • Annelle Sheline on the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran
fundraising special: Florida revisited, and repression & resistance in Israel
Historian and union president Paul Ortiz on the DeSantis agenda and resistance to it • human rights lawyer Noa Levy on the far right agenda in Israel and resistance to it
State-level repression: sex in Indiana, academic freedom in Florida
Journalist Judith Levine on moves to defund the Kinsey Institute, and on the trans kids panic • Phil Wegner of the University of Florida on Gov. Ron DeSantis’s moves to quash academic freedom in that state