Episodes
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
Excerpt: /295/ Aufhebonus Bonus: October
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
Excerpt: /293/ Goodbye 20th Century (RIP Gorby)
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
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Big Man Walking: Gorbachev’s Dispensation, Neal Ascherson, LRB, 2017
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Why Gorbachev Failed, Slavoj Zizek, Compact
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OK BUNGER! The Problem of Generations, pt. 4 (on Gen X, the End of History and Soviet collapse)
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/276/ Broken Promises ft. Fritz Bartel (on the end of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberalism)
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/270/ Russia vs the West ft. Richard Sakwa (on the geopolitics of NATO expansion)
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
/286/ What Was Communism? ft. Branko Milanovic
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
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Capitalism, Alone, Branko Milanovic, Harvard UP
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The Aloofness of Pax Sinica, Branko Milanovic, Global Policy Journal
Tuesday Aug 16, 2022
/281/ Foreign Fighters, Left & Right (I) ft. Stefan Bertram-Lee
Tuesday Aug 16, 2022
Tuesday Aug 16, 2022
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 at: https://www.patreon.com/posts/70597308
Reading:
- Ukraine the Day after Tomorrow, Stefan Bertram-Lee, Sublation
- The Nazification of Ukraine, Stefan Bertram-Lee, Sublation
- ‘Stefan Vs. ISIS’ Pic In Works, Deadline
Tuesday Aug 09, 2022
Excerpt: /280/ Three Articles: Liberal Nationalism
Tuesday Aug 09, 2022
Tuesday Aug 09, 2022
Articles:
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As we unite for the jubilee, let’s believe Britain’s best days are ahead, not behind, Lucy Powell, The Guardian
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The Return of Liberal Nationalism, Sohrab Ahmari, Compact
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What Putin and liberals share, Aris Roussinos, Unherd
Tuesday Jul 26, 2022
/276/ Broken Promises ft. Fritz Bartel
Tuesday Jul 26, 2022
Tuesday Jul 26, 2022
We discuss Bartel's striking claim that democracies, rather than authoritarian systems, were better able to 'break promises' – that is, impose economic discipline. And we conclude by discussing whether it could have been otherwise, whether neoliberalism and the collapse of the 'really existing socialism' were inevitable.
Readings:
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The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism, Fritz Bartel, Harvard UP
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Democracy and Discipline: Review Essay, Alex Hochuli, American Affairs
Tuesday Jun 28, 2022
/270/ Russia vs the West ft. Richard Sakwa
Tuesday Jun 28, 2022
Tuesday Jun 28, 2022
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Whisper it, but Putin has a point in Ukraine, Richard Sakwa, The Spectator
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The Dual State in Russia, Richard Sakwa, Post-Soviet Affairs
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A Review of 'Frontline Ukraine' by Richard Sakwa, Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday
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Putin Redux: Continuity and change, Richard Sakwa, openDemocracy
Tuesday Apr 12, 2022
/254/ Three Articles: Ukraine
Tuesday Apr 12, 2022
Tuesday Apr 12, 2022
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A proxy war in Ukraine is the worst possible outcome — except for all the others, Sam Winter-Levy, War on the Rocks
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“Now we're going to f*ck them all.” What's happening in Russia's elites after a month of war, Farida Rustamova, Faridaily
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Zelensky’s muddled neutrality plan is not the answer for Ukraine, James Sherr, FT (attached)
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
/250/ Oil & Disorder ft. Helen Thompson
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
On energy, the material basis for all our politics?
Helen Thompson, podcaster and professor of political economy at Cambridge and author of Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, joins us to talk about the geopolitics of oil, stretching from the 1956 Suez Crisis to the Fracking Revolution of today. How does US energy independence help explain shifting politics in Europe and the Middle East?
Plus, did the End of History stay afloat on a sea of cheap oil?
Part 2 of the interview, plus our After Party, is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/251-oil-disorder-64394535
Readings:
- Profits from fossil fuel energy power Russia's war machine, and Ukraine suffers, Helen Thompson, New Statesman
- What Is Fueling Our Century’s Global “Disorder”?, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, The Nation
- How Did Europe Get Hooked On Russian Energy?, Paul J. Davies, Bloomberg
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
Excerpt: /237/ Three Articles: Italy, Ukraine, Matrix
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
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How the EU destroyed Italian democracy, Thomas Fazi & Paolo Cornetti, Unherd
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Boringly postmodern and an ideological fantasy, Slavoj Zizek, The Spectator
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Chartbook #70 Draghi for President?, Adam Tooze, Substack
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Excerpt: /234/ Three Articles: Restoration?
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
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Millennials Are Supercharging the Housing Market, Nicole Friedman, WSJ (attached)
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A tale of two elites in Washington and Beijing, Gideon Rachman, FT (attached)
Tuesday Sep 07, 2021
/213/ The Leopard Lockdown ft. Adam Tooze
Tuesday Sep 07, 2021
Tuesday Sep 07, 2021
On Covid and the end of the end of history.
Adam Tooze joins us to discuss his new book, Shutdown. In 2020 everything changed... so that everything might remain the same.
What were the reasons behind the global shutdown? Was it a result of over-protection, a policy of repression, or the result of structural tensions? Has China been the winner of the pandemic? How have central banks been victims of their own success? And does this represent the end of neoliberalism?
The latter part of the interview continues over on patreon.com/bungacast
Tuesday Jul 20, 2021
/204/ Three Articles: People's Republic of Fleeing
Tuesday Jul 20, 2021
Tuesday Jul 20, 2021
On Chinese investment, Swiss democracy, and fleeing from Afghanistan.
In this Three Articles, we discuss flight or departure in various ways: China opening the gates for its huge savings to spill onto world markets; Switzerland leaving (or remaining outside) the EU; and the US's sudden departure from Afghanistan, without telling anyone.
'Three Articles' episodes are normally for subscribers only - but this one's free. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast for regular access.
London book launch/bunga party: Register here
Articles:
- What happens if Chinese household wealth is unleashed on the world?, Thomas Hale and Tabby Kinder, FT (pdf in patreon)
- Swexit, Wolfgang Streeck, Sidecar-NLR
- US troops abandoned Bagram airport base in the dead of night..., various, Daily Mail
Tuesday Jun 08, 2021
Excerpt: /196/ Cosmopolitan Dystopia
Tuesday Jun 08, 2021
Tuesday Jun 08, 2021
We discuss Philip's book Cosmopolitan Dystopia: International Intervention and the Failure of the West and discover that no one really defends sovereignty today. What's behind the concept of 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P)? And should we understand it as a form of "liberal imperialism"?
Tuesday May 18, 2021
/193/ The New 20 Years' Crisis
Tuesday May 18, 2021
Tuesday May 18, 2021
On liberal idealism and imperial overreach.
Why did the winners of the Cold War turn 'revisionist', undermining their own order? How has utopianism come to dominate the discipline of IR, such that we have lost the means to critique power?
We discuss Philip's recent book, The New Twenty Years’ Crisis 1999-2019: A Critique of International Relations, which is both a revisiting of EH Carr's international relations classic The Twenty Years' Crisis as well as an account of the contemporary crisis of the liberal international order.
Reading:
The New Twenty Years’ Crisis 1999-2019: A Critique of International Relations, Philip Cunliffe, McGill-Queen's UP