The Dig

Prevailing identity politics norms call on people “listen to the most affected” or “centre the most marginalized.” But this often works out quite badly in practice. Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on his brilliant essay “Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference.” It’s The Dig’s four-year anniversary. Support us at Patreon.com/TheDig and take a moment to post something to social media about why you listen to The Dig and how it has shaped your politics.

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews Thomas Frank about his book The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism. From The Dig archives on populism: Universalizing American Liberty with Aziz Rana Populism’s Power with Laura Grattan and Thea Riofrancos Worker Freedom with Alex Gourevitch Join a Dig Book Club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews political scientist Megan Ming Francis about the NAACP’s struggle against racist violence in the teens and 20s and how it remade the criminal justice system and the civil rights movement alike. Join a Dig book club! Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/ Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Mike Davis on what the election reveals about this US political moment and the way forward for the Left. Support this podcast at www.patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig book club! Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/

Dan interviews Cornel West on how to think about and act upon the world that this week presented to us. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

What else to talk about right now other than everything about right now? Election, pandemic, BLM, climate, and how the left should think about and struggle with it all. Dan interviews Naomi Klein and Nikhil Pal Singh. Support this podcast on Patreon.com/TheDig Join a Dig Book Club. Next book is Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism thedigradio.com/dig-book-club

Political theorist Wendy Brown on how neoliberalism attacked society and democracy and in doing so laid the foundation for right-wing authoritarianism and nihilism. Episodes from the archives on neoliberalism: A History of Neoliberalism with Quinn SlobodianFamily Values with Melinda Cooper

Roberto Lovato on Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas. Growing up Salvadoran-American in The Mission, fighting with the FMLN in El Salvador, making sense of MS-13, weaving back together the pieces of a transnational history severed by borders and violence. Lovato retells El Salvador and US history through his family’s story. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Join The Dig book club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/

Dan interviews legal scholars Aziz Rana and Amna Akbar, and Movement for Black Lives lawyer Marbre Stahly-Butts, on SCOTUS, liberal RBG and court veneration, and other big questions on the law and politics facing the left. Join a Dig book club at thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Bathsheba Demuth on her monumental book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. From the 19th century through today, governments and capitalists on the Russian, Soviet, and American Arctic borderlands extract energy from a natural world whose reproductive cycles they don’t comprehend and strive to convert Indigenous people into national subjects. Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews tech organizer and scholar Meredith Whittaker on the political economy of the tech leviathan that’s remaking capitalism, empire, and the carceral state. FYI: Whittaker mentioned this interview with Sarah T. Hamid on carceral technologies logicmag.io/care/community-defense-sarah-t-hamid-on-abolishing-carceral-technologies/ Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews historian Paul Renfro on his book Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State. Stranger Danger is also this month’s Dig Book Club book. Read and discuss it with fellow listeners, and then on Zoom with Paul by signing up here: thedigradio.com/dig-book-club/ A relevant Dig ep from the archives: Melinda Cooper on her book Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism thedigradio.com/podcast/family-values-with-melinda-cooper/ Please support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Tithi Bhattacharya, Daniel Bessner, Simon Torracinta on the manifold crises engulfing higher ed as covid exposes and exacerbates decades of austerity and neoliberal iniquity. “House of Cards: Can the American university be saved?” by Daniel Bessner thenation.com/article/society/gig-academy-meritocracy-trap-universities-crisis “Extinction Event: Given what is to come, schools of every kind are now at risk” by Simon Torracinta nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/extinction-event/ “After 2020, There’s No Going Back to the Old America” by Dan Denvir in Jacobin jacobinmag.com/2020/09/joe-biden-imperialism-trump-america

Dan interviews historian Matthew Countryman on his book Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Join a Dig Book Club reading group and discuss Up South with Countryman on September 12. Sign up here thedigradio.com/dig-book-club Support this podcast with a contribution at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan’s recent live event with Yanis Varoufakis on how 2020 revealed that 2008 had changed capitalism forever. Also: we had some pod feed issues last week. If you missed Dan’s interview with brilliant organizers Andres Celin and Rapheal Randall—and this is a must-listen for everyone interested in organizing—check it out: www.thedigradio.com/podcast/organize-to-win-with-andres-celin-and-rapheal-randall/

A must-listen conversation on organizing to win with two extraordinary organizers from Philadelphia’s Youth United for Change. Download their book Y’all Tryna Win or Nah?! https://www.youthunitedforchange.org/y_all_tryna_win_or_nah Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Kelly Lytle Hernández on MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. Dan’s 2017 interview with Lytle Hernández on City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965: thedigradio.com/podcast/a-history-of-human-caging-with-kelly-lytle-hernandez Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan’s 2018 interview with Matthew Frye Jacobson on Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America. With a new intro from Dan on the Columbus myth and the politics of white ethnicity. Support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Our police system is a product of Cold War US imperialism too. Dan interviews Stuart Schrader on Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. Support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

This is an incredible moment to learn about the Young Lords from historian Johanna Fernández, the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History. Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan talks to @loggins__ and @MuseWendi about why people are reading White Fragility and ten books about racism, capitalism, and Black radicalism that you should read instead. Check out Left POCket Project @LeftPOC Blacks In and Out of the Left by Michael C Dawson Dig interview with Michael Dawson Democracy Remixed by Cathy Cohen Dig interview with Cathy Cohen, Jasson Perez, Malaika Jabali Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil by Patricia de Santana Pinho Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields Dig interview with the Fields sisters Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement by Akinyele Omowale Umoja The Meaning of Freedom by Angela Davis Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing Californiaby Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Aziz Rana interviews Dan Denvir on how policing and mass incarceration became core features of the war on immigrants and on his book All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It. Please support this podcast wit $ at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Dan’s book at versobooks.com/books/2858-all-american-nativism

Mike Davis on his classic book about why the US has long lacked strong socialist and labor politics. One recurrent answer: racism. Read Dan’s essay on the moment: jacobinmag.com/2020/06/donald-trump-war-american-democracy-riots-coronavirus Not in the mood for a long, complex Dig interview? Check out Antibody, which is like commie This American Life: thedigradio.com/antibody Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

A Dig special. Zoom forum Dan hosted with leading defund police organizers from around the country. For more info: blackvisionsmn.org byp100.org daretowin.org reclaimRI.org blmla.org If you live in RI, support the fight for a people’s budget: actionnetwork.org/petitions/say-no-to-a-brutal-austerity-budget-in-rhode-island Dan’s essay on Trump’s origins in ordinary bipartisan security politics: jacobinmag.com/2020/06/donald-trump-war-american-democracy-riots-coronavirus

Antibody is a narrative series about how Covid-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. In this episode: All Cops Are Idiots (featuring Kafui Attoh, you can buy his book here: ugapress.org/book/9780820354217/rights-in-transit) A Few Basic Demands (produced by Chenjerai Kumanyika (twitter.com/catchatweetdown) After the Peak (by Karim Sariahmed (twitter.com/sariahmed), along with Alex Azan, Belicia Ding, Nijmie Zakkiyyah Dzurinko , Vanessa K. Ferrel, Michelle Gonzalez, Musaub Khan, and Marc Shi) What We Talk About When We Talk About Mutual Aid (produced by Jackson Roach and Caroline Kanner (twitter.com/_idontCaroline) Get in touch with DCH1 Amazonians United (facebook.com/DCH1United) Support Put People First! Pennsylvania (putpeoplefirstpa.org) The mutual aid groups featured in this episode include: Ground Game LA (groundgamela.org) K Town For All (ktownforall.org) The Red Nation (therednation.org) Brave Space Alliance (bravespacealliance.org) and the Indigenous Kinship Collective (indigenouskinshipcollective.com). Further reading on mutual aid: Regan De Loggans’ mutual aid zine (mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/LOGGANS-mutual-aid-zine.pdf) The complete text of Kropotkin’s book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution) Mutual Aid Hub (mutualaidhub.org)

Dan interviews returning guests Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana on the long history behind the crisis of American imperial legitimation that has become so manifest amid the pandemic. Some works by Bâli and Rana cited in this interview: bostonreview.net/war-security-politics-global-justice/asl%C4%B1-u-b%C3%A2li-aziz-rana-sanctions-are-inhumane%E2%80%94now-and-always lawreview.uchicago.edu/publication/constitutionalism-and-american-imperial-imagination Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Antibody is a new narrative series about how Covid-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. In this episode: The Corner (featuring Pablo Alvarado and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network) Stranger Pleasure (featuring Samuel Delany; produced by David Gutherz) One House in Oakland (produced by Sophie Kasakove) Role Call (produced by Andrea Long Chu) Support day laborer economic survival with a contribution at ndlon.org

Dan interviews Cathy Cohen, Jasson Perez, and Malaika Jabali on this uprising, the conditions that made it possible, and where it might be headed. Support Black Visions Collective at blackvisionsmn.org Check out Malaika’s short film Left Out.

Antibody is a new narrative series about how Covid-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. In this episode: Zoom Canvass (featuring Nikil Saval) Hardwood Flesh (produced by Ari Mejia) Dial 3 to Admit Your Personal Failure (produced by Ian Lewis and Caroline Kanner) You Can’t Go Home Again (written by Alex Press) The International Trans Person Helpline (produced by Cass Adair and Arlie Adlington)

From The Dig and Jacobin: a new narrative series about how COVID-19 has changed everything and nothing at all. The first of three episodes is coming soon.

Dan interviews anthropologist Adia Benton on the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and what its politics reveal about the Covid-19 pandemic today. Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/thdig

Dan interviews Frank Rosenthal on the history of the radical science organization Science for the People and Nafis Hasan on everything about a left-wing politics of science. Subscribe to Science for the People at magazine.ScienceForThePeople.org Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan is playing catch up. Here’s a fav interview from the archives: critical theorist Nancy Fraser on how a total analysis of capitalism requires analyzing capitalism’s totality, including socially reproductive work that makes possible the world that capitalism exploits. This is painfully relevant today as people everywhere do the work of staying at home and social distancing to beat this pandemic while capitalists reap the rewards of the world’s reproduction. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Aaron Benanav, who argues that the problem isn’t that robots are stealing our jobs but rather that capitalist growth is finding its limits and making jobs worse. Read “Automation and the Future of Work” in New Left Review. Parts one and two. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig.

Dan interviews Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht, the authors of Bigger Than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism, to assess the campaign and the way forward. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews the makers of Blowback, a new podcast series telling the history of the Iraq War. Blowback is available only on Stitcher Premium—and for a month you can listen for free. Go to stitcherpremium.com and sign up with the code BLOWBACK. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews historian Kim Phillips-Fein about her book Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics and about how the destruction of social democracy made today’s city where coronavirus is killing its poor and working-class people. In other news: Dan’s Jacobin essay on keeping the Bernie infrastructure alive is here and the volunteer petition to do so, which you should sign, is here. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews veteran organizer Jasson Perez and journalist Sarah Jaffe on left organizing amid covid and where it might go. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Amy Kapczynski and Gregg Gonsalves on the politics of public health and what we can learn from ACT UP. Please support The Dig with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews New York magazine writer Eric Levitz on the big corporate bailout that gave workers precious little to survive the corona crisis. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Marxist economist Grace Blakeley on coronavirus economics. Please support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Mike Davis about everything we are all suddenly trying to figure out. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews NYC DSA down-ballot candidates. Samelys López is running for a US House seat in the Bronx. Jabari Brisport, Marcela Mitaynes, and Phara Souffrant Forrest are running for seats in the state legislature. All four are campaigning on a platform of housing justice. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

An interview on how the Democratic Party got here today with Ryan Grim. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Pep talk time: Dan interviews Rep. Ilhan Omar to give us some perspective and prepare us for the fight ahead. Read the full transcript from Jacobin here. Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

A special pod ep from Sunday’s live Boston canvass kickoff with Michael Brooks and Natalie Shure. Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan interviews Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on her book Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Come see Dan discuss All-American Nativism in Boston on 3/4 facebook.com/events/522615241724284/ Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Live show with Jacobin’s Bhaskar Sunkara and Alex Press in Cambridge, MA for Bernie 2020. Recorded the night of Nevada caucuses. Please support us with your money at www.thedigradio.com

The Catholic Church was a powerful force throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was a force for right-wing reaction. That’s what Dan discusses today with Giuliana Chamedes, the author of the remarkable book A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe. Live Massachusetts Dig for Bernie! With Bhaskar Sunkara and Alex Press at Harvard this Saturday 2/2, 7pm: facebook.com/events/604111176850753/ Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

Racism on the right wing is changing in weird and important ways, and liberal anti-racism offers no viable solution. Dan interviews Daniel Martinez HoSang and Joe Lowndes, authors of Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity. Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig