Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 16, 2025 Ilan Pappé, author of Israel on the Brink, on the ceasefire and how the deepening crisis of Israeli society could lead to something better • Jennifer Berkshire on the appalling Trump educational agenda
Fresh audio product: public monuments, Trump’s Gaza scheme, Mamdani’s run for NYC mayor
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 2, 2025 Erin Thompson on the politics of public monuments as Trump talks of restoring Confederate statues • Mouin Rabbani returns for a look at Trump’s dubious Gaza peace scheme • Ted Hamm, author of Run Zohran Run!, on Mamdani’s campaign for NYC mayor
fresh audio product: recognizing Palestine, bailing out Milei
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): September 25, 2025 Mouin Rabbani explains what behind all these fresh diplomatic recognitions of Palestine and speculates on the future of Gaza • Ernesto Semán on the Argentine situation, and the US bailout of the libertarian Javier Milei (see NYRB article here)
Fresh audio product: Trump’s world, a tour d’horizon; checks and balances and elites
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): July 24, 2025 Anatol Lieven looks at US relations with the world under the Trump regime, specifically Russia–Ukraine, Israel–Palestine, and US self-evisceration • Samuel Moyn, author of this article, on checks & balances and the need for better elites
The Gaza ceasefire: an interview with Mouin Rabbani
This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview that I did with Mouin Rabbani on the January 23, 2025, edition of Behind the News. Rabbani is a journalist and analyst with a deep understanding of the Middle East. He has served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. He is the co-editor of Jadaliyya, an ezine that covers the region, where he also hosts its Connections podcast. I asked Rabbani to comment on… Read More
Fresh audio product: Gaza ceasefire, sex work today
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 23, 2025 Mouin Rabbani on the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s plans for the Middle East • Angela Jones and Bernadette Barton, co-editors of Sex Work Today, on that topic
Fresh audio product: best of 2024
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 2, 2025 A look back at highlights of 2024. Three interviews on Israel’s many wars: Rashid Khalidi and Pankaj Mishra with a historical perspective, and Annelle Sheline adds a former insider’s view. Then, Aziz Rana on the awfulness of the US constitution, Anna Kornbluh with a cultural critique of immediacy, and Brooke Harrington on the offshore money-hiding racket. Concluding with a memorial to Jane McAlevey.
Fresh audio product: Trump and the rest of the world, Trump and the cops
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): November 14, 2024 Anatol Lieven tries to divine a Trump foreign policy out of unreliable rhetoric and early appointments • Alex Vitale tries similar on Trump and criminal justice
Fresh audio product: arming and funding Israel, how people actually like their jobs
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 24, 2024 William Hartung, co-author of this paper, on how much aid the US has given to Israel over the last year (plus some wacky stuff on AI weapons) • sociologist Scott Schieman on his surprising research showing that people actually like their jobs
Anatol Lieven on the Biden/Harris grand design
This is the lightly edited transcript of an interview I did with Anatol Lieven on Behind the News, October 17, 2024. The audio is here. My introduction to the segment: Joe Biden’s foreign policy has been consistently and impressively bellicose, aggressively supporting wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and amping up tensions with China. And his anointed successor, who has something like a 50-50 chance of succeeding him, looks to be following suit. Many people have read Kamala Harris’s courting of endorsements from the Cheneys—the Liz and Dick of our times—as mere pragmatic… Read More
Fresh audio product: the Biden/Harris grand design, the emptying Balkans
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 17, 2024 Anatol Lieven on the ambitiously aggressive grand design of the Biden/Harris foreign policy • Lily Lynch, author of this article, on the emptying out of the Balkans
Rashid Khalidi on settler-colonial Israel: an interview
This interview with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, was broadcast on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News, October 3, 2024. Khalidi’s family was a member of the old Palestinian elite that was destroyed in 1948 when Israel, freshly born as a state, expelled three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their homes to make way for the settlers. Along with the larger history, he writes extensively about that family in the book. It’s not a new book—though BtN has never been impressed with novelty… Read More
fresh audio product: a century of war on Palestinians, Hezbollah after Nasrallah
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 3, 2024 Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years War on Palestine, talks about Israeli settler-colonialism and its imperial patrons • Aurélie Daher looks at Hezbollah and the challenges it faces after the assassination of its leader
Fresh audio product: World Court v Israel, crypto throwing money at politicians, psychoanalyzing Biden
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): August 1, 2024 Heidi Matthews analyzes the World Court’s declaration of Israel’s occupations illegal • Molly White on how crypto is spending its money in politics • Nausicaa Renner psychoanalyzes Joe Biden (article here)
Fresh audio product: Hamas is winning, updates on the US carceral state
Just added to my radio archive (after a week off): July 4, 2024 Robert Pape on how, despite Israel’s murderous onslaught on Gaza, Hamas is winning (article here) • Wanda Bertram on how US incarceration rates stack up against the rest of the world (massively), and other news on crime & punishment (report here)
LBO News from Doug Henwood 