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The United States today exceeds at perpetually waging wars that it are destined to fail to meet their purported objectives. The War on Terror is one such war. The War on Drugs is another. In both cases, failure never leads to much official questioning of the war let alone a repudiation of its underlying wisdom. The conventional wisdom is always that the war just hasn’t been waged in the right way, or aggressively enough. My guest today is Leo Beletsky, who directs the Health in Justice Action Lab at at Northeastern University. He and Jeremiah Goulka recently published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the abolition of the DEA, noting that after hundreds of billions of dollars spent fatal overdose rates have skyrocketed to a historic high. Let’s #AbolishDEA. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out a huge catalogue of excellent left-wing books at versobooks.com Please support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

For many, conservatives and liberals alike, Appalachia provides a skeleton key for interpreting changes in American politics that might otherwise be difficult to comprehend. But the way conservatives and liberals talk about Appalachia tells us a lot more about conservatives and liberals than it does about the region. Elizabeth Catte, the author of What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, puts the region and representations of it in historical and political-economic context. Thanks to Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com. And thanks to University of California Press, which just published Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century by Barbara Ransby ucpress.edu/book/9780520292710/making-all-black-lives-matter Support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

View Transcript Legendary critical theorist Nancy Fraser argues that a total analysis of capitalism requires taking Marxism beyond a narrowly economistic view. Throughout its history, capitalism has been defined not just by labor exploitation but also by the disavowal of that exploitation’s own basic conditions of possibility: the things that the daily business of labor exploitation and surplus value appropriation require from politics, care work, war-making, mining, patriarchy, racism and more. Thanks to Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com. And thanks to University of California Press. Check out Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work by Alex Rosenblat ucpress.edu/book/9780520298576/uberland Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig