The Dig Folgen

That right-wing people in the US and Europe have made George Soros the answer to so many troubling questions is not very surprising: he's a billionaire, he's Jewish and, unlike most of his cohort, he is an actual intellectual who spends much of his money on substantively progressive causes. Daniel Bessner's essay on him in n+1 (https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-globalist/), however, not only sketches out the right's obsessions but also offers a detailed analysis of Soros as a thinker and philanthropist—coming to the conclusion that Soros' hope for an open and pluralistic society will be forever doomed if we continue to live under the very capitalist system that made him so spectacularly rich. Here's Soros's response (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/13/george-soros-im-a-passionate-critic-of-market-fundamentalism) in The Guardian. Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about Thanks to Verso Books. Check out The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield versobooks.com/books/2765-the-amateur Support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig to receive our weekly newsletter

Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead serious shitiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor—all at the mercy of the thinly-veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and about how the task of left organizing is to see through that game and fight together. Dan's guest today is Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the film and also fronts the left-wing hip hop group The Coup. Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot versobooks.com/books/2732-out-of-the-wreckage And October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville versobooks.com/books/2731-october Support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig to receive our weekly newsletter

If Kerri Evelyn Harris wins in Delaware, she will have knocked out an incumbent US Senator. And that would be a really big deal. Harris, a left candidate backed by Justice Democrats, is Dan's guest today. She is the latest candidate putting forward the bold proposition that in a democracy ordinary people should govern themselves—particularly since well-credentialed incumbents like her opponent, Senator Tom Carper, so often do the bidding of corporate interests. Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield versobooks.com/books/2742-radical-technologies Support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig to receive our weekly newsletter