Bungacast

/529/ Don't Pick Up: The Scam Economy ft. Mark Bo

On Southeast Asia's scam compounds.

Mark Bo, organised-crime researcher and co-author of Scam, talks to Alex and Lee about his book, his experiences and why this fusion of gangsterism and speculation has taken root in the contemporary economy.

• What is the scale of the scam industry?

• How do scams like pig butchering, fish butchering, or law-enforcement impersonation work?

• How does organised crime structure itself on corporate lines? How does this fit with modern slavery?

• Do illicit zones signal the coming of a kind of "compound capitalism"? Is scamming a symptom of the death of the developmental state?

The full episode is only available to subscribers. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds, Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, and Mark Bo, Verso

 

/528/ The Heroic Bourgeoisie in the Democratic Post-Colony ft. Sandipto Dasgupta

On the making of independent India – and its lessons.

Assistant professor of politics at The New School, Sandipto Dasgupta, talks to contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about this new book, Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony.

• Why was the postcolonial movement insufficiently anti-colonial?

• What is the difference between the legal and political meaning of popular sovereignty – and why does it matter?

• What was the hidden, repressive element to the Indian Constitution?

• Did post-colonial leaders create something novel, even heroic? Or did they fail even on their own terms?

• Where do the democratic and counter-revolutionary aspects of the Indian revolution express themselves?

• How do symbolic substitutes for genuine popular participation play themselves out in Modi's India?

Links:

• Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony, Sandipto Dasgupta, Cambridge UP

• /198/ Universal India ft. Achin Vanaik

• /417/ Has India passed peak Modi? ft. Achin Vanaik

 

/527/ Exit the Minoritarian ft. Panagiotis Sotiris

On the collective subject at the end of the End of History.

Panagiotis Sotiris, Historical Materialism editorial board member and assistant professor at the University of the Aegean, talks to Alex and Lee about class and the "national-popular".

• Is the way to recover popular sovereignty to "return" to the nation?

• Is there a contradiction between this and declaring oneself to be "in favour of open frontiers for migrants and refugees"?

• What is the meaning of citizenship in this case?

• What's the difference between Gramsci's conceptions of people-nation and nation-rhetoric?

• Does the radical right's "civilisational nationalism" offer the left an opportunity to reclaim a popular notion of nationhood?

Links:

• Rethinking the “We” of Emancipation, Panagiotis Sotiris, Communis

• /471/ Reforming the Deformed ft. Nathan Sperber & George Hoare

 

/526/ Come On Feel the Paranoise

On US derangement on screen.

The OG Bunga boys get togther for the annual end-of-year film episode. We discuss Ari Aster's Eddington, as well as a bit of Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another and Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia: the three films that together marked 2025, and which deal with paranoia, conspiracy, disinformation and unmoored political activity.

• Is this hyperpolitics on screen?

• Do these films serve any critical purpose?

• Is Eddington a faithful depiction of the society of immediacy or is it guilty of immediacy itself?

• Are we all fkin r*****ed?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• /520/ Conspiracy Culture & Paranoid Styles ft. Catherine Liu

• Hell in Ari Aster, Tara Heffernan & Felix McNamara, Corporate Total Art

• /458/ The Society of Pure Vibe ft. Anna Kornbluh (on 'immediacy')

• America’s Unraveling on Screen, Monica Marks, New Lines Magazine

/525/ Neoliberalism in One Country? ft. Branko Milanovic

On homoploutia and national market liberalism.

Branko Milanovic, Research Professor at City University of New York, talks to Phil and Alex about his most recent book, The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World.

• What unites the political trajectories of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump?

• How is global inequality, growth and political conflict evolving in the aftermath of globalisation?

• How are hierarchies of global income shifting as the world rebalances towards East Asia?

• What kind of political theories can we use to model the emergence of this new multipolar world – Adam Smith, Lenin, Luxembourg or John Rawls?

• And what is Homoploutia? 

Links:

• The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World, Branko Milanovic

• Global Inequality 3.0 and More, Branko's substack

• An Economist’s Case for Open Borders, Branko Milanovic, Dissent Magazine

• The ‘homoploutic’ elephant, with Branko Milanović, FT

 

/524/ You've Been Diagnosed with Subjective Problems ft. Amber Trotter

On overmedicalisation and the crisis of authority.

Amber Trotter, practicing psychologist and an editor at Damage magazine, and George Hoare tell Alex about their co-written article in the print issue of Damage on "the pre-political".

• What is driving the explosion in mental health diagnoses? Why are people seeking diagnosis?

• How is it the product of the subjective and the purely scientific?

• Does capitalism make us ill? Is blaming 'capitalism' abstractly part of the problem?

• What is the crisis of authority? Whose authority?

• Can we solve pre-political problems with politics? And political problems with pre-political approaches?

Damage, Issue 5: The Pre-Political

 

/523/ Woke in the Dark ft. Ryan Zickgraf

On post-woke strategies.

Ryan Z is back on, talking to Alex and George about the US Democrats' attempt to respond to Trump/MAGA.

In association with Damage magazine.

• Can the Democrats escape the shadow of woke?

• Is Big Woke dying? Everywhere?

• Who are the groups and think-tanks pushing for a reorientation, and what are they proposing?

• Will the Dems adapt to Trump’s challenge or pretend nothing is happening? 

We then take listener questions and comments on transport infrastructure, left-wing gatekeeping, and the crisis in education everywhere, high and low.

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Can the Democrats Escape the Shadow of Woke?, Ryan Zickgraf, Damage

• Inside the Democratic identity crisis, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

 

 

/522/ At the Bottom of the Tar Pit ft. Benjamin Studebaker

On legitimacy and chronic crisis.

Benjamin Studebaker talks to Alex and Lee about his book, Legitimacy in Liberal Democracy – and why the absence of the threat of revolution makes the crisis drag on.

• What's wrong with 20th century accounts of legitimacy crises? What's changed?

• Why is contemporary politics so stuck? Is it inescapable?

• How does the breakdown of consensus make the emergence of a social majority so difficult?

• Is there no common programme we can agree on, focused on bread-and-butter issues?

• Do we need to stare despair in the face? Is catastrophe the only way out?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Legitimacy in Liberal Democracy, Benjamin Studebaker, Edinburgh UP

• UNLOCKED: /361/ A Nightmare on the Brains of the Living ft. Benjamin Studebaker

• Debilitated democracy: When the legs get ripped off, Dirk Jörke and Benjamin Studebaker, European Journal of Social Theory

/521/ Too Smart to Read ft. C. Derick Varn

On the crisis in literacy.

Poet, podcaster and teacher, C. Derick Varn – who has taught in Mexico, Korea, Egypt and the US, at various levels – joins Alex and George to interrogate the coming "post-literate society".

• What do we mean when we say 'post-literate'?

• This seems a global problem – so is it a problem of the education system?

• Is it as simple as blaming smartphones?

• How else has education become degraded? How have progressives and conservatives combined to do this?

• Are we becoming on oral culture again? What are the consequences?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Are we becoming a post-literate society?, Sarah O'Connor, FT

• Have humans passed peak brain power?, John Burn-Murdoch, FT

• Visible Learning (synthesis of meta analyses), John Hattie

• Why Knowledge Matters, ED Hirsch, Harvard

• Seven Myths about Education, Daisy Christodoulou

• Insensitivity Readers!, Nina Power

 

 

/520/ Conspiracy Culture & Paranoid Styles ft. Catherine Liu

In this special episode, we present talks given by contributing editor Catherine Liu and co-host George Hoare on the paranoid style at a recent conference at UC Irvine, co-hosted by the Palm Springs School for Social Research.

• 00:01:23 – Catherine Liu: Opening Remarks, on Richard Hofstatder’s classic essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”

• 00:12:18 – George Hoare: The Paranoid Style in British Politics

• 00:36:06 – Catherine Liu: "Zombies Clowns and Gangsters"

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

/519/ Reading Club: White Collar & Post-Mass Culture ft. Dustin Guastella

On the middle classes and cultural compression.

For the concluding episode of the 2024/25 Reading Club, we discuss C. Wright Mills' White Collar, plus some additional short texts on what mass culture is like today.

credit: Ryan Zickgraf, based on The Wilson Quarterly/Russell Lynes 1949

 

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

• Does Mills' account of the “economic psychology” of the White Collar worker still ring true today?

• What about their "political psychology"?

• What is the state of White Collar trade unionism today?

• Is there no possibility of the middle class leading a political movement?

• Do the distinctions of high- middle- and low-brow still make sense today, in our era of levelling-down and slop?

• Should we defend democracy in the economy and elitism in culture?

Readings:

• White Collar: The American Middle Classes, C. Wright Mills, 1951 (esp final two chapters)

• Highbrow, Middlebrow, Lowbrow, Russell Lynes, Wilson Quarterly, 1976 reprint of 1949 article (pdf attached)

• Post-Mass Culture, Dylan Riley, Sidecar

• Unionizing the “Cultural Apparatus”, Nelson Lichtenstein, Jacobin

UNLOCKED: /497/ Are We Living in Fast Times? ft. James Hughes & Eli Sennesh

On technology, transhumanism, and progress.

James Hughes (Exec Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) and Eli Sennesh (postdoc, Vanderbilt) present a futurist approach to Alex and contributing editor Leigh Phillips.

• What is wrong with the acronym TESCREAL?

• Why is it wrong to worry about future transhumanism when we need to grapple with the technologies of now?

• What are the limits of bourgeois futurism? What is an alternative futurism?

• Has AI changed everything? Will it?

• Are we actually living in an age of rapid technological advance?

Links:

• Conspiracy Theories, Left Futurism, and the Attack on TESCREAL, James Hughes & Eli Sennesh

• /306/ AI Capitalism: Inhuman Power

• /335/ AI & the End of the End of History

• /446/ The Techno-Fantasy of Perfect Freedom ft. Amber Trotter

• /488/ Homo-Techno, Homo-Solo ...Post-Homo? ft. Alex Gendler

• The Obama-to-Yarvin Pipeline, Geoff Schullenberger, Compact Substack

/518/ We Have Never Been Postmodern ft. Geoff Shullenberger

On free speech, the tech right, and politicisation.

Geoff Shullenberger, managing editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to talk about Peter Thiel, René Girard, victimhood and the antichrist.

• Does it make sense to talk of "right-wing cancel culture"? Is it different from the left's?

• Is countercultural trolling in tension with "defending Western civilisation"?

• What does René Girard argue about mimesis and scapegoating? Why have his theories become popular?

• Is right-populism still politicising? How does it relate to libertarian anti-politics and hard-right militarisation?

• How has Silicon Valley libertarianism adapted to the new state-capitalist disposition?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• René Girard and the Rise of Victim Power, Geoff Shullenberger, Compact

• The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession, Laura Bullard, Wired

• The Faith of Nick Land, Geoff Shullenberger, Compact

/517/ Wonders of the Modern World ft. Pier Paolo Tamburelli

On places of ritual.

Architect Pier Paolo Tamburelli talks to Alex about his project to catalogue modern wonders – structures that are very big, that pretend to be ancient, and are mostly ugly.

For the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

• How has architecture lost its ritual dimension?

• Why are these "modern wonders" kitsch? And why are they found the world over, from Munich to Malaysia, South Dakota to Dakar?

• Do 'wonders' speak to a world where places remain distinct, and where conflicts and history seem to have returned?

• Are disillusioned and cynical postmodern subjects searching for wonder?

• Can architecture rebuild society?

Links:

• Wonders of the Modern World, Arch+, issue 259

• Wonders of the Modern World: Notes for a Research Programme, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Arch+ (pdf attached in patreon)

• What's wrong with the primitive hut?, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, San Rocco (pdf attached in patreon)

 

/516/ France's Two Peripheries: Riots and Insurrection ft. Fred Lyra

On 20 years since the 2005 riots.

Fred Lyra, philosopher and musicologist based in Paris, joins Alex to talk about France through 4 moments: 1995 – the last moment of classic class struggle; 2005 – riots in the banlieues; 2015 – Islamist terror; 2025 – government collapse.

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

• How were the riots normalised? And what was the state's response?

• Why did the riots prompt debates about "models of integration"?

• Why is there an "excess" of state in the banlieues, and an absence of state in left-behind smaller cities?

• How did France go from the Nuits Debouts protests to the Gillet Jaunes – and how did they differ?

• What about Bloquons Tout protests and the repeated fall of governments today?

Links:

• The Peripherisation of France, Fred Lyra, A Terra É Redonda

• Two, Three, or More Fractures in French Society?, Fred Lyra, A Terra É Redonda

• Bonapartist Solutions, Dylan Riley, Sidecar

• Nuits Debout: Up All Night, Fred Lyra, Lavra Palavra