Rev Left Radio

In this episode, we're joined by professor Joel Wainwright (co-author of Climate Leviathan) to discuss his newest book, The End: Marx, Darwin, and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis. Together, Breht and Joel explore the intellectual impact Charles Darwin had on Karl Marx, and why it matters for the ecological crisis of our time. Wainwright argues that Marx's study of Darwin helped him develop a distinctly Marxian concept of natural history, reshaping how he understood history, nature, and capitalism itself. Reading Capital through this lens, they unpack how Marx's critique becomes an ecological critique: capitalism as a social formation that reorganizes the human–Earth relation, producing crisis, "surplus" populations, and new forms of domination - and have some fun disagreements along the way. They close by asking what this natural-historical Marx can contribute to building an eco-socialist alternative beyond capitalist growth and climate catastrophe.
Check out Breht and Alyson's previous episode on Climate Leviathan HERE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon
Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio
Follow RLR on IG HERE
Learn more about Rev Left HERE

Matthew Vernon Whalan joins the show to discuss Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison, an interview-driven, investigative journalistic, and collectively narrated portrait of life inside Bullock Correctional Facility in Alabama.

Through the words of incarcerated people themselves, we explore the everyday realities that rarely make it into public view: mental health crisis and predation, sewage and infrastructure collapse, cruel and unusual punishment, sleep deprivation, violence, drugs and overdose, and the informal social orders that take shape when official protection fails. This book is truly an act of witness -- and a demand that we look directly at what incarceration actually does to human beings. Once examined, we can see the U.S. prison system as a disturbing microcosm of the pathologies infecting and eating away at the broader American society. 
Support Matthew and his work directly on Venmo @Matthew-Whalan-1
Get 15% off any book at Left Wing Books HERE
Check out our previous episode with Project Hope t0 Abolish the Death Penalty HERE
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon
Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio
Follow RLR on IG HERE
Learn more about Rev Left HERE

In this episode, Breht interviews Adnan Husain -- Professor of Medieval history and Chair of the Religious Studies department at Queens college -- about the deep historical roots of today's Middle East. The conversation traces the arc from ancient Persia to the Islamic era, explores how Iran became a center of Shi'a Islam, and examines the long rivalry between Persian and Ottoman power. Along the way, they unpack the Sunni-Shia split, the political role of Turkey in the region, the ways Western narratives about Islam were forged through the Crusades and carried forward into the modern world, Zionist Expansionism, and the ongoing illegal war of aggression waged by the U.S. and Israel against Iran, and indeed, the whole region.

Check out Adnan's previous appearences on Rev Left HERE
Subscribe to Adnan's YouTube channel HERE
Watch Adnan's 2 Part episode on Yemen HERE
Listen to Guerrilla History podcast HERE
---------------------------------
Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon
Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio
Follow RLR on IG HERE
Learn more about Rev Left HERE

Torkil Lauesen joins us to discuss his book Unequal Exchange: Past, Present, and Future and the hidden mechanics of modern imperialism. Lauesen returns to the tradition of Arghiri Emmanuel to argue that while the world market tends to equalize prices, wages remain radically unequal across borders -- driving a structural transfer of value from low-wage production zones to high-wage consumer economies.
We walk through Lauesen's reconstruction of unequal exchange through Marx's value theory, the leading approaches to measuring global value transfer, and what contemporary estimates imply about the scale of the drain. From there, we explore the political consequences inside the Global North: why reformism and social democracy have often been stabilized by imperial arrangements, what that means for internationalism, and why the "imperial mode of living" is increasingly unstable.
Finally, we turn to the shifting world order -- especially Lauesen's argument that a new mode of production may be emerging, best exemplified by China -- and what that implies for the future of capitalism, multipolarity, and socialist transition. We also discuss the ongoing war/conflict involving Iran and what it reveals about crisis, hegemony, and the changing methods of imperial power.
Check out our other episodes with Torkil HERE
outro Music: 'Antithesnails' by spinitch and Chaz Matador
---------------------------------
Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon
Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio
Follow RLR on IG HERE
Learn more about Rev Left HERE

(recorded on 3/1/26) - Breht went on Workers' Lit as a guest!
"The American ruling class is at war.
Physically, they are at war with Iran, pummeling the country with unrelenting airstrikes, slaughtering civilians, and doing their best to make yet another nation unlivable.
But they are fighting another war: a psychological war against every one of us. They are building a world of declining literacy, misinformation, confusion, and fear.
Combine those two wars and you get an apathetic American populace even as its own country murders untold innocents
Breht O'Shea of RevLeft joins Aysha, Jen, and Jacob to discuss these dual wars and how we can fight back."
Check out more from Workers' Lit here: https://www.workerslit.com/
Make a donation to Socialist Night School via Venmo @OmahaNightSchool