World History

Thawra Ep. 7 – United Arab Republic Against Eisenhower

10 Apr 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the the US’s Eisenhower Doctrine, which in 1957 inaugurated...

Thawra Ep. 6 – Cold War Heats Up

02 Apr 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the intensification of the Cold War across the Middle...

Thawra Ep. 5 – The Struggle for Syria

23 Mar 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the early years of a struggle for Syria that...

Thawra Ep. 4 – From the Nakba to Nasser

11 Mar 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the politics surrounding the Zionist settler colonial destruction of...

Thawra Ep. 3 – The Post-Colonial Arab State System

04 Mar 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRD episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of the Middle Eastern Arab state system...

Thawra Ep. 2 – Birth of Arab Nationalism

27 Feb 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out 20th century anti-colonialism, including Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Great...

Thawra Ep. 1 – Europe’s Imperial Juggernaut

21 Feb 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment sets the stage: European imperialism in the Arab Mashriq from the...

Transcript: How Capitalism Remade Homophobia

28 Jun 2023
Read the transcript here: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/capitalism-homophobia-history-christopher-chitty-sexual-hegemony.

The Fall of OPEC w/ Giuliano Garavini

18 Jun 2023
Featuring Giuliano Garavini on his book The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century. The second in a two-part series on the 20th-century history of petrostates, petrocapitalists, and the world system.

The Rise of OPEC w/ Giuliano Garavini

11 Jun 2023
Featuring Giuliano Garavini on his book The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century. The first of a two-part series on the 20th-century history of petrostates, petrocapitalists, and the world system.

Sexual Hegemony w/ Max Fox and Chris Nealon

25 Mar 2023
Featuring Max Fox and Chris Nealon on the late Christopher Chitty’s book Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System.

Conspiracy of Equals w/ Laura Mason

17 Oct 2022
Featuring Laura Mason on her book The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals. Mason discusses Babeuf’s call to abolish property, his radically egalitarian conspiracy against the Directory government, and the...

Transcript: China Boom w/ Ho-fung Hung

16 Aug 2022
Transcript of the first part of Dan’s two part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then elsewhere but...

Before the West w/ Ayşe Zarakol

28 Apr 2022
Ayşe Zarakol on her book Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders. How centuries of Asian empires from Genghis Khan to Timur and the early Ming Dynasty through the Ottomans and...

China Boom w/ Ho-fung Hung

18 Mar 2022
Part one of a two-part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then elsewhere but not in China; and...

The Dawn of Everything w/ David Wengrow

10 Nov 2021
Astra Taylor interviews archaeologist David Wengrow on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, his new book co-authored with the late David Graeber.

Big Ship Capitalism with Laleh Khalili

30 Apr 2021
Dan interviews Laleh Khalili on Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. The Suez Canal, the colonial roots of contemporary maritime trade, Aden dock worker radicals, why Dubai is not...

David Harvey on Capital

20 Jun 2018
View Transcript

The Right to Have Rights Part II

04 May 2018
This is part two of Dan’s interview on Hannah Arendt’s notion of “the right to have rights.” This episode covers a lot, including why we must fight not only to expand the democratic political community...

The Right to Have Rights Part I

01 May 2018
What are rights worth when government denies people the very right to have rights? Political theorist Hannah Arendt recognized this loss of “the right to have rights” as millions of refugees found themselves without a...

Bhaskar on the Bolsheviks

27 Dec 2017
At the close of the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara discusses his new article on the Bolsheviks and what we can learn from and blame on them—and also what might be...

Peace Can Happen in Korea with Tim Shorrock

05 Dec 2017
View Transcript