Fresh audio product: the Desi diaspora, finance capital today

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): February 22, 2024 Jeet Heer on Indian Americans in politics and society (article here) • Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno, authors of The Fall and Rise of American Finance, on the new finance capital

Fitch lecture: 13th annual edition, with Robin D.G. Kelley

This year’s Robert Fitch memorial lecture—here’s the text of the first, which I gave in March 2011, which has a lot of background on Bob—will be delivered by Robin D.G. Kelley on Monday, March 18, at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens. Kelley, a distinguished professor of history at UCLA, is calling his talk “From the Waterfront to the Sea: Working Class Democracy and the Question of Palestine.” I’ll be doing the intro. More info here.

Fresh audio product: the bankers’ club and how to bust it, the problem with immediacy

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): February 15, 2024 Gerald Epstein, author of Busting the Bankers’ Club, on the finance racket and how to transform it • Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, on our sped-up, unmediated cultural eternal present

fresh audio product: exhausted humanity faces climate crisis, recessions raise lifespans

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): February 8, 2024 Ajay Singh Chaudhary talks about his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World • Matt Notowidigdo, co-author of this paper, on how recessions increase life expectancy

Vibecession over

Though I’m certainly not the first to make this observation, it looks like the “vibecession” is over. The term was coined in June 2022 by multimedia economic analyst Kyla Scanlon (drawing on Keynes but also the poetry of Charles Bukowski), who defined it as “a disconnect between consumer sentiment and economic data. So basically, the economy is doing fine, but people are absolutely not feeling fine.” By recent measures, people are starting to feel somewhat finer, if not bounce-off-the-walls fine. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index rose 6.8 points in January to its highest level… Read More

Fresh audio product: why did SA bring case against Israel, organizing amidst sprawl, the widening war in the Middle East

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): February 1, 2024 Sean Jacobs explores why South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel • Eric Blanc (Substack post here) on organizing in a scattered and atomized society • Hassan El-Tayyab on the widening war in the Middle East