Fresh audio product: Trump & the courts, class & elections, hipster nihilists

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): March 27, 2025 Samuel Moyn on Trump and the courts • Chris Maisano, author of this article, on class and politics • Evgenia Kovda on hipster nihilism (article here)

Fresh audio product: a couple of Joes, the unchanging Ivies

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): December 26, 2024 Branko Marcetic, author of Yesterday’s Man, says farewell to Joe Biden (and takes some shots at Joe Scarborough too) • Santiago Pérez, co-author of this paper, on how little the class composition of elite college student bodies have changed

Fresh audio product: boys talk, economists on inequality

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): September 19, 2024 Niobe Way, author of Rebels with a Cause, on the emotional and social lives of boys and what they’re telling us about society • Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality, reviews what economists have said about the topic over the centuries

Fresh audio product: durability of slaveholder wealth, a conservative looks at the election, effects of teachers’ strikes

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): September 12, 2024 Neil Sehgal, co-author of this paper, on the durability of slaveholder wealth, via a look at Congress • Emily Jashinsky with a conservative’s view of the election • Melissa Lyon, co-author of this paper, on the effects of teachers’ strikes

Fresh audio product: wars, economic policy preferences

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): November 9, 2023 Anatol Lieven on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and the global standing of US power • Ilyana Kuziemko and Suresh Naidu, co-authors of this paper, on class differences in economic policy preferences (predistributionist vs. redistributionist)

Encore audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): December 29, 2022 historian David Roediger, author of The Sinking Middle Class, on the uses of that term in US politics • economist Ellora Derenoncourt, co-author of this paper, on the US racial wealth gap, 1860–2020 [holiday-season encore presentation of interviews first broadcast in June]

Americans’ class ID shifts down

The USA is the country where everyone feels middle-class, right? No. Gallup is out with the latest edition of a question it’s asked ten times over the last twenty years: “If you were asked to use one of these five names for your social class, which would you say you belong in?” When they did the survey in April, the largest set of respondents said “middle,” 38%—but that’s not much more than a third. Almost as many, 35%, said “working” (a term that has often been pronounced obsolete). Here’s some more detail:… Read More

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): June 25, 2020 Nikhil Pal Singh on race, class, policing, protest • Michael Kinnucan of Brooklyn DSA’s electoral committee on left victories in the NYC primary elections

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Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 24, 2019 Gabriel Winant, author of this article, on the professional–managerial class and its decomposition (the 1977 Ehrenreich papers are here and here; their 2013 follow-up is here) • Alan Beattie, author of this paper, on the US-led global order and its decomposition

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Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 3, 2019 Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough, on the paradox of human rights discourse arising alongside great inequality, and on the difference between poverty reduction and income compression

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Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): August 24, 2017 Jodi Dean on class vs. identity, and the online life vs. practice • Jason Wilson on Charlottesville and the far right

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Just added to my radio archive (date is link to show): January 26, 2017 Asad Haider, author of this, on the problems of “white privilege” discourse • Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of the new novel Class, on race and class in the world of Brooklyn public schools

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And so soon! Freshly added to my radio archive: April 14, 2016 Ann Neumann, author of The Good Death, on how we spend our final days in the USA • Richard Florida on class and urban space  

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Just added to my radio archive: October 22, 2015 Leo Panitch on the Canadian election • Megan Erickson, author of Class War: The Privatization of Childhood, on class and schools

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Just posted to my radio archives: May 22, 2014 Matt Taibbi, author of The Divide, on criminalizing the poor (and dissenters) and letting bankers run free BtN has been fundraising for KPFA all month. This is the first show with original content since April 24—this interview only, less the fundraising. So it’s short. But please contribute to KPFA if you want to keep these shows coming. Be sure to mention BtN when you do.