Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: New scholarship explores the lives of the first Africans to fall under European rule, half a millennium ago; and, the birth of hip hop, in New York City. A Black scholar claims that urban destruction under neoliberal capitalism laid the groundwork for the new musical genre.

The US assassination of a leading Iranian general threatens to bring the world once again to the brink of war. We spoke with Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar.

The roots of Hip Hop music and culture have long been debated. Dr. Lisa Calvente teaches Intercultural Communications at DePaul University. She wrote a recent article for the political journal “Souls,” in which draws a straight line between neoliberal capitalism and the birth of hip hop in New York City.

 Before Christopher Columbus ever set out for the New World, the Portuguese had been making raids on West Africa, and taking Black prisoners as slaves. Nick Jones is a professor of Spanish at Bucknell University. He’s written a book about the lives of those African captives of the Portuguese and Spanish empires. It’s titled, “Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain.”