Hello and welcome to the inaugural episode of confronting capitalism.

My name is Basker Sankara.

I'm the editorial director of Jackman Magazine, and this is a podcast we're putting on with

Catalyst Journal to offer an analysis of the world around us.

We thought there's no one better to explain complex political and economic affairs

than our own Vivek Chipper.

Vivek is a professor of sociology at NYU, but most importantly, he's the editor of Catalyst

Journal. I think Vivek has a unique ability to take complex events, complex views, theory as a whole,

and make them comprehensible to ordinary people who might not have time to pour through all three volumes of capital.

I mean, I myself have only did a heavy skim of one of them.

Vivek, we're so glad that you're starting this podcast with us.

Thanks, Bhaskar.

It's actually pretty exciting.

These are both difficult and challenging times for us,

but they also, I think, give us a real opening for the left to make some real progress.

So I'm excited to do this and I'm excited to be involved.

We thought about having this show because you spent your entire career studying how capitalism works and what alternatives to it might look like. And we thought it might be a good bridge to put together this theoretical vision of what capitalism is and what the alternative to it is with very timely current events issues.

So, in other words, not just separating neatly the commentary we often have on Jacobin

with the deeper analysis we have in Catalyst, but kind of linking it together and introducing

people to varying and sometimes contested traditions on the left.

Yeah, there are a lot of commentaries, podcasts and YouTube shows out there that provide commentary

to current events.

...