Jacobin Radio

Mike Davis died in 2022, but his work is more urgent than ever. As record temperatures, fires, floods, El Niño, and megadroughts threaten the planet, we hear his prescient 1995 talk, “Reconceptualizing the Environment.” Mike challenged the idea of “natural disaster,” showing how market-driven development put Los Angeles in harm’s way while shifting costs onto the public and the poor.

Our sponsor Equator magazine is running an online reading group of Mike’s Late Victorian Holocausts, his landmark study of how climate shocks, empire, and the world market combined to produce mass famine and deepen global inequality. Check it out at equator.org/events

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Aurélie Daher, author of a piece for Responsible Statecraft, looks at the destruction Israel is visiting upon southern Lebanon. Annie McClanahan, author of Beneath the Wage, discusses nonstandard forms of work and compensation.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Advanced capitalist countries have recently rediscovered the role of industrial policy to build out key economic sectors like semiconductors and AI. But what happens if business is the one calling all the shots?

On this latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, we’re sharing Vivek Chibber’s keynote address from the 2026 IFAR Consortium Conference, hosted by the Indonesian International Islamic University. He discusses how developing countries used industrial policy in the past, why the US and Europe are now turning to greater state intervention, and how one could build a new social-democratic alliance between the state and labor.

The latest issue of Catalyst is out and you can subscribe for just $20 using the code CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM: https://catalyst-journal.com/subscribe/?code=CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM

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Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

Jodi Dean, who has a new Substack on the issue, surveys how AI has been terrible. Anatol Lieven, author of a new article for New Left Review’s Sidecar blog, looks at the bloody stalemate that is the Russia–Ukraine war.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Featuring Molly Crabapple on her book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. The second in a two-part interview.

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The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvir.