Jacobin Radio

Vivek Chibber, NYU sociology professor and editor of Catalyst, brings Marxist political-economy perspective. He debates whether AI is truly apocalyptic for work. He contrasts job-replacing automation with task-augmenting tools. He examines historical tech shifts, how capital steers adoption, and why labor power and policy matter for who benefits.

Stacy Horn, journalist and author of The Killing Fields of East New York, traces 1970s mortgage fraud, blockbusting and redlining that gutted a Brooklyn neighborhood. David Backer, education professor and author of As Public as Possible, examines why school finance is unequal and how funding reforms could help. Short, sharp conversations about predatory finance and the politics of education funding.

Yara Hawari, co-director of Al-Shabaka and analyst of Palestinian policy, offers a concise update on Gaza and international maneuvers. She outlines ongoing occupation and violence after the so-called ceasefire. She explains the politics behind the Trump Board of Peace and UN actions. She surveys NGO restrictions, reconstruction plans, and shifts in Palestinian politics and refugee protections.

Peter Linebaugh, historian of the commons and radical Atlantic history, explores long histories of commoning and how enclosure linked to imperial conquest. He traces medieval customs, criminalization of subsistence practices, and connections between enclosure, colonization, and the making of a dispossessed working class. The conversation highlights resistance, legal changes, and intellectual currents that justified expropriation.

Kieran Knutson, president of Minneapolis CWA Local 7250 and veteran labor organizer. Luis Feliz Leon, labor journalist and organizer covering mass strikes. They recount Minneapolis resistance to ICE raids. They explore coordinated shutdowns, mutual aid networks, strategic corporate targeting, and plans for a democratic workers assembly. Short, vivid stories of organizing under pressure.

David Harvey, a Marxist geographer and longtime scholar of political economy, and Adam Faderman, an investigative reporter on Arctic and Greenland issues. They discuss the role of finance and the state in capitalism, metropolitan regions as political terrain, neoliberal uses of AI, the end of Arctic exceptionalism, Trump’s Greenland fixation, and strategic and resource realities in the Arctic.

Vivek Chibber, sociology professor and editor of Catalyst, provides historical and structural analysis of revolutions and political crises. He contrasts Iran’s 1979 upheaval with today’s protests. He explains why large mobilizations often fail, analyzes state capacity and military cohesion, and outlines scenarios from repression to possible long-term transformation.

Laura Field, researcher of Trump-era ideas and author of Furious Minds. David Austin Walsh, historian of conservative movements and author of Taking America Back. They trace how respectable conservatives and fringe radicals interlock. They explore Buckley’s role, how crackpots catalyze mass movements, intellectual apocalypticism, national conservatism, and the culture-war networks reshaping politics.

JaNaé Bates Imari, faith organizer who mobilizes congregations for racial and economic justice. Greg Nammacher, longtime labor leader for janitorial and service workers. Emilia González Avalos, immigrant-rights organizer and voter mobilizer. They recount how long-term organizing, faith-based tactics, union power, mutual aid, and disciplined mass mobilization combined to confront a federal occupation and pull off a citywide shutdown.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, lecturer on Middle East international politics and author on Iranian reform, provides expert analysis. He discusses the aftermath of June strikes, sanctions and economic collapse, how protests began and spread, casualty verification during internet blackouts, competing political currents, US hesitation to escalate, and possible futures for Iran.