Best Music on a Show About Economics & Politics Village Voice Best of NYC 2005

Doug Henwood began doing Behind the News on WBAI, New York, in 1995. KPFA, 94.1 FM Berkeley, began broadcasting it in 2009. WBAI’s now-former program director, who seems more interested in hawking miracle cures than political analysis, dropped it 2010, but it lives on at KPFA (Thursdays at noon, Pacific time). Here are the archived shows.

Y ou can get the five most recent shows by visiting the show’s iTunes page. The show is also available via Stitcher (web, iPhone, and Android).

People often ask about the theme. It’s “Wawshishijay (Our Beginning)” by Odo Addy from Pieces of Africa by the Kronos Quartet. I inherited it from WBAI’s late and much-missed program director, Samori Marksman, who gave me one night of his four-time-a-week show in 1995. After he died, I kept the theme in his memory.

Note that the dates of the shows are links. If you want to direct someone right to a specific show, copy that link.

TECHNICAL NOTES The files are in MP3 format, at two levels of fidelity - high (FM radio quality), at 128kbps (as of the December 20, 2012 show—before that they were 64kbps), and low (telephone quality), 16kbps. Shows are 52–53 minutes long; the 128kbps versions are around 50 megabytes, and the 16kbps versions, around 6 megs. The old streaming option is no longer available; it had stopped working on some browsers and devices.

Thanks to Jordan Hayes of Bitway for hosting the archives.

For shows earlier than January 2017, click here.

FULL SHOWS

April 16, 2020 Yanis Varoufakis talks about life under COVID-19, the economic crisis, vultures stripping Greece, and democratizing the EU (includes bonus audio clip of Jim Cramer recalling his Trotskyist past)

September 19, 2019 Sam Gindin on the UAW’s strike against GM, and the possibilities for the green repurposing of a plant GM is abandoning • Robin Einhorn on the role of slavery in shaping tax politics in the early US (article here)

August 15, 2019 Andrew Sernatinger on the recent DSA convention (see article here; mine is here) • Margaret Kimberley on Elijah Cummings, the black misleadership class, Trump, white supremacy, and gun violence [back after summer vacation and KPFA fundraising break]

December 27, 2018 Wilson Sherwin, a grad student at CUNY writing on the welfare rights movement, on that and its relation to anti-/post-work politics • Marta Silva Cabral and Forrest Hylton look at Brazil on the eve of Bolsonaro’s inauguration

February 22, 2018 Marcie Smith, adjunct econ professor at John Jay College (CUNY), on the recently departed Gene Sharp, revered but problematic theorist of nonviolence and friend of the intelligence services

August 10, 2017 [return after KPFA fundraising break] Chris Brooks looks at the reasons for the UAW’s defeat in Mississippi • Cedric Johnson, author of this article, evaluates the lessons of the Black Panthers for politics today If you like Behind the News and want to keep it coming, please support KPFA, its home station. If you do, please mention BtN!

May 18, 2017 Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of Body Horror, on homeownership, chronic illness, getting revenge on rapists, and the working conditions of models • Greg Kaplan, co-author of this paper, on the (stagnating) course of lifetime incomes

April 27, 2017 Sebastian Budgen on the French election: the neoliberal vs. the neofascist • Sofia Japaridze on how foreign NGOs turned Georgia (the country) into a broke libertarian paradise

March 9, 2017 Yanis Varoufakis back on BtN for the first time in over two years! He discusses the interminable eurocrisis, austerity, Brexit, the nationalist international (Trump, Le Pen, etc.), and DiEM25, among other things. The full Varoufakis–Ali–et al. debate is here. The version of this show that ran on KPFA was truncated because the station is fundraising. Please donate and keep this worthy enterprise going. If you do, please mention Behind the News!

March 2, 2017 Mark Blyth on neoliberalism and global Trumpism (the Guardian/Observer article on Mercer and Cambridge Analytica he talks about is here) The version of this show that ran on KPFA was truncated because the station is fundraising. Please donate and keep this worthy enterprise going. If you do, please mention Behind the News!

February 23, 2017 Angela Nagle, author of this and the forthcoming Kill All Normies, on the alt-right • Laleh Khalili on Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s new national security advisor This show didn’t run on KPFA because the station is fundraising. Please donate and keep this worthy enterprise going. If you do, please mention Behind the News!