Give Them An Argument
Stagione 1
di Ben Burgis
Meagan Day comes on to discuss what we know so far about the election results and what a Biden Presidency and a Republican Senate could mean for the socialist left.
Ben reacts to the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn. Greg Belvedere talks about worker coops. There's a panel on the Presidential election featuring Matt Lech, Zeeshan Aleem, Luke Savage, and Katie Halper. Finally, David Griscom memorializes Bill Joe Shaver in the Outlaws & Revolutionaries segment.
Jeff Cohen chats with Ben about VoteTrumpOut. David Feldman comes by to explain that, despite being an "old lefty from way back," he wants Trump to serve a second term. Colette Shade makes her GTAA debut to talk about her New Republic article "Self-Help Hacks at the End of the World." Finally, rapper and activist Napoleon da Legend talks about his music career, mass incarceration, and his relationship with Michael Brooks.
Samuel Moyn chats with Ben about why the judicial powers of the Supreme Court are an obstacle to social progress. We don't need to pack the Court. We need to find ways to disempower it.
Prager U gets the recent history of socialism very wrong. Ben is joined by Matt McManus to talk about the relationship between Marxism and philosophical liberalism and then by Matthew Sitman (and David Griscom) to talk about conservatism, country music, and why those are two very different subjects.
Ben is joined by Daniel Bessner and Djene Bajalan to break down the Azerbaijan/Armenia conflict. Djene's article in Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/azerbaijan-armenia-conflict-nationalism-colonialism
Scottish libertarian Antony Sammeroff comes on the pod to debate libertarian and socialist ideas about healthcare. Ben talks to Krystal Ball about the Presidential election and why right-wing populism is a political dead end. Finally, Cole James Cash fills in for David Griscom's usual music segment to talk about his album "2016." This is a good episode, guys. You should give it a listen!
Ben is joined by Paul Prescod to talk about his Jacobin article "Trump Claims He's Pro-Worker. But His Labor Board Is Trying to Destroy Worker Organizing." (https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/trump-national-labor-relations-board-nlrb) Then Daniel Bessner, Shawn Gude, and returning champion Harvey J. Kaye join the podcast for a panel on Eugene V. Debs and the what the socialist left can learn from its early history. At the end David Griscom comes back for another installment of "Outlaws and Revolutionaries" where he and Ben talk about mezcal and the music of Guy Clark.
Ben is joined by Woke Bros co-host Wosney "Big Wos" Lambrey and Congressional candidate Shahid Buttar. Judith Jarvis Thomson's classic paper "A Defense of Abortion" is revisited in the context of Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. A deeply strange story about Keith Richards is mentioned in passing while Ben discusses Terry Allen with David Griscom during this week's installment of David's weekly "Outlaws & Revolutionaries" segment.
Ben is joined by David Feldman and Emma Vigeland to talk about the election and by Nando Vila to talk about US imperialism in Latin America. In this week's installment of "Outlaws & Revolutionaries," David Griscom talks about the great Blaze Foley. The episode ends with some chat questions about the relationship between socialism and Irish Republicanism, Ben's Michigan State University "Beat Michigan" shirt, and the struggle ahead for the American left.