Bungacast

Apr 01 2025 400 ep. 42 mins 4.3k
Bungacast Podcast artwork

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.

  News  Society & Culture  History
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


/478/ Should You Listen to Satan? ft. Orlando Reade

Apr 01 2025 54 mins  
On revolution, epic poetry, John Milton, and freedom. George and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch talk to Orlando Reade, who teaches English at Northeastern University London. We discuss Orlando’s new book What In Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost and the history of readings of John Milton’s great epic poem. Is Paradise Lost a poem about darkness? What

/477/ Talking Turkey in the Group Chat ft. Djene Bajalan

Mar 28 2025 56 mins  
On Erdogan's World and the revolt against it. [For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast] Historian Djene Bajalan joins George and Alex to review the past month – ceasefires in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, winning and losing US patronage, Trump's inconsistent strategy and leaks, and the gold rush. We then turn to a country exemplary of the contradictions of

/476/ Freedom against the New Nihilism ft. Jensen Suther

Mar 25 2025 35 mins  
On critical theory and autonomy. [For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast] Jensen Suther, a junior fellow at Harvard working in philosophy and literature, talks to Alex H and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about art, culture, and socialism. He also offers a riposte to previous guest Anna Kornbluh's discussion of immediacy, and its cultural forms such as autofi

/475/ Class Power: Professionals, Petits and Proles ft. Dan Evans

Mar 18 2025 67 mins  
On class formation, fragmentation, pessimism and optimism. George and contributing editor Leigh Phillips talk to Dan Evans, a writer and academic based in South Wales. We discuss his piece in the New Socialist, ‘Is the Working Class Back?’ and themes emerging from it. How important are definitions of class? If the working class remains weak and fragmented, and its politics

/474/ Urban Power in a Planet of Slums ft. Ben Bradlow

Mar 11 2025 41 mins  
On cities and the politics of development. [For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast] Ben Bradlow, assistant professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton, talks to Alex about his book Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg. If our future is urban – and it is – why is it different to what we imagined? Are Johanne

/473/ Make Alienation Great Again ft. Todd McGowan

Mar 04 2025 76 mins  
On Embracing Alienation. Todd McGowan is back on the pod, talking to George and Alex about his book, Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try To Find Ourselves. Why is alienation good actually? What does it give us? How is alienation related to subjectivity and freedom? What is the problem with anti-alienation politics of Left and Right? What happened to the 1960s concern

/472/ Munich, MAGA, Musk, Malema ft. Will Shoki / Ryan Zickgraf

Feb 27 2025 40 mins  
On Trumpworld: Vance in Munich; Musk in South Africa. [This contains only the interview on South Africa – for the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast] Alex, George and Ryan Zickgraf round up events in Germany: first the elections, then US Vice-President JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference where he called out Western elites' hypocrisy on liberalism and

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

Feb 25 2025 12 mins  
On Gramsci in the 21st century. [Patreon Exclusive] Sociologist Nathan Sperber and our own George Hoare talk to Alex H and Lee Jones about the new edition to their book, An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy, which includes a new chapter on Gramsci's relevance to contemporary politics and events and a new section on Gramsci's influence on the New Right. W

UNLOCKED: /418/ Neoliberal Order Breakdown System, German-Style ft. Gregor Baszak

Feb 20 2025 91 mins  
This episode, originally published in June 2024 only for subscribers, is crucial backdrop to this Sunday's (23 Feb 2025) snap elections in Germany. For more like this, join us at patreon.com/bungacast On German political derangement. Independent researcher and writer Gregor Baszak joins us to talk about German centrism being squeezed under pressure from both left and right — Sa

/470/ Political Reaction to System Failure ft. Tim Pendry

Feb 18 2025 94 mins  
On the world under Trump, and British responses. Tim Pendry, author of the Unstable Times substack, as well as an international affairs consultant, talks to Alex H and Lee Jones about the world under Trump II, the massive shifts underway, and his own policy work with the Workers Party of Britain. How has intra-bourgeois struggle shaped the past decades in politics? What is "Am