Ottawa's Jenn Labelle paints the perfect picture of every Canadian family on movie night, and in a time when world travel is down, Montreal's Gino Durante takes you on an audio trip of his favourite journeys.

Edward Ongweso Jr. and Jacob Silverman on cryptocurrency, NFTs, Elon Musk, the metaverse, meme stocks, and techno-utopianism amid the crushing reality of our neoliberal hellscape. The first in a two-episode series on crypto. 

Read Dan's new essay on border control politics: nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/border-crises/

---

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' novella, written in 1843 when he was 31, which has become intertwined with his reputation and with Christmas itself. Ebenezer Scrooge is the miserly everyman figure whose joyless obsession with money severs him from society and his own emotions, and he is only saved after recalling his lonely past, seeing what he is missing now and being warned of his future, all under the guidance of the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet To Come. Redeemed, Scrooge comes to care in particular about one of the many minor characters in the story who make a great impact, namely Tiny Tim, the disabled child of the poor and warm-hearted Cratchit family, with his cry, "God bless us, every one!"

With

Juliet John Professor of English Literature and Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at City, University of London

Jon Mee Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of York

And

Dinah Birch Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Mary Sarotte tells Spencer Mizen about her new book Not One Inch, which reveals how diplomatic missteps after the fall of the Berlin Wall soured US-Russian relations and fuelled the rise of Vladimir Putin.

(Ad) Mary Sarotte is the author of Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (Yale University Press, 2022). Buy it now from Amazon:

​​https://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-One-Inch-Post-Cold-Stalemate/dp/030025993X/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-Histboty

---

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Patreon only ep: https://www.patreon.com/posts/59449701 Who is Ghislaine Maxwell? And what has the trial against her revealed so far about her & her partner in literal crime Jeffrey Epstein? And what are their connections to "The Intelligence Community"? Kim Iversen, the host of the Kim Iversen Show and Garland Nixon a former police officer and criminal justice teacher turned political analyst & radio show host join the show to share their thoughts. Plus Katie shares how she got the first woman elected president of Honduras, the sleazeballs who went to, taught at and directed her alma mater and Katie Halper Show Merch!

Democracy Now! 2021-12-16 Thursday

• Headlines for December 16, 2021
• As Omicron Spreads, 100+ Firms in Africa, Asia & Latin America Can Make mRNA Vaccine If Tech Shared
• Steve Coll on How the U.S. Pursued Withdrawal Over Peace in Afghanistan & Let the Taliban Take Over
• "No Food Available": Afghanistan Faces Catastrophe as Donors Cut Humanitarian Aid to Taliban Gov't

Download this show

Having left their bubble of east coast elites, the boys are finally ready to accept (and accept responsibility for) the Let’s Go Brandon movement. They also revise the American Conservative’s revision of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Reconstruction revisionism. Dates and tickets for our Southern Tour now live at chapotraphouse.com/live

Democracy Now! 2021-12-10 Friday

• Headlines for December 10, 2021
• "Terrible Step": Press Freedom in Danger as U.K. Court Clears the Way for Julian Assange Extradition to U.S.
• "Hold the Line": Watch Filipina Journalist Maria Ressa's Full Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
• "The Forever Prisoner": Alex Gibney on Abu Zubaydah, Held in Guantánamo Without Charge Since 2006

Download this show

In an extended interview with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, he discusses his new film, “The Forever Prisoner,” which tells the story of Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, the first so-called high-value prisoner subjected to the CIA’s torture program, who has been indefinitely imprisoned since 2006 without charge.

Touré Reed and Adolph Reed discuss their new article in Socialist Register, how the project of racial justice became unmoored from political economy in the postwar era, and how this disconnect continues to shape our understandings of race and inequality today.

The Jacobin Show offers socialist perspectives on class and capitalism in the twenty-first century, the failures of liberalism, and the prospects of rebuilding a left labor movement in the US. This is the podcast version of the show from December 7, 2021 with Jen Pan and Ariella Thornhill hosting.

Subscribe to Jacobin for just $10: https://jacobinmag.com/subscribe/?code=JACOBINYT

Music provided by Zonkey: https://linktr.ee/zonkey

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jacobinmag

---

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For 78 days in 1990, a group of Mohawk protestors withstood a siege from the Canadian armed forces. The root of the conflict? A town in Quebec sought to take over their land to expand a golf course. The Oka Crisis is the subject of Alanis Obomsawin's acclaimed documentary KANEHSATAKE: 270 YEARS OF RESISTANCE (1993), which offers us an opportunity to consider how Canada treats its First Nations.

Watch the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yP3srFvhKs

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. To hear weekly bonus episodes, subscribe to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus/

---

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Vann joins Long Reads for a special, two-part conversation about Indonesia’s turbulent past and present. Michael is a professor of history at Sacramento State University who specializes in the history of Southeast Asia. Today’s episode covers the events leading up to the coup in the 1960s, when General Suharto seized power and slaughtered the Indonesian left.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by Features Editor Daniel Finn.

You can find Michael's essays about Indonesian history on the Jacobin website:

"The True Story of Indonesia’s US-Backed Anti-Communist Bloodbath" https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/01/indonesia-anti-communist-mass-murder-genocide

"Indonesia Still Hasn’t Escaped Suharto’s Genocidal Legacy" https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/09/indonesia-sukarno-suharto-communists-genocide-dictatorship-corruption

Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

---

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's an east-coast themed comedy show today with the pride of Cornerbrook Trent McLellan and Sackville's Nikki Payne, who asks "Have you seen my contractor?"

The 76th Series of Radio 4's multi award-winning ‘antidote to panel games’ promises yet more quality, desk-based entertainment for all the family. The series starts its run at the Hexagon Theatre in Reading where Jan Ravens and Omid Djalili are pitched against Tony Hawks and Barry Cryer, with Jack Dee as the programme's reluctant chairman. Regular listeners will know to expect inspired nonsense, pointless revelry and Colin Sell at the piano. Producer - Jon Naismith. It is a BBC Studios production.

Democracy Now! 2021-12-08 Wednesday

• Headlines for December 08, 2021
• A One-Sided Narrative: U.S. Press Focuses on "Russian Aggression" While Ignoring U.S. Escalation
• Striking Columbia Student Workers Demand Living Wage as School's Endowment Grows to $14 Billion
• Compassion Is Not a Crime: Animal Rights Activist Avoids Jail After Conviction for Baby Goat Rescue

Download this show

Nils Melzer responds to the Julian Assange verdict on a special Useful Idiots Livestream. Nils Melzer is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture; Human Rights Chair, Geneva Academy; Professor of International Law, University of Glasgow; Vice-President IIHL, and the author of The Trial of Julian Assange (https://twitter.com/nilsmelzer)

Subscribe for extended interviews and to support independent journalism.

Subscribe now

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew discusses the new Top500 list, Atos’ Quantum Learning Machine, and a few SC tidbits. RadioFreeHPC is produced by the greater Columbus Dungeons and Dragons team, led by Kevin, Lord High Dungeon Master and Slayer of the Wasteland. Meeting Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in Kevin’s Mom’s basement. Cookies and… Read More »Top500, Quantum, And SC

On Friday, a familiar pattern played out: The Labor Department released a very, very good jobs report, and the media continued hyping what a lousy economy President Joe Biden is overseeing. As the economy added 210,000 jobs, the unemployment rate fell nearly half a percentage point — down to 4.2 percent, a full point lower than the Congressional Budget Office projected a year ago. Wages were up nearly 5 percent year over year, with bigger gains most concentrated among the working class. Hourly wages for restaurant workers, for instance, were up more than 13 percent. This comes on top of the child tax credit and other subsidies in the American Rescue Plan, which, along with former President Donald Trump’s stimulus checks, have left people’s savings accounts fatter than they’ve been in a generation. It has practically never been easier to find a job; wages and hours are growing steadily; and people have more money in the bank.

Yet surveys show that the American people by huge margins say they don’t like the direction of the economy. So how can we explain this apparent paradox? Why do people keep saying that the economy sucks even as wages are rising and unemployment is falling?

It would be tempting to suggest that the answer lies in the fact that since the late 1970s, we went some 40 years without any real wage growth, and if wages had kept up with productivity, people would be making a lot more than they are now. That’s certainly enough to make people sour on the economy generally, but it doesn’t explain why they’re more sour now than at many other times over the last 40 years. What the paradox reveals is that our political system misunderstands how people identify themselves in relation to the economy. The American people — and importantly, American voters — think of themselves as consumers rather than workers.

For workers, the economy is going well. But for consumers, not so much. If people are asked how the economy is doing, the question they’re answering is: How well is it serving you?

If you order something on Amazon, is it in stock and showing up at your door the next day at the price you’re used to? Can you get a cheap Uber quickly? Are gas and grocery prices up? When people walk into a restaurant and one of the sections is closed because they’re short-staffed, that’s the kind of thing people mean when they say that the economy is going badly. It’s not serving them the way that they’re used to.

The transformation of the American people from workers to consumers goes back a long way, but it picked up its real strength right after World War II. During the war, workers had either left their jobs to serve overseas or were working long hours at home for much less pay than they could command in order to support the war effort. “Together we can do it!” blared one typical General Motors poster, showing two fists next to each other, one labeled “labor” and the other “management.” The poster commanded “Keep ’em firing!” above images of a tank and a fighter plane that needed the factory’s supplies of ammunition.

When the war ended, the pot boiled over, and workers demanded to be compensated for their sacrifices. They had been essential to the war effort, and now they wanted to be treated like it.

The great post-war strike wave of 1945 and 1946 saw millions of workers walk off the job, like nothing that had ever been seen in the U.S. Instead of sitting down with labor and constructing a new post-war social contract, corporate America organized against the workers and strikes, fighting them at every step and winning many of the contests. Voters handed Congress to the GOP for the first time in 18 years, and Republicans used the opportunity to pass the Taft-Hartley Act, which sharply limited union activities and helped destroy the labor movement. Instead of letting workers take control of their own destinies, American policymakers bought off the new veterans and the rising middle class — the white element of it, anyway — with a GI bill, the construction of endless suburbs and highways, and the advent of mass consumer society.

So this was the deal: The bosses would fully control the workplace, and you’d be miserable at your job, but you’d have a decent amount of security, and your paycheck could buy you a house with a yard and the endless stream of gadgets that this new economy would produce. You had no autonomy at work, but you did at home, and so the way you spent your money, not the way you earned it, became the way you identified yourself. You were a consumer, not a worker.

It’s as consumers that we make political judgments.

Fifty years later, after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush urged us all to do our true patriotic duty.

“One of the great goals of this nation’s war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry,” he said in the weeks following September 11. “Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida.”

And if we didn’t storm the aisles of Walmart on Black Friday, Bush warned, the terrorists would win. “We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don’t conduct business — where people don’t shop.”

And so we are both consumers and workers, but the pride we take is in our consumption. That’s where we believe we have autonomy. It’s as consumers that we make political judgments.

Democrats are frustrated that they’re not getting credit for rising wages and people’s fatter bank accounts, but they’re missing the psychological piece of this. If you’re in a union and it fights for and wins a raise, then you’re going to recognize that the union deserves credit for that. You and your colleagues fought for better wages, and you won. If there are politicians who supported you and helped enforce labor laws along the way, you share some credit with those politicians.

But if you’re not in a union, and your boss gives you a raise so that you won’t quit, why would you give the Democrats credit? From your perspective, you did that. You’ve been working hard, and you deserved that raise. And you’re right — but you were working hard in previous years too, and you didn’t get as much back then. The difference was full employment, which is a function of policy, but workers seldom connect their raises to those types of attenuated policy decisions.

They do, however, connect prices to policy. They deserved their raise, but higher gas prices and grocery bills? That’s something that somebody else is doing to them, and the easiest one to punish is the party in power.

The post The Paycheck Paradox: What’s Missing When We Talk About the Economy appeared first on The Intercept.

The famous Blyth Staithes (created for off-loading coal into ships) were the backdrop for one of the grimmest scenes in the Michael Caine classic Get Carter - the smoggy industrial view at the time described by the director as an "absolute vision of hell". Undaunted, comedian Mark Steel travels to this part of Northumberland and finds a fascinating industrial legacy, a posh pub, a very nice beach and prominent indications of its role in the first and second World Wars. Does a town blighted by so many closures show any evidence of green shoots? Mark presents his findings to a local audience at The Phoenix Theatre and as ever gets away with just the right amount of affection rudeness and we learn more about a very distinctive coastal town in the UK. The full box set of all episodes (with well over 50 towns visited) is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Written by and starring...Mark Steel With additional material from Pete Sinclair Production Coordinator...Beverly Tagg Producer...Julia McKenzie A BBC Studios Production.

Russia is seeking a legally binding pledge that NATO will stop expanding east, including to Ukraine. If the US refuses, is war next? Scholar and author Richard Sakwa analyzes the growing Russia-Ukraine conflict and how Russiagate fueled it. Guest: Richard Sakwa. Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent. His books include "Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands" and his latest, "Deception: Russiagate and the New Cold War." Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate

From the Icebreakers Comedy Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, we shine our spotlight on comedian Rob Pue.

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches in front of a remote audience - and all from their own home! Joining them for the final episode of the series and all from a safe distance is Janine Harouni, Jamie MacDonald with music supplied by Tim Sutton and Sooz Kempner. Voice Actors: Kieran Hodgson and Nimisha Odedra. Producer: Rajiv Karia Production Co-Ordinator: Sarah Sharpe BBC Studios Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the events of 21st October 1805, in which the British fleet led by Nelson destroyed a combined Franco-Spanish fleet in the Atlantic off the coast of Spain. Nelson's death that day was deeply mourned in Britain, and his example proved influential, and the battle was to help sever ties between Spain and its American empire. In France meanwhile, even before Nelson's body was interred at St Paul's, the setback at Trafalgar was overshadowed by Napoleon's decisive victory over Russia and Austria at Austerlitz, though Napoleon's search for his lost naval strength was to shape his plans for further conquests.

The image above is from 'The Battle of Trafalgar' by JMW Turner (1824).

With

James Davey Lecturer in Naval and Maritime History at the University of Exeter

Marianne Czisnik Independent researcher on Nelson and editor of his letters to Lady Hamilton

And

Kenneth Johnson Research Professor of National Security at Air University, Alabama

Producer: Simon Tillotson

The most useful keybinding is C-c w w, or (+workspace/switch-to).

This command prompts you a list of workspaces to choose from. I use Ivy for autocompletion, so I can type any workspace name. If there is a match, it goes to the workspace. Otherwise it creates a new workspace with the name.

Another useful commands is C-c w d, or (+workspace/display) which lists the existing workspaces. But I use it less often than C-c w w because it can show the same list with autocompletion.

Finally, you can set up Doom to show workspace name in modeline.

Note: You need to enable Doom ui:workspaces to get the above working.

Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter Oliver Stone about his new film "JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass," which was recently released on SHOWTIME. Stone explores misconceptions regarding JFK's legacy and discusses why he believes the US government refuses declassify documents related to the assassination even 58 years since it took place.

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew completes an SC roundup discussing supply chain issues, composable computing, and Oracle’s cloud service. RadioFreeHPC is brought to you by Prairie Gulch Old Western Reenactment Club. Join them in their new Oregon Trail reenactment. Apply online. RadioFreeHPC is distributed in partnership with HPCwire. *Download the MP3 * Follow us… Read More »But Is It Composable? (SC Roundup)

With its story of an idealistic political outsider who arrives in Washington to shake things up, Frank Capra's MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) helped codify what is perhaps the quintessential archetype of American politics. But... what does the movie actually say? To find out, we sat down and actually watched it. This one has been a long time coming, folks!

---

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches in the BBC's Radio Theatre in front of a remote audience. Joining them from a safe distance is Athena Kugblenu taking on MPs wages, and Geoff Norcott on must-see TV. This week's music is supplied by Huge Davies. Voice Actors: Emma Sidi and Jason Forbes Producer: Rajiv Karia Production Co-Ordinator: Sarah Sharpe BBC Studios Production

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches from the BBC Radio Theatre in front of a remote audience. Joining them from a safe distance is Glenn Moore talking about returning back to the office, Daliso Chaponda on the future of the Metaverse and Stiff & Kitsch with a song about all the things we can now worry about again now the pandemic is over (kind of). Voice Actors: Luke Kempner and Katie Norris Producer: Pete Strauss Production Co-Ordinator: Sarah Sharpe BBC Studios Production

Steve Punt and Gareth Gwynn present the week via topical stand-up and sketches in front of a remote audience - and all from their own home! Joining them from a safe distance is Michael Spicer tackling non-sensical poiticians, Priya Hall wonders why we're experiencing shortages of pretty much everything and Igancio Lopez plays us out with a Bowie-inspired song about billionaires in space. Voice Actors: Luke Kempner and Karen Bartke. Producer: Pete Strauss & Rajiv Karia Production Co-Ordinator: Sarah Sharpe BBC Studios Production