Education journalist Jennifer Berkshire analyzes (overdone) claims that teachers’ unions are keeping kids out of school, and warns us about the ongoing war on public education at the state level. And economic and social historian Helen Yaffe looks at how Cuba has contained COVID-19, and at what’s behind their impressive treatment and vaccine work. photo: … Continued
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.
Global shipping: the shadowy business behind the Ever Given. And subsidized jobs.
Laleh Khalili looks into the murky business of global shipping, an industry much in the headlines because of the stuck ship, but whose structure largely went unexplored. And LaDonna Pavetti talks about subsidized employment for low-wage workers.
The political economist Güney Işıkara explains why Turkish president Recep Erdogan is getting even more authoritarian. And the progressive political strategist Keenan Korth explains how the left took over the Nevada Democratic party. photo: joel protasio via Unsplash
Sochie Nnaemeka, director of the New York State Working Families Party, on the awfulness of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Susie Bright, the original “sexpert,” on what the pandemic has done to our libidos.
Texas-based immigration attorney Brianna Rennix talks about conditions at the US–Mexico border: how many of Trump’s brutal policies is Biden continuing, and was Trump that much of a departure from his predecessors? And sociologist Gianpaolo Baiocchi outlines a proposal to keep distressed housing out of the hands of private equity and turn it instead into … Continued
Behind the News – March 4, 2021
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.
Fundraising special: former Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren talks about the cultural devolution of the GOP, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads his poetry (from a 1956 KPFA broadcast). Photo Wikimedia
Behind the News – February 18, 2021
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.
Katya Kazbek, a Russian-born, New York-based writer, explores the unsavory background and politics of Alexi Navalny, the fashionable Russian dissident. And Marianela d’Aprile, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, offers a socialist critique of the anarchist concept of mutual aid.
Sarah Buehler, a BC-based climate activist, talks about Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone pipeline and his climate politics more generally. And Jacobin contributing editor Chris Maisano reviews the work of the political scientist Leo Panitch, who died in December. (His article is here.) photo: Markus Spiske on Unsplash