Dan interviews historian Robin D.G. Kelley on his classic book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression.

In the 1980s, as China sought to introduce markets into its economy, an internal debate roiled over whether to liberalize prices gradually or all at once. It rejected the free-market shock therapy...

What role does mass incarceration play in American political economy? What does that reveal about what sort of politics are required to overcome it? Ruth Wilson Gilmore with Alberto Toscano and...

By Michal Schatz

By Ben Mabie

Over the last few weeks, The Dig has published our two interviews with Ussama Makdisi, professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of four books, including the...

Hamas has been all over the news since its brutal October 7 attack, but there's much less understanding of how the group emerged. Only by studying Hamas's history can we chart a better way forward.

By Ben Mabie

In December, The Dig published our two interviews with Shaul Magid, the distinguished fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue in Fire Island, New York....

By Ben Mabie

Editor’s note: In a few days, we will be piloting a new newsletter format that involves listeners who support The Dig on Patreon posing questions to Dig guests — in this case, Quinn Slobodian. If...

By Ben Mabie

Transcript of the first part of Dan’s two part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then...

In the US, patients recovering from life-threatening illnesses often find that their first concern is not their health but the massive medical debts they’ve incurred. Right-wing politicians, insure...

The Dig talks to leading Arab American activist Linda Sarsour and immigrant rights lawyer Nicholas Espíritu about Trump's bans on Muslims and refugees.

Western media often characterizes the Middle East as a region eternally riven with sectarian conflicts. In an interview, historian Ussama Makdisi says this is wrong, starting with the fact that the...

In the ’80s and ’90s, the Democrats took a jackhammer to education, housing, and social welfare. This isn’t the story of a weak party unable to defend its earlier gains, but a transformed party...

Sean Guillory on the deep roots of Russia's political-economic order and the bizarre, dangerous state of US relations.

Earlier this month, the historian Jo Guldi joined the Dig to discuss her sweeping history of the struggle over land in the modern world. Subscribers to our patreon account had a chance to ask Guldi...

By Mack Penner

Mass incarceration should be central to any analysis of American political economy—including Trumpism.

By Mack Penner

R.L. Stephens and Ella Mahony discuss what's at stake as hundreds of DSA members prepare to gather in Chicago this week.

“Black faces in high places" hasn't worked out so great for most black people.

by Benjamin Feldman

Filmmaker Brett Story and scholar Jordan Camp on why American geography is carceral geography.

By Michal Schatz

In an interview, author China Miéville explains why Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto is such a remarkable work, defending the book against its detractors and arguing that it remains urgently...

The economic crisis has led to upheaval in a political establishment that worked obsessively to eliminate inflation and maximize profits at the expense of general wellbeing.

Ayn Rand believed that the path to social harmony ran through the inferior masses’ acceptance of brutal rule by their natural superiors. Her perspective was wrong, and its implications were just as...

By Mack Penner

By Michal Schatz

By Maia Silber

By Ben Mabie

“Black faces in high places" hasn't worked out so great for most black people.

The history of American territorial expansion is a history of racial engineering.

by Ben Feldman

By Maia Silber

Old-money WASPs once ruled America with an air of clannish exclusivity. Then the economic crises of the 1970s upended their world, opening the corporate floodgates to new-money barbarians — and...

The foundational myths of the United States celebrate the conquest of the frontier as the creation of a nation founded on principles of equality. Nick Estes thinks it’s time Americans grappled with...

The Dig relaunches, discussing Trump's win with three of of the smartest and savviest radical thinkers we know.

By Mack Penner

by William Harris

Trump has made Obama's massive deportation machine into a terrifying spectacle in a bid to to scare undocumented immigrants from the country.

by William Harris

Germany’s anti-antisemitism has failed to achieve its purported aim. Instead it has given license to proxy Israeli nationalism, fueled a rise in xenophobia, and compounded the challenge of addressing...

By Mack Penner

A three-interview special episode on the history of racial segregation and environmental injustice in Houston.

by Maia Silber

Transcript of the second part of Dan’s two part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political and economic history: the 2008 financial crisis, how China’s response deepened global and...

By Michal Schatz

By Maia Silber

by William Harris

By Michal Schatz

Between 2010 and 2020, a wave of protests erupted around the world. In some cases, these movements strengthened socialist forces. In others, they opened the door to the Right. Vincent Bevins spoke to...