The modern anarchist movement began in 1999, when the World Trade Organization met in Seattle in order to create a set of rules which would require every country to accept the worst excesses of capitalism.

Waiting for them in Seattle was a loose coalition of anarchists, farmers, organized labor, punks, Zapatistas, and giant puppets.

Team Puppet won.

D.W. Gibson's new book One Week to Change the World is an oral history of the Battle of Seattle. Gibson interviewed everyone from the black bloc to the riot police. The book is a history but also a guide for future protests. I highly recommend it!

Ever since C. Thi Nguyen appeared on the podcast, I've been trying to use games to understand more about the relationship between rules and life. Jay Dragon, whose game Wanderhome is almost ruleless, joins me to discuss games, rules, and anarchy, and we especially talk about how we can analyze oppressive real-world systems as if they're games.

Here are some links for more from Jay:

https://possumcreek.medium.com/

https://possumcreekgames.com/

Robin Schuldenfrei rejoins me to talk more Bauhaus! In this episode, we discuss her book Luxury and Modernism, covering the complexities of the Bauhaus, which had a leftwing ethos but produced luxury objects, and made them by hand to appear machine made. Robin talks us through how the contradiction between luxury and egalitarianism ran from Morris's arts and crafts movement to the Bauhaus, and modernism only became a truly "everyday" part of life during the colossal expansion of middle-class wealth in the midcentury, as celebrated by Life magazine and recreated in the show Mad Men

John McGowan joins me to discuss Liberty as Independence, Quentin Skinner's new book about the way that our ideals of liberty were formed in in 17th and 18th century debates. The book covers legendary figures, such as Hobbes, Milton, Locke, Swift, Paine, and Jefferson, as well as many lesser-known figures that they engaged with.

For more from John McGowan, here's the link to his blog: https://jzmcgowan.com/public-intelligence-blog/

Finally, I'd like to apologize to Badger from The Wind in the Willows. In this episode, I repeatedly refer to him as "Mr. Badger." He is simply, as befits his status, Badger or The Badger. I regret the error.

Nathan Gelgud joins me to discuss Reel Politik, a comics collection about a group of Brechtian revolutionaries who take over the movie theatre they work in.

Nathan and I discuss our shared love for movies, the radical nature of paying attention to a movie screen, and The Chelsea Theater, a local movie theatre in Chapel Hill that Nathan and I both love (I even worked there!). Many thanks to Bruce Stone, who ran The Chelsea for decades!

You can find the book here: https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/reel-politik/

Pastor Micah joins me to share a radical reading of the Book of Genesis in which wealth isn't a blessing on God's people, but a curse!

I recently appeared on Micah's podcast, The Word in Black and Red, to discuss the 10 Commandments with Micah. That link is here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s-2-20-exodus-19-20-arrival-at-mt-sanai-the-ten-commandments/id1682991552?i=1000730399185

I also recently appeared on The Skeptical Leftist podcast! That link is here: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/skepticalleftist/episodes/The-Anti-Influencers-Case-For-Anarchism-with-Graham-Culbertson-e3a0a4j

And the YouTube video of that conversation is here (I didn't watch): https://youtu.be/YXYH1ngF30A?si=4DMONaFxIUGRuCNc

Alfie Kohn returns to the show to discuss his new podcast, the role of teachers in social progress, and why someone's view on chatbots in the classroom tells you eveything you need to know about their view of education.

You can listen to Kohn's Zone wherever you get your podcasts, or get it straight from his website: https://www.alfiekohn.org/podcasts/

It's not your imagination: everything is getting worse. And there's a reason why.

More than any other individual, Henry Fonda was a symbol for better, more leftist, more social democratic America, from The Grapes of Wrath to 12 Angry Men. He even played an English professor who faced cancellation for teaching anarchist literature!

Then in the 1960s, he was the literal father figure that New Left Hollywood figures Jane and Peter Fonda were rebelling against. And Henry let himself be used as a villain in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, playing the embodiment of rapacious American capitalism.

Alexander Horwath weaves together all these threads into his essay film Henry Fonda for President. As we live in a world haunted by 50 years of neoliberal decay, the America Fonda represented seems further away than ever, even as his films still crackle with righteous rage against injustice. Alex and I talk about all these issues and more - I hope you enjoy the conversation, and see the film when you have a chance!

According to conventional history, the last 12,000 years has seen the steady march of progress from primitive savagery to enlightened civilization.

In the age of Trump, Elon, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Putin, Xi, Orbán, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, and Khamenei, this story can't be true.

Luke Kemp joins me to offer another story, one in which mutual aid is what makes humans special - and what historians call "civilization" is actually the history of domination and coercion.

I cannot recommend the book more highly!

https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9780593321355