The global politics podcast at the end of the End of History. Politics is back but it’s stranger than ever: join us as we chart a course beyond the age of ’bunga bunga’. Interviews, long-form discussions, docu-series.
Episodes
Tuesday Apr 02, 2024
Tuesday Apr 02, 2024
On Mexico, class, and sexuality.
We welcome anthropologist Roger Lancaster onto the pod to talk about his new book, The Struggle to Be Gay – in Mexico, for Example.
We discuss:
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How much is being gay tied to being modern? And conversely, how much of globalized culture is itself "gay"?
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Do you need to be middle class to be gay?
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Why did neoliberalism provide more sexual freedom than corporatism in Mexico?
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How was Mexico ahead of the US in introducing ‘progressive neoliberalism’?
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Is now a time of freedom, or should we think of it differently?
In part two, we discuss AMLO's "synthetic" presidency, and the way peasant conservatism in central America has traditionally provided a boost to radicalism – and ask whether this is still the case.
Only available at patreon.com/bungacast.
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
On Portugal's elections, 50 years since the revolution
Catarina Príncipe, a long-time activist on the Portuguese left and a doctoral student of political economy, is back on the podcast to talk through what happened as Portugal went to the polls.
- How does Portugal see itself, with regard to Europe, and its own history?
- How did the right-populist Chega party break through amid high turnout?
- What kind of anti-politics did Chega bring to the table?
- Is there nostalgia for the dictatorship?
- How did immigration become an issue in a country where emigration is the big problem?
- What is going on with Portugal's huge housing crisis?
- Why has the EU disappeared as a political issue, 10 years on from the peak of the crisis?
Bungacast is expanding, with new regular contributors, partnership with Damage magazine and more. Read about it here or see the video.
Links:
- In Portugal’s Election, the Center Left Struggles to Hold On, João Murta & Guilherme Rodrigues
- Europe After Brexit, Bungacast live event, ft. Catarina Principe + others
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
On what comes next: in politics, ideas, economy, subjectivity
To commemorate seven years of the podcast and four-hundred episodes, we got all our new Contributors in to examine the oppositions and tensions that we think will characterise the next decade. We say hello to Amber A'Lee Frost, Alex Gourevitch, Catherine Liu, and Leigh Phillips.
For all Bungacast shows, including our Contributors, the Damage magazine episode, Reading Club and more, go to patreon.com/bungacast
Politics
- Right-populism: insurgency or incorporation
- The Left: engagement or reclusion
- Multipolarity: opportunity or restriction
- War: inertia or action
Industry & Economy
- Work: precarity or militancy
- Green Capitalism: industry or austerity
- Tech: exhaustion or enchantment
Ideas & Art
- Truth: the image or the word
- Belief: reason or romanticism
Individual & Society
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Subjectivity: vulnerability or resilience
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Sex: liberation or puritanism
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Sociability: virtuality or embodiment
![/399/ From ADHD to Let Me Be (Emotion Sickness, pt III) [sample]](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog2148233/adhd-letmebe_300x300.png){kind=logo}
Friday Mar 22, 2024
Friday Mar 22, 2024
On the withdrawal from hyperpolitics and hypermodernity.
What comes after a decade of populism? Alex Hochuli talks through his new essay in Damage, issue 2. This is episode is the third part of our Emotion Sickness series on the politics of feelings. Click here for part 1 and part 2.
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If we are disengaging from politics, what is the associated feeling - resentment or resignation?
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Why are our times "hypermodern" – and why is this exhausting?
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What can the examples of the 'great resignation', 15-minute cities, and postliberalism all tell us about the ways people are withdrawing from modernity?
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Why do we need to decelerate to save modernity?
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How might we gain control of time?
This episode is in partnership with Damage. Bungacast subscribers ($7+) automatically get a digital subscription to the magazine. Go to patreon.com/bungacast.
Links:
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From ADHD to Let Me Be: Taking Control of Time, Alex Hochuli, Damage
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Damage issue 2: "Deinstitutionalized" (subscribe for Alex's essay + more)
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/365/ It’s So Over (Again) ft. Ryan Zickgraf (see also the links in show notes)
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Hypermodern Times, Gilles Lipovetsky
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Social Acceleration, Hartmut Rosa
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Scorched Earth, Jonathan Crary
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Part II of the series: on therapy and vulnerability.
[Patreon Exclusive: subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]
Sociologist Ashley Frawley (and COO of Sublation Press) is back on the podcast to talk about her new book, Significant Emotions. What is behind the seeming rise of public emotionalism and the focus on mental health?
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How was “happiness” a policy concern – and when did it disappear and why?
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What’s going on with universities and their focus on the mental health of students?
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Is there much emotion about, in a romantic sense of deep feeling?
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Or is it emotion ersatz, instrumentalised, superficial, sentimentalised?
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How does affect polarise politically Left and Right?
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Can we solve the crisis of subjectivity by focusing on the self?
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And who is the Big-Ass Subject?
Links:
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Significant Emotions: Rhetoric and Social Problems in a Vulnerable Age, Ashley Frawley, Bloomsbury
Friday Mar 15, 2024
Friday Mar 15, 2024
On Benedict Anderson's classic Imagined Communities.
[Patreon Exclusive. Subscribe: patreon.com/bungacast]
Originally published in 1983, Anderson's account of the origins of nations is one of the most cited books in English in the humanities. In what ways does this diverse and inventive book still explain the world?
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How is imagined different from imaginary?
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Did nations emerge first in Latin America?
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Does Anderson's account of print capitalism still apply – and is it more valid than ever?
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Are we really in a post-national era?
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Does Anderson underestimate the political side – the project of achieving your 'own' state?
The Reading Club this year is dedicated to three themes: the rise and fall of nations; intellectuals and the public; Russia: past and present.
Tuesday Mar 12, 2024
Tuesday Mar 12, 2024
Turbulent times, ideological confusion. Politics is back, but it's stranger than ever. All the more reason for unflinching critique of the current moment. That's why Bungacast is expanding.
Regular contributors are coming on-board: Catherine Liu, Amber Frost, Alex Gourevitch, and Leigh Phillips
Regular contributors are coming on-board: Catherine Liu, Amber Frost, Alex Gourevitch, and Leigh Phillips
We're partnering up with Damage Magazine
There'll be many more exclusive episodes – see patreon.com/bungacast
And a new Reading Club, with new themes!
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
On media and the Millennial Left.
[Patreon Exclusive: for full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]
Continuing the retrospective on the millennial left's failures, we invite political theorist Benjamin Studebaker back on. We discuss:
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Was left-populism a media event?
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Was the Millennial Left just a moment in internet history?
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Having bought into the internet's possibilities, can we abandon it?
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Does it make sense to speak of a "millennial" left?
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Faced with so many dead ends, do we need to "go monastic"?
Links:
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The Millennial Left as a Moment in Internet History, Benjamin Studebaker
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Omelets with Eggshells: On the Failure of the Millennial Left, Alex Hochuli, American Affairs. Additional comments on Alex's Substack
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
On the missed opportunity of the 2010s.
Chris Cutrone of Platypus joins us to talk about his collection of essays, The Death of the Millennial Left. We discuss:
- Why define it as the "Millennial" Left?
- Was the anti-Stalinism of leaderless protests a good thing?
- Did the talk of "winning" from 2015 onwards represent maturity?
- Should the turn to a more public, statist capitalism make us more optimistic?
- How will the 'lawfare' used against Trump play out?
Links:
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The Millennial Left is dead, Chris Cutrone, Platypus
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The Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions 2006-2022, Chris Cutrone, Sublation
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
On the politics of emotions and emotionalism.
Philosopher Nina Power (an editor and columnist at Compact Magazine) kicks off this series by talking to us about anger, hate, and evil.
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Do we complain too little or too much? Should we be more repressed?
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Political passions were meant to be dead. Has anger overtaken apathy?
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Should we hate our enemies? Is that okay?
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Has contemporary society become hysterical?
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Why does everyone want to be a victim today? How does this relate to self-interest?
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Is evil a psychological concept?
For part two, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast
Links:
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What Do Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Discontents, Nina Power, Penguin Books
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Political Ponerology, Andrew Lobaczewski, Red Pill Press (pdf)
Friday Feb 16, 2024
Friday Feb 16, 2024
On Indonesia's new president and the End of History.
For the full episode: patreon.com/bungacast
Michael Vann, Indonesia expert and history professor at Sacramento State, joins us to talk through the election results.
- How did Prabowo go from wannabe fascist dictator to cuddly populist grandpa?
- Why is Jokowi "Indonesia's Obama"?
- What is Indonesia's Trump/Hunter Biden ticket?
- What's up with the $32bn new capital being built in Borneo?
- What is the Museum of Anticommunism, and how successfully has Indonesia's ruling class rewritten its history?
- Plus: why is metal so popular in Indonesia?
Links:
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Suharto’s Old Guard Is Still Calling the Shots in Indonesia, Michael Vann, Jacobin
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Shadow Puppets and Special Forces: Indonesia’s Fragile Democracy, Michael Vann, The Diplomat (on police v military clashes)
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Indonesia state apparatus is preparing to throw election to a notorious massacre general, Allan Nairn, The Intercept
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
We discuss the parallels between our age (the end of globalisation, the threat of war) with the end of the Belle Epoque in the early 20th century. What might Lenin have to teach us?
We then turn to your questions and comments on:
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Palestinians as surplus population
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Peripheral countries as 'imitators'
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Whether Brexit has led to greater political accountability
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Why Ridley Scott sucks
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Why contemporary art sucks
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Bonapartism and techno-populism
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Romanticising dead workers - and old social-democrats
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Esoteric knowledge about how the world *really* works
Readings:
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Lenin's Lesson for Western Liberals, Philip Cunliffe, UnHerd
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Why the Tories Are Blowing Brexit, George Hoare, The Northern Star
Friday Feb 09, 2024
Friday Feb 09, 2024
On Indonesia: a country without a Left.
Foremost scholar of Indonesian politics and political economy, Vedi Hadiz of the University of Melbourne, joins us to talk through the country's politics in advance of the elections next week.
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What was the authoritarian order that followed the 1965 anti-communist massacres?
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How did the Asian financial crisis lead towards democratisation – and how did the old oligarchy manage to retain much of its power?
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How has Indonesia become "Islamified", and what is "Islamic populism"?
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How do class and ethnicity/religion interact in Indonesia? Who speaks for the "downtrodden"?
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Is the upcoming election a contestation between oligarchic populisms?
Links:
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Marketing Morality in Indonesia's Democracy, Vedi Hadiz, East Asia Forum
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The demise of the left and the Islamisation of dissent in Indonesia, Vedi Hadiz, Melbourne Asia Review (video)
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Indonesia’s 2024 Presidential Election Could Be the Last Battle of the Titans, Carnegie Endowment
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
On El Salvador and mass incarceration.
Nayib Bukele, El Salvador's president, has just been re-elected on a landslide. His trademark policy is a state of emergency and the locking-up of tens of thousands of suspected gang members. He also made Bitcoin legal tender. What is 'Bukelismo', will it last, and will it spread?
First, we talk to Nelson Rauda, an editor at investigative outlet El Faro about the mood in El Salvador, what the state of emergency has been like, who the main gangs are and whether Bukele has secretly been negotiating with them, and what opposition there is to Bukele's subversion of democracy and civil liberties.
Then, Juan Rojas, Latin America columnist at Compact Magazine, joins us to discuss why such 'mano dura' (iron fist) policies have failed elsewhere but why they continue to appeal across the region – including among the poor and working class.
For part two, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast
Readings:
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El Salvador’s Bitcoin Paradise Is a Mirage, Nelson Rauda, NYT
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Behind Bukele's Revolution, Juan Rojas & Geoff Shullenberger, Compact
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On Security, Bukele and Petro Have a Problem in Common, Juan Rojas, Americas Quarterly
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In response to killings, El Salvador’s bitcoin president attacks civil liberties, Nelson Rauda, LA Times
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The Rise of Nayib Bukele, El Salvador's Authoritarian President, Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker
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Chaos in Ecuador, Guillaume Long, Sidecar/NLR
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¡Viva la ‘eficracia’!, Martin Caparrós, El País
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
On how to respond to conformity.
Lias Saoudi, frontman of the British band Fat White Family, joins us to talk about rock, popular culture and contemporary unfreedom. We discuss:
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Why are the kids taking less drugs?
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Can we respond to our nihilistic times with nihilistic art?
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What is the nature of conformity today?
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How to challenge conformity without sneering at the masses?
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Is there a romantic revival going on? Why is Lias interested in Ivan Illich?
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If living cheaply in big cities is now very difficult for artists, will something new emerge from the provinces?
Links:
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Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family & the Miracle of Failure, Lias Saoudi & Adelle Stripe, White Rabbit Books
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Punk's spirit is broken, Lias Saoudi, UnHerd
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Is modern medicine making us sick?, Lias Saoudi, UnHerd
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Forthcoming album: Forgiveness Is Yours
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/353/ Bunga Sells Out ft. Jason Myles - on music and the spectacle
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/359/ Apollo Gets High ft. Benjamin Fong - on drugs in America