Bungacast

Just a short announcement about what's coming up, while we're off on summer holidays. Subscribe to the podcast to support us and get two new, original, paywalled episodes a month ($5/mo). For $10/mo you also get access to the Reading Club. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

On Rojava and Ukraine. We talk to Stefan Bertram-Lee, former volunteer fighter for the the YPG in Rojava, about whom a Hollywood movie is being made. We ask him about the type of person who volunteers, and how this compares to those who have gone to Ukraine. How does this stop you "being a teenage nihilist"? And who would win in a fight: ISIS, Azov or the YPG? Part two of this episode is available...

[ Patreon Exclusive ] With European liberals waving Ukraine flags, how might the war and escalating geopolitical tensions between major power be prompting a return to nationalism and patriotism? Is it just a means for elites to extract sacrifices from the people? And how 'real' are nations anyway? Articles: As we unite for the jubilee, let’s believe Britain’s best days are ahead , not behind, Lucy...

On our financialised world.  We talk to Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou about his new book, Speculative Communities . How has speculation become the very practice around which modern societies coalesce? And how does speculation actually give voice to the  waning legitimacy of neoliberalism?  Do dating apps, Tik Tok and other social media give birth to 'speculative communities'? And is populism a specul...

[ Patreon Tier 2&3 Exclusive ]   On Zizek's "How Marx Invented the Symptom" from The Sublime Object of Ideology.   We kick off the second phase of the 2022 Reading Club, on Cynical Ideology, with this selection from Slavoj Zizek's landmark first book in English. How does he supplement Marx's conception of ideology? Are we post-ideological or trapped in cynical ideology? How would we go about break...

On the end of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberalism. Fritz Bartel talks to us about his new book in which the 1970s crisis and its aftermath takes centre-stage. How did the response to this global crisis differ in Western democratic capitalism versus Eastern state socialism? And why did this determine which side won the Cold War? How did the twin factors of global finance and energy emerge th...

On the climate emergency. We are specially unlocking this episode of our monthly Reading Club – the concluding episode of the first half of the 2022 syllabus ( download it here ). If you'd like full access to all of the Reading Club, go to patreon.com/bungacast We discuss Andreas Malm's Climate, Corona, Chronic Emergency and Adam Tooze's review essay, "Ecological Leninism". How convincing is Malm'...

On reviews of our book, The End of the End of History   [ Patreon Exclusive ]   A year since the book came out, and two years since we finished writing it, we take a look at published reviews the book has received and respond to them.   Questions addressed include: have we overstated our case? Do we ignore the importance of the 1970s in favour of the 1990s? Might war matter more than class struggl...

[ Patreon Exclusive ] On your questions & criticisms. We discuss the link between Covid and war in Ukraine and return to the question of who exactly is the ruling class. Plus: inflation, what actually happened in the 1990s, contemporary art, and the politics of abortion.  

On abortion. After the US Supreme Court ruling, where does this leave women in the US? Political theorist Alex Gourevitch joins us to discuss Roe v Wade, and how the fact it rooted abortion in a right to privacy was problematic. How can we ground the right to abortion in an argument for freedom in general? And is the US really faced with a rising tide of reaction, as liberals claim? Are same-sex m...

On the endgame to war in Ukraine.   Eminent Russian expert, Putin and Gorbachev biographer and ex-Sovietologist, Prof Richard Sakwa, joins us in advance of his imminent retirement from the University of Kent. We talk about the geopolitics of NATO expansion and the dynamics of the Ukraine war reaching back to 2014. How high is the risk of nuclear war now, and how might the Ukraine war play out? Rea...

[ Patreon Exclusive ]   On the whatever decade.   People are turning back to reinterpret the 1990s. Clearly, they were peak End of History years. But does that mean that no politics actually happened? If it's the period of the cultural turn, does that mean we should seek to understand that decade culturally?   And what are the political consequences of how we interpret the 1990s?   Readings: The 1...

If the End of History was characterised by post-politics, and the 'populist decade' of the 2010s dominated by anti-politics, then how should we understand more recent phenomena? Are the following of a qualitatively different nature to anti-politics, namely: the intensification of culture wars, growing polarisation that does not always align neatly with class, of increasingly hysterical and persona...

To commemorate the publication of the German edition of The End of the End of History, co-author Alex Hochuli was in conversation with David Broder, Europe editor of Jacobin Magazine at Spike Magazine , Berlin.   The crumbling of the liberal, technocratic order over the past decade has led to a variety of hysterical reactions from the establishment. Faced with new challenges to their authority, th...

[Live events in Germany: Berlin / Munich ] On emergency politics today. We talk to Geoff Shullenberger about competing emergency politics, left and right. Should politics be enjoyable and provide a frisson of transgression, or not? Is bare life all that's on offer? And is declaring the predominance of 'emergency politics' itself an emergency a problem? Readings: How We Forgot Foucault , American A...

On crumbling state authority.   Benjamin Fogel is back on the podcast to talk us through how South Africa has gone from the hopes of post-apartheid to the Durban riots of 2021. How have corruption, criminal networks, Indian oligarchs, and political forces combined to shatter any sense of a national project? We also discuss the role of xenophobia and particularist and racial politics in today's Sou...

[ Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive ]   On neoliberalism and biopolitics.   In the fifth session of the "Emergency Politics & Control" theme of the 2022 Reading Club, we take on The Birth of Biopolitics , Michel Foucault's 1978-9 lectures at the College de France (no's 4-6, 9-10).   How does Foucault trace a line between German ordo- and American neo-liberalism to biopolitics? What role does human c...

[ Patreon Exclusive ]   On the economic drivers and political choices of inflation.   In the absence of workers demanding higher wages, where is inflation coming from? Is there more to it than pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and the Ukraine war? How responsible is Biden's spending package? And how can generations who have never known serious inflation respond?   Three Articles: Chartbook...

[ Patreon Exclusive ] On your comments & criticisms. We tackle ideological realignments over the use of history; conspiracy theorising; a game-show called The Last True Marxist; whether we've had any progress over the last 50 years; and much more. 

On liberals' embrace of the past and history wars. We talk to Matthew Karp about his essay, " History As End: 1619, 1776, and the politics of the past ". It seems as if there's an ideological inversion going on, where liberals see history in terms of original sin and cycles of injustice, or at best, want to relitigate the past in order to fight battles of the present. Meanwhile conservatives have...

[Patreon Exclusive]   We analyse the French presidential election results, the country's geographical and class divides, and what a second term for Macron means for the EU.   Three Articles: Emmanuel Macron Is Forming a New Right-Wing Bloc , Interview with Bruno Amable, Jacobin Why Macron is invincible , Christopher Caldwell, Unherd Le Pen was doomed from the start , Nathan Pinkoski, Compact Other...

[ Patreon Tier 2 Exclusive ] On Frank Furedi's  How Fear Works . Following on from last month's discussion of Corey Robin's Fear, we examine a differing attempt to demystify the politics and culture of fear.  To join a local Reading Club where you are, email info@bungacast.com  

On Marxism & the Left. We talk to Elena & Joshua about their new edited collection, The Conformist Rebellion: Marxist Critiques of the Contemporary Left . Who or what is "the Left" today – merely the left wing of Capital? And what distinguishes a specifically Marxist critique of the Left? How has Marxism and the question of exploitation been sidelined in favour of a libera concern with discriminat...

The second part of our double ep on France's presidential election. Ahead of the second round, we discuss how likely a Le Pen victory could be and the effect of Zemmour’s candidacy – which appears to have made her seem more centrist. We also debate how the French deep state and EU might react to a Le Pen victory. We also ask Chris , co-author of Technopopulism , whether this is a classically 'tech...

On France's presidential elections.   We talk to Charles Devellennes to digest the first round, which saw centre-right Macron and far-right Le Pen come out on top, with leftist Mélenchon missing out. How similar are Macron and Le Pen's proposals actually? And has Macron's attempts to play statesman over Ukraine affected his chances?   With Le Pen and Macron both going after Mélenchon's 20% of the...