KPFA - Letters and Politics
Letters & Politics seeks to explore the history behind today’s major global and national news stories. Hosted by Mitch Jeserich.
Episodes
June 13, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) writes the widely acclaimed Unpopular Front newsletter for Substack. He is the author of When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.
The post The Rise of the Far-Right in the 1990s and Its Influence on Today’s Politics appeared first on KPFA.
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June 12, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: DW Gibson is the author of several books including The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century, 14 Miles: Building the Border Wall, Not Working: People Talk About Losing a Job and Finding Their Way in Today’s Changing Economy, and his latest, One Week To Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests
He serves as director of Art Omi: Writers in Ghent, New York, and h...
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June 11, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and her latest, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.
The post How The Republican Party Went From Anti-Slavery to Pro-Imperialism appeared first on KPFA.
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Part I. Joseph Stiglitz vs Friedrich von Hayek: One Nobel Prize Winning Economist Takes On Another
Guest: Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize–winning economist. He served as chief economist of the World Bank. Currently, he teaches at Columbia University and a Senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is the author of several books including his latest, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.
Part II. Biden’s Mov...
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June 6, 2024 • 59 mins
Ari Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center. He’s the author of several books including, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America; Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics; and his latest, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It.
The p...
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June 5, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Anthony D’Agostino is an Emeritus Professor of History at San Francisco State University. He is an expert on the history of the Russian Revolution and the Cold War and the author of several books including Soviet Succession Struggles: Kremlinology and the Russian Question from Lenin to Gorbachev published in 1988 and republished in 2024.
The post A History of the Soviet Union and its Influence on the Global Left appeare...
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June 4, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Keith O’Brien is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of Paradise Falls, Fly Girls, Outside Shot, and his latest, Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball.
The post Charlie Hustle and the Culture of Gambling in Professional Sports appeared first on KPFA.
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June 3, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: John Nichols is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation Magazine. He is the author of several books including his latest, co-written with Senator Bernie Sanders, “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.”
His Latest piece in the Nation is:
Donald Trump Was Convicted Because of Democracy—Not in Spite of It
Photo (C): Tingey Injury Law Firm, West Charleston Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV, USA
The post The Convicted P...
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Part I. A Book for Kids (& You) to Think About Palestine & Israel.
Guest: Reza Aslan is a writer and scholar of religions. He is a recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award and the author of such books as Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth; No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam; and his latest, A Kids Book About Israel & Palestine.
Part II. KPFA’s Audacious History with Liam O’Donoghue,
Gue...
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May 29, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Glory Liu is a lecturer in social studies at Harvard University. She is the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism.
The post How Adam Smith Became A Capitalist Icon appeared first on KPFA.
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May 28, 2024 • 59 mins
Today’s Letters & Politics is preempted by a special KPFA broadcast:
Mitch Jeserich hosts a special 2-hour remembrance of former broadcaster Larry Bensky. This program airs live from 10am-noon and includes time for listeners to call in with memories of Larry.
KPFA call-in numbers: 510-848-4425, 800-958-9008
The post KPFA Special Programming: A Tribute to Larry Bensky appeared first on KPFA.
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May 27, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Sudhir Hazareesingh is a British-Mauritian historian. He is a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history, among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Mémorial d’Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of thes...
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May 23, 2024 • 5 mins
Guest: Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the New School University in New York City. Richard Wolff is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of the weekly national syndicated television and radio program Economic Update that airs weekly on KPFA.
The post KPFA Special: Richard Wolff on US-China Dynamics and the New Global Order appea...
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Guest: Benjamin Balthaser is associate professor of multi-ethnic US literature at Indiana University, South Bend. He is the author of Anti-Imperialism Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War, and Dedication, a personal history of growing up in a Jewish “red diaper” family. His forthcoming book from Verso, Citizens of the Whole World: The American Jewish Left and Cultures of Anti-...
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May 21, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Adam Shatz is the US editor of the London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is the author of Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination and The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. He is the host of the podcast Myself with Others.
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May 20, 2024 • 59 mins
Mitch Jeserich reads from Thoreau’s Essay Civil Disobedience.
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay “Civil Disobedience” (originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government”), an argument in favor of citizen disobedienc...
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May 16, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Amy Tan is the author of several novels, including The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. She is a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club and is on the board of American Bird Conservancy. Her latest book is The Backyard Bird Chronicles.
The post KPFA Special – Amy Tan: Connecting with Nature appeared first on KPFA.
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May 15, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Gray Brechin has worked as a journalist and television producer and is coauthor of Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream; and Imperial San Francisco, With a New Preface: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin.
KPFA is offering today as a thank-you gift to you a 3 Books Pack: Techno-Road to Rebellion for $350
The 3 books Pack Includes:
– Imperial San Francisco, With a New Preface: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin $150
– ...
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May 14, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and academic, a bestselling author, and the former finance minister of Greece. He is a co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025. His books include And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, and his latest, Technofeudalism: WHAT KILLED CAPITALISM.
Foto credit: Wikimedia
The post KPFA Special – Yanis Varoufakis: How Techno-Feudalism is Repl...
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May 13, 2024 • 59 mins
Guest: Brian Merchant is a journalist focusing on technology and the future of work. He is the author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, and his latest, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. He is also a founder of Terraform, Vice’s science fiction outlet.
The post KPFA Special – The Luddites & the Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech appeared first on KPFA.
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