So… any of you bears wanna help me out? Thanks!!
Trueanon and Blowback are my personal favourites cannot recommend both of them enough, they’re just so good.
Other flavourites of hexbear are Citations Needed, The Deprogram and the Antifada. I’ve also heard that Everybody Loves Communism, RevLeft Media, Radio War Nerd, Geopolitical Economy Report and Guerrilla Media are also good.
I really had a hard time getting into trueanon. I listened to quite a lot of episodes and Brace is very entertaining on other people’s shows but i just couldn’t stand his pod. Every episode just feels the same and in chapo pod style i hadn’t a fucking clue what they were talking about half the time.
I feel like it’s good to start with their the game series to kind of get a feel for the style of comedy without it being so in your face, idk with other podcasts I find the whole like, “here’s 10 minutes of random bullshit before we actually start” kind of annoying but with Brace and Liz they just have good enough chemistry that it becomes actually funny
Their Falun Gong and Elon Musk series is what sold me on them. If anyone is on the fence about TrueAnon, those are very good starting points
For less investigative eps check out “hail the new dawn”, “vote true no matter who”, and “Magamaidan”
i kinda felt the same, as someone who isn’t american but the recent episode on the fake ebola hoax was awesome
Is Trueanon not a bit kooky or is that just the subreddit?
Ait here’s a list of a few leftist podcasts:
1Dime Radio
American Prestige
Blowback
Book Club Commune
CENTER FOR COMMUNIST STUDIES
Cadre Journal
Center for Communist Studies Audio
Citations Needed
Cosmopod
David Harvey’s Anti-Capitalist Chronicles
Democracy at Work
Foreign Languages Press - Audiobooks
Guerrilla History
Give The People What They Want!
Historical Materialism Podcast
Introduction To Marx/Marxsim
Mass Struggle
New Books in Critical Theory
No Easy Answers
People’s History of Ideas Podcast
Peoples Dispatch
Pod Damn America
Politics In Command
Proles of the Round Table
Radical Thoughts Podcast
Radio Free Amanda
Reading Capital With Comrades
Red Book Club
Red Library
Red Plateaus
Red Power Hour
Revolution and Ideology
Revolutionary Lumpen Radio
Revolutionary Left Radio
Red Menace Podcast
Socialism for All
The Antifada
Socialist Revolution
The Crimson Flag Podcast
The Lavender Menace
The People’s Forum
The Red Nation
The Red Nation Podcast
The Unequal Exchange Podcast
The Verso Podcast
Theory Underground
Why Theory
Working Class History
Žižek And So On
I just wanna add my daily drivers rotating the same hosts around with different topics:
Revolutionary Left Radio
Red Menace Podcast
Guerrilla History
Also, big shout-out to Trillbilly Worker’s Party!
I don’t know how many times I’ve endangered myself laughing while driving listening to them.
What sort of socialism podcast are you looking for in particular? Is it something:
- Introductory
- Historical
- Theory-based
- Current affairs-focused
- Casual
I would like to hear some history of both US socialist movements and US action against socialist movements, as well as socialist movements in other countries. I would also like to learn about theory, and current affairs. It’s fine if it’s not all in one podcast, and I’m also open to one-off or series of podcasts focused on these historical aspects.
As someone else recommended in a top-level comment, Blowback is an amazing resource, especially season 2 and 3, which deal with the Cuban Revolution and the Korean War.
Podcasts on US social movements… that’s a tough one. You’ll hear some episodes covering this on RevLeft Radio but because most socialist movements in the US are either quite small and fragmented or they haven’t achieved a whole lot there often isn’t a huge amount to cover.
For US actions against socialism, Blowback is really good, as others have already mentioned. Others are American Exception and some episodes of Guerilla History.
For theory, I strongly recommend Red Menace as well as a lot of the stuff produced by Socialism For All. There’s also Marx Madness, We Read Theory, Red Book Club, Radical Reviewer (on YouTube), and a lot of the episodes of Teach Me Communism.
For current affairs, there’s Citations Needed, Radio War Nerd (specifically about wars), Everybody Loves Communism, The Deprogram, and some of TrueAnon.
While this next recommendation doesn’t fit any of your categories, I’d also recommend Actually Existing Socialism because they interview primarily academics on their areas of expertise in socialist movements and it’s really underrated, although it can be a bit dry so it might not be to your tastes.
My overall recommendation would be to try out an episode or two of whatever podcasts take your fancy to see if you like the presentation style and if it’s to your preferred depth. Some of these podcasts are more conversational and entry-level while some of them go much deeper and lean towards the more academic side. There no right or wrong in this matter, it’s just about finding what suits your preference.
Cosmopod is also very good for theory.
Excellent suggestion!
I have only listened to like one or two episodes from Cosmopod because I haven’t been on a podcast kick but I’ve liked what I have heard so far.
isn’t the guy who does american exception a fool? i was turned off by his uncritical pushing of RFK jr, gave me a strange vibe
Looks like you’re right and Aaron Good is an opportunist.
I haven’t been following anything of his closely but I know from listening to the early days of his podcast that it would be a decent recommendation based on OP’s request.
I’ve gotta be honest with you, I’d say that 50% of my list I only suggested half-heartedly because I’m either suspicious of the hosts or because I don’t find their work to be rigorous or principled enough to meet my standards but… that doesn’t mean that there isn’t useful or interesting content in there for others and I didn’t want to push my own biases on OP.
Here’s someone’s take on Aaron Good on the topic of his support for RFK which I thought was a good one:
I think I read that comment a few months ago when i was double checking his bona fides, it really is too bad because he has interviewed some serious people
(it’s a hilarious/brutal takedown that almost makes me feel bad for Good)
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Sorry I have to respond to this deleted message to get my notification to go away.
In notifications you can click the checkmark to make it go away, too.
The app I use (Thunder, so I can see Hexbear stickers) has a glitch where if a post is deleted, there is no checkmark to dismiss it, only a respond button. In fact, I could not even see this post by clicking on it becaus it’s in a deleted post comment chain, I had to just press the respond button. I’ve already shared the issue with the devs.
Donors to the [Heartland] institute included the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, Microsoft, General Motors, Comcast, Reynolds American, Philip Morris, Amgen, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Eli Lilly, liquor companies, and an anonymous donor who had given $13 million over the past five years.
Pooh’s Adventures of Necro-Capitalism
??
They’re talking about big major companies you would recognize that donated to this Heartland Institute, which presents the Stopping Socialism podcast according to your photo
Read this in
voice
There is a scourge haunting
Citations Needed
is the official podcast of hexbear.Newsheads get Radio War Nerd and Newgang gets
I mean, it has “socialism” in the name
Which makes me think it’s a bot-aggregated list. Ugh.
I’m not much of a podcast enjoyer, so I’ll throw in some YouTube recs.
- Reimagining Soviet Georgia podcast (also had an episode or two on Yugoslavia)
- Unequal Exchange podcast
- Also if you just want the audio format, for history maybe you could also do audiobooks. For example The Jakarta Method has a recording on youtube
- Geopolitical Economy Report
- Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier du Critique (on YouTube)
The Jakarta Method
The German communist podcast 99 zu 1 did an interview with the author, in english.
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99zu1 liefern gutes zeug hm
Die Gäste sind in der Regel ganz prima. Anderseits, bemühen die sich auch um Pluralismus und laden ab und zu Menschen mit fragwürdigen Ansichten ein. Ich weiß nicht wie ich das finden soll, aber qualitätsmäßig ist 99 zu 1 mMn tendenziell besser als die meisten US-Amerikanischen Podcasts.
So lange man fähig ist die argumente solcher akteure in diskussion zu dekonstruieren sehe ich es als sinnvolle praxis, man muss sich meiner ansicht nach diesen ansichten schon reflektiert stellen
ich muss öfter reinhören
Das tun die ja eben nicht (oder zumindest normalerweise - letztens hatten die eine 1,5h lange Folge zur Linken Migrationskritik nachdem ein Wagenknechtler bei einer von denen organisiert debatte labern dürfte, die gegenüber seinen Ansichten schon recht kritisch war), und das ist eins meiner Probleme mit der Sendung.
Trotz alledem kann mensch sich viele spannende Gespräche bei denen anhören.
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Do you have any preferences/topics youre interested in or looking for? I would classify socialist-adjacent podcast in two different camps: podcasts made by socialists who talk about something else, and podcasts about socialism itself. The first one tends to be more entertaining and focused while the hosts openly interpret the topic through their politics , while the latter can be fun and educational while a bit more heavy on the theory/concept side.
For the first bunch i recommend Well There’s Your Problem, a podcast about engineering disasters (with slides), and for the latter The Deprogram, we know one or two of the hosts browses hexbear.
At this point, I would like to hear about socialism since I’m somewhat at the “still learning” phase.
Go for The Deprogram! It’s light but pretty entertaining and educational, not to mention Hakim is so knowledgeable that he drops dozens of book recommendations for most topics.
If you want do dive into the deep end, try Reading Capital With Comrades. Its structured like a book club, but you can get a lot from it without reading capital alongside.
What do you already know?
There is no wrong answer to this question.
You could say something like “socialism is when the government does stuff” or “socialism is when they take your funco pops and give them to everyone else” or “socialism is when you don’t talk to your best friend because they’re a revisionist.”
Two hundred years of history has wrought a mighty warp in our understanding of even simple things.
It’s important to know where you’re at because some of the learning about socialism material is like “it’s possible not to suffer” and some of it is like “British utopian communist ideology kept American parties from escaping Trotskyism”.
Let’s see, I know that in socialism, the state takes over means of production from companies and removes competition. I also know that socialism is supposed to be a system run by the people. Everyone is paid by their need, basic needs are met for everyone, and classism and wealth inequality are eliminated.
I also know that communism is the militant and authoritarian version of socialism. I think that one Soviet Russia’s problems with communism was that the some of workers weren’t incentivized and were thrown into labor camps for not doing their jobs, and also there wasn’t honesty in the government controlled supply chain because of fear of repercussions for not meeting production quotas, which meant there wasn’t enough food.
I know a bit about the Cuban Revolution and Castro.
So you kinda can’t get directly to where you wanna be from where you are.
Everybody’s got preconceived notions and grows up in propaganda and it takes a little while to get used to the They Live glasses and start really operating based on the perception you get through them.
I would recommend citations needed, blowback and the deprogram first and foremost and once you’re through those revisit the question.
Those three are primarily for a western audience. I assumed since you’re posting in English and on Midwest.social but if you’re from like idk India or South Africa lmk and I’ll try to dig equivalent stuff up.
Yeah, that sounds good. I already started with the Deprogram yesterday and it seems like a pretty good start.
The afrika baambaata sample in blowbacks intro always gets me pumped. Probably half of getting people to recommend your shit is getting them in the mood you want em in to enjoy it from the jump.
Honestly the Deprogram doesn’t actually do all that much deprogramming, it’s more venting and news and analysis and spotlights for people who are already into socialism.
Historicly.net is a good podcast for laying out the scale of how various forms of oppression evolved together, and challenging the victor’s narrative of history.
Where do chapo trap house and red scare fit into this matrix?
I’ve heard about half an episode each in friend’s vehicles and didn’t really hear much socialism but I figure that’s how they get you. Pretty soon it’s not my friend’s car, it’s our car.
Apparently red scare is kinda sus and reactionary but idk much about it bcs I’ve never listened to it myself, all I really know first hand is that the fans of it are completely insufferable
i gotta admit i liked the art posts on the subreddit haven’t seen that kind of content replicated, never really listened to the pod itself though
Next thing you know we’ll take your and your friend’s toothbrush, too.
Both of those barely fit the 1st category. Most people here (me included) will have choice words about the hosts of either podcast, but let’s leave it at them being clueless radlibs, if not worse.
In their current state, I wouldn’t even consider them part of a “pipeline” (i guess that’s what you meant by “that’s how they get you”). True Anon is way more funny and interesting, and the people hosting it seem to have much more coherent politics.
FWIW after the early trump years cracked the facade of liberalism for me, chapo finished the job. Dunno if I’d be here without them.
Early trump chapo hit different though, then the Bernie campaign happened. Rn it’s a funny comedy podcast about American politics with hosts a bit less clueless about the ills of capitalism than your average host, but I don’t see them introducing anyone to anything else than “both parties fucking suck” as an idea.
True anon is my go to listen. Early trueanon focused on Epstein, but after year 1 it shifted to be more generally about a leftwing look of historical people and events.
And funny.
And this year has shifted in tone again. In a good way. It seems more focused on issues that are important to the left. Organizing, unions, human rights issues, international politics, etc.
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Yes, Dessalines
https://www.youtube.com/@dessalines6388/playlists
Also these folks
Socialism for All is great, their recent State & Rev reading finally got me to listen through it, and wow is it such an important read.
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker.
This is Hell
It’s a radio show/podcast that’s been running for decades. Host Chuck Mertz does great interviews
A few that haven’t been mentioned:
