This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at patreon.com

and by bold-type books, which has loads of great titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.

One that you might like is How to Sell a Poison, The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT by

Elena Konis. Historian Elena Konis's sweeping narrative follows DDT as generations of

Americans struggled to make sense of the notorious chemicals risks and benefits. In an age of

spreading misinformation on issues including pesticides, vaccines, and climate change,

Konis shows that we need new ways of communicating about science. As Scott W. Stern wrote in The New

Republic, as Elena Konis details in her monumentally disturbing new book, DDT remains in our soil,

our water, the animals that surround us, and even within our very bodies. One of Konis's greatest

achievements is to put a human face on this science of risk. How to Sell a Poison, The Rise, Fall,

and Toxic Return of DDT by Elena Konis, out now from bold-type books.

Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin Magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and I'm broadcasting

from Providence, Rhode Island. In September 2020, the pandemic was ending and up ending lives

everywhere in exposing the depth and breadth of inequalities, both local and global.

But the media in the United Kingdom trained its spotlight upon a more pressing matter.

It was announced that the BBC singers would not be singing the Imperial Anthems,

Rule Britannia, and Land of Hope and Glory. London's woke cosmopolitan educated elites were once

again looking down at and cancelling the left behind common man, disdainful of his customs.

The tabloids juiced the outrage. The history of the British Empire was thus rendered into a

skirmish in the culture war, much like the history of racism and slavery here in the United States.

For opponents and proponents alike, invoking colonization and decolonization has too often become

above all else a battle fought in the symbolic register. Symbolism and statues, no doubt matter,

...