Jacobin Radio Folgen

Mass incarceration should be central to any analysis of American political economy. It's also a moral monstrosity. But before The New Jim Crow and anti-mass incarceration activists across the country loudly insisted this was the case, it received little attention. Marie Gottschalk, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, and The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. She talks with The Dig about prisons in American life. You can read Gottschalk's recent piece for Jacobin "Conservatives Against Incarceration?" here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/carceral-state-mass-incarceration-conservatives-koch-trump/

American slaveholders before the Civil War oversaw an incredibly brutal economic system that generated enormous wealth for a tiny elite while denying enslaved Africans the most basic rights. But they also presided over American foreign policy, overseeing US territorial and economic expansion. As historian Matt Karp explains in This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy, they didn't just want an independent slaveholding south — they wanted to spread their empire of slavery to the entire United States and beyond. In November 2016, Karp spoke at the New School in New York City with historian Eric Foner, Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and author of many books on the Civil War including Reconstruction and The Fiery Trial. Karp is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University and a contributing editor at Jacobin. Follow him on Twitter at @karpmj.Produced by Tanner Howard.

The horrors of the Trump administration have shown no signs of slowing in the month he has been in office. But so far, neither has the pushback we've seen in the streets. The protests have reminded Ellie Mae O'Hagan of the anti-austerity protests in the United Kingdom — both in terms of the hope they represent and the potential dangers and pitfalls they face. O'Hagan wrote about this in a recent article for Jacobin, "Lessons from the Anti-Austerity Movement," which you can read here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/lessons-from-the-anti-austerity-movement/ Ellie Mae O'Hagan is a frequent contributor to the Guardian who lives in London. Follow her on Twitter at @MissEllieMae.