The Magnificast

It's time for the second installment of our Monopoly Capital series. In this episode, we talk about the ways monopoly capital reabsorbs all of the surplus it produces in some incredibly frustrating ways! Here's the MR article we mentioned in the show: https://monthlyreview.org/2016/07/01/surplus-absorption-and-waste-in-neoliberal-monopoly-capitalism/

Karl Marx is great, but a few things have changed since he wrote capital. Instead of corporations competing against one another, global corporations have gained monopoly power and are able to set prices with little to no competition. In this episode, we're jumping into Paul Baran & Paul Sweezy's Monopoly Capital! Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theilla...

Folks, we're bringing 2023 in with a bang. Dean Dettloff, the cohost isn't with us for this one, but don't worry, Dean Dettloff the guest star, is! Tune in (is that what you do with podcasts?) and listen to us chat about Dean's trip to Cuba and what it means for us as Christians in the United States. Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.band...

Folks, the holidays wiped us out! We'll be back in the new year with the hot content you crave. Until then, check out this classic episode about David Roediger's essay Making Solidarity Uneasy. ------ One of the big motivating ideas on the left is solidarity. But, what does that really mean? In this episode, Matt and Dean talk through David Roediger's essay Making Solidarity Uneasy: Cautions on a...

Back in 2019, we recorded this episode with the incredible Brent Plate about Christmas and media. Don't sleep on it! We're still on this Christmas kick. This week we talk with Brent Plate about Christmas films, the history of Christmas and a lot more! Check out Brent's articles here: https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/christmas-movies-brent-rodriguez-plate https://religionnews.com/2018/12/07/tech...

Back in 2019, we published this episode with Pamela Klassen about her book: The Public Work of Christmas. It's still a banger! Listen in! Ho Ho Ho, we're back with more Christmas content for all you Whos down in Whoville. This week, we talked with Pamela Klassen, a professor in the study of religion at the University of Toronto. She edited a rad collection of essays called The Public Work of Chris...

Back in 2018, we made this special episode with Hannah Shanks about Mary, materiality and bodies. It's a rad episode! To celebrate Christmas we're bumping this classic episode to the top of the list! Mary did you know that your baby boy would be the king of kings? Yeah, she knew. In this extra credit episode of the Magnificast, Matt talks with Hannah Shanks author of This Is My Body: Embracing the...

It's the last week of Advent! We made it. We're rounding out our series on Cuba with some extremely niche content about Papal visits and Cuba. This is some really in the weeds content, but it shows a real interesting interchange between the Cuban revolution and religion. There's a dialectic at play here that is worth paying attention to! Here was the book we mentioned from Fidel on the podcast: ht...

We've spent a lot of time talking about all of the ways the US is bad, but in this episode, we're going to stop and talk about all the ways the Cuban revolution is good. Literacy, healthcare, global solidarity, and more! Cuba has it all folks. Tune in and listen along with us about the ways we talk about Cuba and what it would mean to be in solidarity with the Cuban people. Here are the books we t...

The United States has meddled in Cuba through clandestine and covert ops for years. They've carried out so many wild missions it's hard to even talk about them all in an hour-long podcast, so we made a list of the 5 wildest covert ops the US has carried out in Cuba. These ops range from goofy to downright evil. But, these stories are important because the main conceit of the US blockade on Cuba is...

It's advent season, but how can we feel excited about the coming birth of Jesus when the United States continues to carry out sanctions and an illegal blockade against the Cuban people? So, throughout this advent season, we're going to focus on stories about Cuba. We're kicking the series off with an episode about the weird narrative about religious freedom that the US pushes. The big weird docume...

Ok, so we know that rich people get rich by exploiting workers, but how does this whole capitalist system get kicked off in the first place? How did the commons become privately owned? In this episode, we answer all o these questions and more! Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Get...

Big revolutions? In this economy? How about a lot of very small revolutions? This week on the 'cast we read Antonio Negri & Felix Guattari's Communists Like Us: New Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty and talk a little bit about left-communism, post-Marxism and molecular revolutions! Read the book for free here: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=45 Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Out...

This past week, Lula won a historic victory for the left and for Brazil when he defeated Bolsonaro! In light of the big victory, we decided to do a round-up of articles about the victory and reflect on what it all means. We also pay some special attention to Lula's thoughts on religion and, because this is The Magnificast, we throw a weird French philosopher in the mix too. Here are the articles w...

It's important to analyze the story we tell about capitalism. In light of Halloween, it's important to recognize the story of capitalism as a horror story. So, in this episode, we talk through the specifics of how wage labor works and how capitalism is a vampire. Here's what we read in this episode Wage Labor and Capital - https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ Capital Vol 1...

Hey Folks, we've both been pretty busy this week and we need a minute to catch our breath! Here's a Magnificast Classic episode with Erin Green about her work with REAP. It's a really cool episode and unique project, so give it a listen if you haven't already! Christian universities have a long history of creating the institutional levers and buttons by which they can harass and discriminate again...

This week on the pod we've got Laurel Marshall Potter, a PhD student from Boston College who is currently living in El Salvador, to research the current status of Ecclesial Base Communities (or CEBs). You can read Laurel's work on CEBs here: https://brill.com/view/journals/ecso/18/2/article-p198_005.xml Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.b...

A lot of moral questions revolve around doing or not doing something, but what if the biggest moral problems were actually about the very way we live our lives? Driving, smartphones, food production, etc. are all far more political than most people realize. In this episode, we talk through the book The Imperial Mode of Living by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen. Get the book here if you want: https:...

This week, we're joined by Jim Hodgson, the Magnificast correspondent on Latin America. Jim has a long history of working with Christian solidarity organizations, like the United Church of Canada, on projects around building Christian solidarity in Latin America. This week, he's back with us to talk about the recent referendum in Cuba on the Family Code. Throughout the conversation, Jim gives us l...

We all know that humans are causing climate change, but in this episode, we're talking about which humans are responsible specifically! throughout this episode, we talk about climate change, colonialism, and solidarity. Here are some articles we referenced in the episode! Jason Hickel - Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown Will the People with Guns Allow Our Planet to Breathe...

Jesus is a lot of things to a lot of people, but if you take the gospel seriously, you've got to admit that, if nothing else, Jesus is radical. He's flipping tables, sending the rich away empty, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and casting out demons! Jesus is as radical as it gets. Yet, a lot of Christians don't see it that way. To get to the bottom of it, this week, we talked with Damon Gar...

Folks, on this podcast, we love the parables. This week we're talking about Luke 16:19 the Rich man and Lazarus. In the conversation, we talk about the historical context of the parable, the trope of class inversion, and just why the rich man was hell in the first place. In this episode, here are the books we talk about William Herzog - Parables as Subversive Speech Ernesto Cardenal - The Gospel i...

Jessica Reznicek is a Catholic Worker and water defender who sabotaged the Dakota Access Pipeline and was sentenced to prison time for in 2019. Jessica's story is really fascinating, and her sentencing is strikingly unjust! Listen in as Alex from the Support Jessica Reznicek campaign tells us Jessica's story and explains its significance! Find out more here: http://supportjessicareznicek.com/ Intr...

This week Joe Biden enacted a pretty significant policy around forgiving student debt. You know we love talking about debt on this show, so this week we're getting into it about the weird rhetoric around debt and why Christians ought to be on the side of jubilee! Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-t...

Last week we got really hung up talking about the specifics of growth that we didn't have much time to get into more of the specifics about degrowth. This week we're back with some more about defining degrowth and what degrowth means for anti-imperialism. You can check out the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3989-the-future-is-degrowth Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Outro music by th...