Historian Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind, on the market-friendly New Democrats, from the 1970s into the 1990s and beyond. And Barry Eichengreen discusses the role of the dollar and threats to its pre-eminence. photo: Joshua Sukoff via Unsplash
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.
Alexander Zaitchik, author of Owning the Sun, on how the pharmaceutical industry became such a high-priced racket. photo: Myriam Zilles via Unsplash
Fundraising special: the Ukrainian cauldron: where it came from, where it might go.
Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute on what provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine, what motivates Putin, and where it might all go. Plus, fundraising.
Fundraiser special: the perversions of free Fed money and growing up in communist Albania
Christopher Leonard, author of The Lords of Easy Money, on the damage done by over a decade of hyper-easy monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, and Lea Ypi, a political philsopher and author of Free, on growing up in the last days of Communist Albania and the early days of its neoliberal successor.
Toronto-based activist and organizer John Clarke on the politics and personnel behind the Ottawa convoy, Dave Zirin on racism in the NFL (and Brian Flores’s lawsuit over it), and Justine Medina on working at Amazon and trying to unionize it. photo: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0
Two Perspectives on the COVID Era: Big Picture and Interior
Thomas Sugrue and Caitlin Zaloom, authors of The Long Year: A 2020 Reader, talk about the common and varied impacts of the pandemic around the world. And Laura Kipnis, author of Love in the Time of Contagion, talks about the challenges of living together, a steep climb even in the best of times.
Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative on how prison makes people sick and kills them. Psychiatrist Terry Kupers, from a 2013 interview, on the effects of solitary confinement on mental health. And refinery worker and union VP BK White talks about worker safety and health at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California, where workers … Continued
Davos Man, and saving the world from Davos Man.
Peter Goodman, author of Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, discusses the plutocrats and their pretensions. And Vijay Prashad, director of The Tricontinental, outlines a plan to save the world, essentially from Davos Man.
Erin Thompson, author of Smashing Statues, talks about the politics of public art. And John Huntington, author of Far-Right Vanguard, recounts the history of the far-Right and its often close relations with the “respectable” Right. photo: Pixabay
What’s behind the demonization of Russia, China, and a preposterously inflated North Korea? Is Russia about to invade Ukraine, or China about to invade Taiwan, or North Korea about to lob nuclear missiles at LA? Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation fills us in on the Russia angle, and veteran journalist … Continued