This Is Hell!

Chuck is out of action this week COVID, so we are featuring past interviews with upcoming guests who all have new books coming out on the days we are scheduled to interview them in upcoming weeks. Today's episode features two listener-favorite historians. First up is Quinn Slobodian on his 2023 book "Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy." Greg Grandin follows with a discussion of his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2020 book "The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America." A classic Moment of Truth with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Chuck is out of action this week COVID, so we are featuring past interviews with upcoming guests who all have new books coming out on the days we are scheduled to interview them in upcoming weeks. Today's episode features two guests whose work imagine a more emancipatory, dignified, sustainable future should socialist imperatives govern the future of human development. First up is political scientist Jodi Dean, who joined us in 2022 to discuss her book "Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States" from 1804 Books. Physicist and researcher Erald Kolasi follows in a 2021 interview in which he outlines his vision for a more ecologically sustainable future as discussed in his Monthly Review article titled "The Ecological State." Rotten History from our dear friend and comrade Renaldo Migaldi follows the interview. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Mike German, co-author with Beth Zasloff of the new book, "Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within," returns to This is Hell! Mike is a former FBI agent who went undercover in the far right whtie supremacsit movement and has appeared on the show a couple of times. "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview. Check out Mike's book here: https://thenewpress.com/books/policing-white-supremacy Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Disinformation and far-right digital media scholar Becca Lewis, who posted The Guardian article, “‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/jan/29/silicon-valley-rightwing-technofascism?fbclid=IwY2xjawIYf-tleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHc2nPsngc-4BdtZ_VAwm84lbBIMTOkq8WaTAvn1nYmXhUWlgWa_lfeyW2w_aem_L7nLbYIVbWoIlBoxR9OKLw Becca served as an expert witness in the defamation lawsuits brought against Alex Jones by parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims. She is currently writing a book on the rise of reactionary politics in Silicon Valley and online. Keep TiH! free and completely listener supported by subscribing to our weekly bonus Patreon podcast or visiting thisishell.com/pages/support

Journalist and historian Eoin Higgins, author of the new book, "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left." "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview. Check out Eoin's book here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/eoin-higgins/owned/9781645030461/ Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Award-winning journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata joins us to discuss her new book, “Another World Is Possible: Lessons For America From Around The Globe”, published by The New Press. Her articles can be found be found in In These TImes, The Nation, and The New York Times. Purchase the book at this link: https://thenewpress.com/books/another-world-possible Natasha Hakimi Zapata’s website: https://www.natashahakimizapata.com/ Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thisishell

Jeff Bryant joins us to discuss his recent writing on the threats facing community public education and the ways schools and communities are resisting them. Articles to be discussed include "How a Struggling Boston School Found Success in the Roots of its Haitian American Community," and "Voters Across the Political Spectrum Gave Public Education Important Wins in the 2024 Election," both available at The Progressive. Rotten History from Renaldo Migaldi and The Moment of Truth with Jeff Dorchen both follow the interview. Check out Jeff's recent writing at The Progressive here: https://progressive.org/topics/jeff-bryant/ Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Maya Schenwar returns to This is Hell! Maya will be joined by the co-editor Kim Wilson who are co-editors of the new collection, "We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition" from Haymarket Books. Maya is editor in-chief of truthout. Kim is the cofounder, cohost, and producer of Beyond Prisons, a podcast on incarceration and prison abolition. Rotten History from Renaldo Migaldi follows the interview. Check out their new edited volume here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2446-we-grow-the-world-together Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Sarah Jaffe, author of “Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone and Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt” joins us to discuss her new book “From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire”, published by Bold Type Books. Purchase the book at this link: https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-the-ashes-grief-and-revolution-in-a-world-on-fire-sarah-jaffe/21156243?ean=9781541703490 Sarah Jaffe’s website: https://sarahljaffe.com/ Jeffrey Dorchen also brings us his latest "Moment of Truth". Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thisishell

Liz Pelly joins This Is Hell! to discuss her Harper's cover article titled "The Ghosts in the Machine: Spotify's Plot Against Musicians," excerpted from her new book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (One Signal Publishers). Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thisishell

Defunding the Police and Abolition as Forms of Democracy by This Is Hell!

Kellie Carter-Jackson returns to discuss her new book, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press). Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Best of 2024: Gareth Gore on his book, "Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church," published by Simon and Schuster on the day of the interview. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Gabrielle Perry joins us to discuss her recent Scalawag article, "Louisiana is the blueprint for further fascist repression." Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Returning to This is Hell! is listener favorite Sophie Lewis, author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, as well as Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation. Sophie will be on to talk about her new writing at The Drift, "Lipstick on the Pigs: Kamala Harris and the Lineage of the Female Cop." "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Cory Doctorow on his Financial Times article, "‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything: The term describes the slow decay of online platforms such as Facebook. But what if we’ve entered the ‘enshittocene’?" "Rotten History" follows the interview. Cory also has a new novel, The Bezel. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access weekly bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Ajay Singh Chaudhary returns to This Is Hell! to talk about his Baffler Magazine article, "Sick and Tired: Against Resilience," an excerpt from, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World (Repeater Books). Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access weekly bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Dan Piepenbring on his Baffler article, "K-Pop: Our forefathers did dissociatives." Dan is the New Books columnist for Harper’s and the co-author, with Tom O’Neill, of CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. He’s currently working on a book about ketamine. "The Moment of Truth" follows the interview. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access weekly bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon.

Tad DeLay returns to This Is Hell! to discuss his new book from Verso, Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change. "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access weekly bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Matthew D. Taylor joins us to discuss his book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, published just yesterday by Broadleaf Books. Jeff Dorchen joins us after the interview to deliver a new segment of "The Moment of Truth." Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell