Fresh audio product: Ukraine, libraries, Cold War fiction

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 24, 2022 Richard Seymour, author of this article, on the cultural politics of the war in Ukraine • Emily Drabinski on the war against libraries • Annie Levin on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Cold War fiction [info on Current Affairs]

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 17, 2022 Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind, on the market-friendly New Democrats, from the 1970s into the 1990s and beyond • Barry Eichengreen on the role of the dollar and threats to its pre-eminence.

Oil and gasoline prices move together

I keep seeing people on social media saying things like, “Well oil prices are down but gasoline prices are still high.” Look, the last thing I want to do is defend the fossil fuel industry. It should be put out of business as soon as possible because it’s a threat to civilization and maybe human life itself. But on this point, the social media pundits are wrong. For example, in August 2013, crude oil (as measured by West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark) was $107 a barrel and the average gasoline price… Read More

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 10, 2022 Alexander Zaitchik, author of Owning the Sun, on how the pharmaceutical industry became such a high-priced racket • Zongyuan Zoe Liu, co-author of this article, on sanctions and the global pre-eminence of the US dollar

Anatol Lieven on the roots of disaster

[Here’s an transcript of my interview with Anatol Lieven, broadcast on March 3, 2022, edited to make it read more like prose than spoken word. My comments are in square brackets. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lieven covered the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the southern Caucasus, for the Financial Times and the Times of London. In the 2000s, he worked at several think tanks in Washington and is now a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s also got seven… Read More

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 3, 2022 Anatol Lieven on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine • Alyssa Giachino and Derek Seidman, among the authors of this report, on private equity and fossil fuels