The Dig: Boots Riley on Sorry to Bother You and Communism
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 August 2018
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead-serious shittiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor — all at the mercy of the thinly veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and about how the task of left organizing is to see through that game and fight together. Dan's guest today is Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the film and also fronts the left-wing hip-hop group The Coup.
Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon and by Verso Books, |
| 0:06.0 | which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you. |
| 0:11.0 | One that you might like is out of the wreckage, a new politics for an age of crisis by George |
| 0:17.0 | Monbio, now out in paperback. I interviewed George just recently about this very book on this show. |
| 0:25.0 | A toxic ideology of extreme competition and individualism dominates our world. |
| 0:30.1 | It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. |
| 0:34.0 | Only a positive vision can replace it. |
| 0:36.6 | A new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a path to a better future. Guardian columnist George Monbio shows how new findings in psychology, |
| 0:47.0 | neuroscience, and evolutionary biology cast human nature in a radically different light. |
| 0:52.0 | As supremely altruistic and cooperative. |
| 0:56.3 | He shows how we can build on these findings to create a new politics of belonging. |
| 1:01.2 | Both democracy and economic life can be radically reorganized from the bottom up, |
| 1:06.0 | enabling us to take back control and overthrow the forces that have thwarted our ambitions for a better society. |
| 1:13.7 | Out of the wreckage, a new politics for an age of crisis by George Monbio, out now in |
| 1:19.4 | paperback from Verso Books. Welcome to the Digg, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. |
| 1:30.0 | My name is Daniel Denver and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island |
| 1:39.0 | Sorry to bother you is a hilarious film about the dead serious shittiness of life under neoliberalism's |
| 1:46.0 | flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between |
| 1:51.7 | free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent |
| 1:56.4 | of full-on slave labor. |
| 1:58.5 | It's all at the mercy of the thinly veiled barbarity of Palo Alto style techno-utopianism. |
| 2:05.2 | It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only |
... |
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