Bungacast

/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

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

[We are unlocking this episode from the Bungacast Reading Club, originally released Nov 2025, which is normally available only to Reading Club subscribers. If you'd like to join, sign up at patreon.com/bungacast]

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

• 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

/515/ State Capitalism Is Now ft. Ilias Alami

On the weakness of state and capital – and their fusion.

Ilias Alami joins Alex and Lee to talk about his essential co-authored book, The Spectre of State Capitalism.

• Why is state capitalism not just a China story, but is global?

• What does the rise of state capitalism tell us about the health of contemporary capitalism?

• How did globalisation and stagnation combine to give birth to it?

• Is this an extension of neoliberalism or something new and different?

• Does this represent a 're-politicisation' of the economy – and does it open up more hopeful political futures?

Links:

• The Spectre of State Capitalism, Ilias Alami & Adam D Dixon, Oxford UP [OPEN ACCESS]

 

/514/ The Expressway World ft. Richard Williams

On living with modernity.

Richard J Williams talks to Alex and George about his new book, The Expressway World and how cities have adapted to the infrastructural legacies of the mid-20th century. We talk about New York, London, São Paulo, Madrid, Glasgow and Seoul.

• Why do people hate expressways – and who actually loves them?

• What are Big Man cities? How do expressways bring together populism, authoritarianism, and capital?

• Why is the antidote to 20th century car-centricity always gentrified and sanitised public space?

• What are the class struggles that emerge over the expressway world?

• Is there a basic lie behind many "ecological" infrastructure projects?

Links:

• The Expressway World, Richard J Williams, Polity

• Intersections, Owen Hatherley, Sidecar

• /113/ Globoville ft. Richard Williams

/513/ Global Right: LATAM Division ft. Guilherme Casarões

On the Bolsonaros, Milei and MAGA.

Alex talks to Guilherme Casarões, Associate Professor of Brazilian Studies at Florida International University, about Bolsonaro's sentencing, Trump's tariffs on Brazil, and the bailout of Milei.

• Is the motivation behind the tariffs on Brazil just partisan interest?

• How has Jair Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo, become point-man for the Latin American radical right's connection to MAGA?

• Is Bolsonarismo the closest to MAGA among the global radical right?

• Will a "Populist International Order" follow the Liberal International Order?

• Why is the nationalist Trump bailing out the libertarian Milei?

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

Then George, Alex and Ryan Zickgraf discuss the global radical right and whether Charlie Kirk's killing was its "George Floyd moment".

Finally, the boys take listener questions & comments from the past month. (NB recorded 25 September)

/512/ Reading Club: Middle-Class Dreams & Nightmares

On Göran Therborn's article, "Dreams and Nightmares of the World's Middle Classes".

The penultimate episode of this block on the middle class, we discuss the differing fortunes and politics of the global North and South middle-classes – as well as ways they may be similar.

Subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

• Is the middle-class dream increasingly only a dream?

• Can the "ever-rising middle-class wave" in China and India sustain itself?

• Is being middle-class defined by one's consumption? By income? By something else?

• How have fears changed: from being politically "squeezed" between to proletariat and bourgeoisie, to being economically "squeezed" and fearing falling?

• What politics do the middle-classes generate? What kind of populism?

/511/ Britain's Tinderbox ft. Lisa McKenzie

On the UK's working-class unrest.

Sociologist Lisa McKenzie talks to Alex and contributing editor Lee Jones about why the country feels like a powder-keg.

• What's behind protests like Unite the Kingdom? How responsible are far-right agitators?

• Why are threats posed to women and children such an explosive issue?

• What is the type of nationalism that is behind the proliferation of English and British flags?

• What are Farage's Reform promising and will they deliver? What of the immigration question?

• How is Corbyn's "Your Party" going, and why can't the Left seem to speak for or to the working class?

Links:

• Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain, Lisa McKenzie, Bristol UP
• Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class, Lisa McKenzie
• James Treadwell thread on raising of flags, X

/510/ Couch Potatoes to Screen Sausages ft. Ryan Zickgraf

On critiques of entertainment.

New contributing editor Ryan Zickgraf joins Alex and George to talk about the history of media critique and contemporary cases.

• How does consensus-age comedy like King of the Hill deal with hyperpolitics today?

• Is the reliance on archetypes a problem, or inherent to all comedy?

• Why is Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death still relevant?

• Is the Gen X critique of 'couch potatoes' and TV-watching similar to today's techlash?

• Have we become insensible to contradiction?

Links:

• We’re still distracting ourselves to death, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd 

• King of the Hill reboot is ill-suited to the Trump age, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd