The phrase ‘adult beginner’ can sound patronising. It implies you are learning something you should have mastered as a child. But learning is not just for the young. By Tom Vanderbilt. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

I started using Emacs almost exactly four years ago, after almost a decade of Vim. I made the switch cold turkey. I vividly remember being extremely frustrated by unbearable slowness while editing a Clojure file at work. With no sane way of debugging it, just moving the cursor up and down would result in so much lag that I had to step away from the computer to breathe for a while.

David Dayen joins hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper to break down the GameStop/Wall Street Story. They also discuss the early days of Biden's presidency, and the moves that are available to him with his new authority.

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Behind the News, 1/28/21 - guests: Sarah Buehler on Keystone; Chris Maisano on the work of Leo Panitch - Doug Henwood

Regular US contributor Bruce Shapiro and Irish columnist Fintan O'Toole make sense of the events that have unfolded in the 'Failed State' so far this year, and what it might take for America to wrestle with its history and restore some semblance of democracy.

Joe Biden's affable, honest and engaging personality were critical to him winning the Presidency from Donald Trump. It has also built him a strong network of contacts internationally which he will be calling on as he manages not only his domestic crises but the numerous foreign policy challenges as well.

Every Wednesday at 6 PM ET, Jen Pan, Ariella Thornhill, and Paul Prescod host a new episode of The Jacobin Show, offering 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 audio version of the broadcast on January 20, 2021.

Labor organizer Jane McAlevey joins us to discuss strategies for building a working class movement under a Biden presidency. And we cover the Biden inauguration, new initiatives to tax the rich, and the difference between political power and vigilante violence. Jane McAlevey has been an organizer and negotiator in the labor movement for over twenty years. She is also the strikes correspondent for the Nation, senior policy fellow at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, and author of the books Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell), No Shortcuts, and A Collective Bargain.

In the latest in our series tackling the big questions on major historical topics, Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, an expert in ancient history, responds to listener questions and popular internet search queries on the Persian empire. Once the largest empire the world had ever seen, Persia was one of the dominant powers of the ancient world.

 

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Behind the News, 1/21/21 - guests: Réka Juhász on precedents for WFH; Vanessa Williamson on Confederate roots of "taxpayer" discourse - Doug Henwood

‘Hygge’ (pronounced hoo-ga) along with ‘tak’ (the word for ‘thank you’ that we learnt from watching Borgen and other Scandi dramas) is one of the few Danish words to have become known to us in the UK. It’s a word that means comfort, contentment and cherishing the simple pleasures in life. In lifestyle magazines it’s faux fur throws, cups of hot cocoa and scented candles; but to the Danish it has simpler and less commercial roots. As these cold Winter nights draw in after a difficult year of scant comfort, it feels like we all need some hygge and legendary Dane, Sandi Toksvig, will do her best to bring it to you. Deep in the Danish countryside in her cosy wood cabin Sandi will explore the concept of hygge and the Danish way of life and welcomes celebrity guests who join her in front of the open fire to explore what brings them hygge. In this episode Sandi is joined by comedian and friend Alan Davies who talks about walking in nature, literature, the childhood toy he still wants and escaping from the demands of smart phones. Guests for the series are Grayson Perry, Alan Davies, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Bridget Christie, Sindhu Vee, Clive Myrie, Professor Brian Cox, Zoe Lyons and presenters and podcasters Rose and Rosie . We look forward to you joining Sandi in her cabin (there will be pastries). Host...Sandi Toksvig Producer...Julia McKenzie Material for Sandi's opening script... Simon Alcock Production Coordinator...Carina Andrews Sound Recordist and Editor...Rich Evans A BBC Studios Production

"Biden Calls For Hope And Healing In Speech," NPR reports. "Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot calls for return to Sept. 11 unity," writes The Chicago Tribune. Following the 2014 Ferguson protests, a CNN headline read, "Obama: Now is the time for peace, healing." "Filmmaker Ken Burns aims for healing with new documentary about Vietnam War," the San Diego Union-Tribune has told us. Everywhere we turn columnists, celebrities, pundits, and politicians are insisting we have "unity," "come together," promote "peace" and work to "heal the divisions."   On its face these concepts sound fine enough: after all, who doesn’t like peace? Unity sounds great! Who wouldn't want to "heal" our wounds? Wounds are bad! But in the majority of political contexts, these warm and fuzzy buzzwords rush past the messy and difficult work of justice, substantive change, or reparations and get straight to the part where everyone just feels good about themselves.   In a world where 2100 billionaires hoard more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population, where billions live in abject poverty, what do concepts like peace mean? After an administration that has carried out deliberate policies of ethnic cleaning at the U.S border, what does unity entail? In a country that has leveled much of the Middle East, Korea, Vietnam, and overthrown numerous democracies in Latin America, what does healing involve? Without concrete policies of accountability, restitution, restoration and reparation, squishy liberal notions of "unity" and "healing" achieve little more than protecting the status quo.   This isn’t a unique problem: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously reminded white liberals that "True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice," a point he made literally hundreds of times in his years of advocacy to a handwringing media insisting everyone just calm down and go home and let the lawyers at the Department of Justice take care of things.   Nevertheless the problem persist decades later: time and again, before there's been any concrete changes, policy proposals, or restitution to victims of injustice, those in power evoke abstract notions of "healing," "unity" and "peace" to shut up activists and act as of it the work is done right before pivoting back to business as usual.   On this week's episode we will examine the origins of the concepts of "unity" as a political PR gambit, detail how concepts of "healing" which can are very useful in grassroots and interpersonal psychological contexts have been cynically appropriated by those in power, and breakdown how media consumers can avoid the shallow allure of "peace" and "unity" rhetoric in the face of routine, everyday racism, violence, exploitation, and injustice.   Our guest is Lara Kiwani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC).

Thomas Frank joins hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper in this special post-inauguration episode, looking ahead to the Biden era, and how the media can transition from Trump.

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The economic model of social media is organized around personal data surveillance. And that has consequences. These systems that claim to capture our reality are actually shaping our reality and our understanding of the world. Ron Deibert presents the second CBC Massey lecture with a focus on surveillance capitalism. Social media are not only used to sell products, but also to push ideologies. Due to copyright reasons there is no podcast or stream for these lectures on the Big Ideas website. Please head to the CBC Massey Lecture website.

There are dire consequences to living in an always-on, hyper-connected digital society. Digital technologies have created a new machine-based civilization that is increasingly linked to a growing number of social and political maladies. Accountability is weak and insecurity is endemic. Ron Deibert exposes the disturbing impact of the internet and social media on politics, the economy, the environment and humanity. Due to copyright reasons there is no podcast or stream for these lectures on the Big Ideas website. Please head to the CBC Massey Lecture website.

Physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski discusses the impact of oceans on human civilisations through history, from providing food to connecting trade routes. Plus, she explores how our relationship with the oceans has changed throughout the ages.

 

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Now that Donald Trump is gone from office, what’s next? This week on Intercepted: There are a slew of unanswered questions about the siege of the Capitol. Americans are being asked to believe that the national security apparatus — the same one that charged nearly 200 people en masse, including journalists and observers, with felony rioting when Trump was inaugurated in 2017, and has leveled federal charges including terrorism charges on Black Lives Matter protesters — failed to see the threat to the U.S. Congress posed by right-wing extremists, even as people organized across social media platforms in plain sight.

In response to the Capitol siege, Joe Biden and some members of Congress are looking to expand new domestic terrorism laws. They are using the exact same playbook deployed by the Bush-Cheney White House after 9/11 and embraced across the aisles in Congress. This is a dangerous moment where policies with very serious implications could be rushed through in the heat of the moment.

The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux, Ken Klippenstein, Alice Speri, Natasha Lennard, Sam Biddle, Mara Hvistendahl, and Murtaza Hussain share their thoughts on the transition of power from Trump to Biden that is happening today.

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Arthur Schopenhauer is best known for the deep pessimism of his book The World as Will and Representation. Here we focus on a slightly less pessimistic aspect of his philosophy: his views on compassion. Very unusually for an early nineteenth century thinker, he was influenced here by his reading of Indian philosophy. David Bather Woods is the interviewee.

We are very grateful for sponsorship for this episode from St John's College.

Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Doug speaks with Jodi Dean on Trump and American fascism. Plus, a conversation with Quinn Slobodian, co-author of this article, on Querdenken, the eclectic German anti-mask movement that joins hippies and petty capitalists.

Matt and Katie talk about the fallout from the storming of the capitol. Andre Damon of the World Socialist Web Site discusses how censorship has affected political opposition from the left.

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Democracy Now! 2021-01-06 Wednesday

• Headlines for January 06, 2021
• Georgia Turning Blue? In Victory for Grassroots Organizers, Warnock Wins Senate Runoff; Ossoff Leads
• "Unprecedented Moment": Far-Right Forces Swarm D.C. to Back Overturning Election, Egged On by Trump
• "Miscarriage of Justice": No Charges Against White Kenosha Officer Who Shot & Paralyzed Jacob Blake

Download this show

Is Trump a fascist? Has he unleashed fascism? Was July 6 a coup? A failed coup? Never going to be a coup? Do these labels matter? To answer that question, Katie will chat with an amazing round table consisting of: philosopher Jason Stanley; historian and law professor Samuel Moyn; political scientist Jodi Dean; historian Daniel Bessner; and journalist Eugene Puryear. Jason Stanley (https://twitter.com/jasonintrator) is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University whose latest book is "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them." He's a contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Review, The Guardian, Project Syndicate and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jodi Dean (https://twitter.com/Jodi7768) is a political theorist who teaches political, feminist, and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited thirteen books, including The Communist Horizon, Crowds and Party, Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging. Samuel Moyn (https://twitter.com/samuelmoyn), is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at and Professor of History at Yale University. His latest books are "Christian Human Rights" and "Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World." Daniel Bessner is a historian, non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Contributing Editor at Jacobin, and the author of "Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual" and is co-editor of "The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the 20th century" Eugene Puryear (https://twitter.com/EugenePuryear) is the host for Break Through News (https://twitter.com/btnewsroom) and The Punchout podcast; a member of the PSL Party For Socialism and Liberation (https://twitter.com/pslweb) and the author of "Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America."

Should Democrats prioritize impeaching Trump? Should Twitter have removed Trump? If so, when? Will there be a bipartisan expansion of the Surveillance State? Will it mirror what we saw after 9/11? Guests Kyle Kulinski, Zephyr Teachout, Shahid Buttar & Evan Greer will tackle these and other questions. Kyle Kulinski (https://twitter.com/KyleKulinski) is the host of The Kyle Kulinski Show and the co-host of Krystal Kyle & Friends. Shahid Buttar (https://twitter.com/ShahidForChange) is a congressional candidate, Constitutional attorney, activist, and organizer Shahid Buttar (https://twitter.com/ShahidForChange) (https://shahidforchange.us/), ran against Nancy Pelosi in CA-12 in 2020, and will challenge her again in 2022. Evan Greer (https://twitter.com/evan_greer) is an activist singer/songwriter, parent, and she is an organizer based in Boston. Zephyr Teachout (https://twitter.com/ZephyrTeachout) is a Fordham Law professor and the author of “Break 'em Up” (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250200891).

Laurence Rees compares the actions of the two dictators over the course of the Second World War

 

Historian, author and broadcaster Laurence Rees discusses his new book, Hitler and Stalin, which compares the actions of the two dictators over the course of the Second World War.

 

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This week as 2021 stumbles, blinking into the daylight, Andy is joined by Zoe Lyons, Catherine Bohart, Geoff Norcott and Alun Cochrane. On the agenda, the concept of democracy, lockdowns, schools, and the Oxford comma. Written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Alice Fraser, Mike Shephard, Charlie Dinkin and Celya AB Producer: Richard Morris A BBC Studios Production

Behind the News, 1/14/21 - guests: Jodi Dean on Trump and US fascism; Quinn Slobodian on the Querdenker, the German anti-maskers - Doug Henwood

Long Reads is a new 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.

Our guest today is David Ost, who witnessed the emergence of Solidarity first-hand and later wrote a book about the movement's rise and fall called The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe.

Read Ost's piece for Jacobin, "The Triumph and Tragedy of Poland's Solidarity Movement," here: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/poland-solidarity-communism-solidarnosc

Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.