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Podcast

Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More

Join economist Rob Larson, and Real News Network editor-in-chief Max Alvarez for a dissection of the lifestyle, moral bankruptcy, and stupidly large sums of money hoarded by the billionaire class.

The fact that we live in one of the most unequal societies in the history of the world was already common knowledge before the richest man in the world and his teenage lackeys started raiding federal offices this week.

Lists of “richest people in x country” may be easy to come by, but how much do we really know about the disgustingly wealthy who sit atop our global economic system? Who are they, really? How did they accumulate their ill-gotten gains? And what kind of depravities do they use to maintain their positions?

In this discussion with Real News Network editor Max Alvarez, economist Rob Larson will turn the weapons of class-war wielded by the elite against them—crunching the numbers on their balance sheets and combing through their fawning profiles in the Wall Street Journal so that you don’t have to. Larson will build on his book, Mastering the Universe to argue that ending corporate dominance of our society starts with stoking the fires of righteous anger by appreciating all of the sordid ways the ruling class make us miserable, break our society to pieces, and destroy the planet in their pursuit of ever-increasing power and profit.

As we behold whole continents on fire, pandemics thrashing public health system to smithereens, and declining lifespans for the vast majority, Larson and Alvarez will make the case that the only way forward is to yank on the emergency break and give capitalism the boot.

***Please note: This discussion was recorded on February 12, 2025.***

Speakers:

Rob Larson is a professor of economics at Tacoma Community College and author of Mastering the Univers, Bit Tyrants: The Political Economy of Silicon Valley and Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom. He writes for Jacobin and Dollars & Sense, and is the House Economist for Current Affairs. He lives in Tacoma, Washington.

Maximillian Alvarez is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Executive Director of The Real News Network (TRNN) in Baltimore. He is the founder and co-host of Working People, "a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today," and the author of The Work of Living, a collection of interviews with US workers recorded during Year One of COVID-19. Prior to joining TRNN, he was an Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review. He is a columnist for In These Times, and his writing has been featured in outlets like The Nation, Poynter, Boston Review, The Baffler, Current Affairs, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and as an analyst and commentator, he has appeared on programs like PBS NewsHour, Breaking Points, Democracy Now!, The New Republic, NPR’s 1A, The Hill’s Rising, and more.

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Mar 4, 2021

Mama Phife Represents presented by BreakBeat Poets Live! (1-7-21)

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor in conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib to celebrate the release of Boyce-Taylor’s intimate collection Mama Phife Represents, a tribute to her departed son Malik ‘Phife Dawg’ Taylor of the legendary hip-hop trio A Tribe Called Quest. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist. She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. Her collections of poetry include Raw Air (2000), Night When Moon Follows (2000), Convincing the Body (2005), and Arrival(2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. The founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series, Boyce-Taylor is also a poetry judge for the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She has led workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company. Boyce-Taylor is the recipient of the 2015 Barnes & Noble Writers For Writers Award and a VONA fellow. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he will release the book A Little Devil In America with Random House. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Mama Phife Represents: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1551-mama-phife-represents Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/EBSCuT-rM94 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021

Black Mothering as Poetic Archive (1-12-21)

Join Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and Alexis Pauline Gumbs as they discuss mothering, parenting, loss, and Cheryl's new book Mama Phife Represents. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist. She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. Her collections of poetry include Raw Air (2000), Night When Moon Follows (2000), Convincing the Body (2005), and Arrival (2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. The founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series, Boyce-Taylor is also a poetry judge for the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She has led workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company. Boyce-Taylor is the recipient of the 2015 Barnes & Noble Writers For Writers Award and a VONA fellow. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Feminist Love Evangelist, a daughter-on-assignment and a cousin-in-the-making. She is the author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Dub: Finding Ceremony, M Archive: After the End of the World and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity. She is also co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering Love on the Front Lines and co-founder of Mobile Homecoming Trust. This year Alexis is a National Humanities Fellow writing a new biography called The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: Biography as Ceremony. Order a copy of Mama Phife Represents: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1551-mama-phife-represents Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/sr1_I0h4HZM Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021

Blood Red Lines: Fighting Fascism and the Far Right (1-12-21)

Join Brendan O'Connor and Jay Caspian Kang for a conversation about fighting fascism in the context of recent far-right violence. ---------------------------------------------------- Even as Donald Trump prepares to leave office, the forces that put him there have not yet dissipated, as the storming of Capitol Hill by a militant coalition of revanchist small business owners, street-fighting neo-fascists, and Qanon cultists made clear earlier this month. Through on-the-ground reporting, archival research, and critical analysis, Brendan O'Connor's Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right unearths the history of this social formation, tracks its transformation during the Trump years, and charts its future. ---------------------------------------------------- Brendan O' Connor is a journalist and writer in New York. He has written for The Baffler, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His latest article on the recent far right violence in Washington, A Preview of What's to Come, was published at The Nation. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, East, and the National Writers Union. His new book, Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right is now available from Haymarket Books. Jay Caspian Kang is a correspondent on Vice News Tonight and a writer-at-large at the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Blood Red Lines: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1519-blood-red-lines Order a copy of Jay Caspian Kang's book, The Dead Do Not Improve: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9780307953896 Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/UtYrGZWCeCQ Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021

Black Lives Matter at School Philadelphia Edition (1-13-21)

Join Black Lives Matter at School activists and educators for a conversation about the new uprising for educational justice, Philly-style. ---------------------------------------------------- Education activists Tamara Anderson, Jesse Hagopian, Ismael Jimenez, Dana Morrison join Edwin Mayorga for a conversation about the struggle against systemic racism in schools, how we can win real educational justice and the lessons from Black Lives Matter at School organizing in Philadelphia and beyond. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Tamara Anderson is an advocate for children and teens, an antiracist trainer, a professional artist, an editor, a freelance journalist, and a blogger with over twenty years of experience as an educator. She supervises middle and high school pre-service teachers at La Salle University and serves as an adjunct at West Chester University. Her work with juvenile justice led to her being the recipient of the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant. Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives. Ismael Jimenez is a dedicated educator, who for the last fifteen years has worked with students in Philadelphia from preschool age to high school. Ismael assisted in the development of the updated social studies curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia. Ismael is a core member of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee and Black Lives Matter Philly, a founding member of the Melnated Educators Collective and a co-founder of the Philadelphia Black History Collaborative. Dana Morrison is an Assistant Professor in West Chester University’s Department of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies. She began working on higher education outreach for the week of action in Philadelphia in 2017 and has since organized Black Lives Matter events with students, faculty and staff throughout the PA State System of Higher Education. Edwin Mayorga (moderator) is a parent, educator, scholar-activist. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies and the Program in Latin American and Latino Studies at Swarthmore College (PA). He is host of the podcast Encuentros Políticos/Political Encounters on USALAmedia. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Black Lives Matter at School: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1554-black-lives-matter-at-school Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/zkN_kOrgjSg Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021

African Politics Today: What Progressives Need to Know (1-15-21)

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Mar 4, 2021

The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop (1-21-21)

Join Felicia Rose Chavez and Kiese Laymon as they discuss The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop’s call to consciously work against traditions of dominance in the classroom and how to achieve authentically inclusive writing communities. Get a copy of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1552-the-anti-racist-writing-workshop ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Felicia Rose Chavez is an award-winning educator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She is the author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom and co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT with Willie Perdomo and Jose Olivarez. Chavez served as Program Director to Young Chicago Authors and founded GirlSpeak, a literary webzine for young women. She went on to teach writing at the University of New Mexico, where she was distinguished as the Most Innovative Instructor of the Year, the University of Iowa, where she was distinguished as the Outstanding Instructor of the Year, and Colorado College, where she received the Theodore Roosevelt Collins Outstanding Faculty Award. Her creative scholarship earned her a Ronald E. McNair Fellowship, a University of Iowa Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, a Riley Scholar Fellowship, and a Hadley Creatives Fellowship. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Felicia currently serves as Scholar-in-Residence in Creativity and Innovation at Colorado College. Find her at www.antiracistworkshop.com. Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA in Fiction from Indiana University. Laymon is currently the Ottilie Schillig Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He served as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Nonfiction at the University of Iowa in Fall 201. Laymon is the author of the novel Long Division , the collection of essays How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and Heavy: An American Memoir. Heavy, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal, the LA Times Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose and Audible’s Audiobook of the Year, was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by the The Undefeated, New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Library Journal, The Washington Post, Southern Living, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times Critics. Laymon is the recipient of the 2019 Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. Laymon has written essays, stories and reviews for numerous publications including Esquire, McSweeneys, New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, ESPN the Magazine, Granta, Colorlines, NPR, LitHub, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, PEN Journal, Fader, Oxford American, Vanity Fair, The Best American Series, Ebony, Travel and Leisure, Paris Review, Guernica and more. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/6B1_pIVzPRU Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks