Global Discontents ─ Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy

In a compelling new set of interviews, Noam Chomsky identifies the “dry kindling” of discontent around the world that could soon catch fire.

In wide-ranging interviews with David Barsamian, his longtime interlocutor, Noam Chomsky asks us to consider “the world we are leaving to our grandchildren”: one imperiled by the escalation of climate change and the growing potential for nuclear war. If the current system is incapable of dealing with these threats, he argues, it’s up to us to radically change it.

These ten interviews, conducted from 2013 to 2016, examine the latest developments around the globe: the devastation of Syria, the reach of state surveillance, growing anger over economic inequality, the place of religion in American political culture, and the bitterly contested 2016 U.S. presidential election. In accompanying personal reflections on his Philadelphia childhood and his eighty-seventh birthday, Chomsky also describes his own intellectual journey and the development of his uncompromising stance as America’s premier dissident intellectual.

Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including Hegemony or Survival and Failed States. A professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, he is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts.

David Barsamian, director of the award-winning and widely syndicated Alternative Radio, is a winner of the Lannan Foundation's Cultural Freedom Fellowship and the ACLU's Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.