"You can not have social transformation and free trade..." Our guest @panagsotiris on the ways in which international capital = more exploitation

And while we've got your attention—tell us what guest(s) you'd like us to have on in 2026!

What episode got you talking in 2025? Did JD Vance Kill the PMC? with a special appearance (apparition?) by @ghostofchristo1: 🎧 LISTEN: www.patreon.com/posts/487-di...

We wouldn't want to spend the End of the End of History without anyone else but you...

What Bungacast episode got listeners talking the most in 2025? 🗣️ @jhensonpogue LISTEN: www.patreon.com/posts/495-he...

What were the Must Listen Bungacasts of 2025? 🎧 Start here: bungacast.podbean.com/e/461-welcom...

What happens when Bungacast visits a small town in New Mexico? 🎉 Find out: www.patreon.com/posts/526-co...

🎬 MOVIE CLUB 🎬 We get a mega-dose of American paranoia and talk Eddington, One Battle After Another and Bugonia. Grab your popcorn: www.patreon.com/posts/526-co...

What is the crisis of authority? @DamageMag's Amber Trotter:

📚 From the Archives 📚 Last year, we talked with @CLiuAnon about how the changing culture wars have changed, why everyone is a populist now, and about how we should defend the canon. LINK: www.patreon.com/posts/426-ex...

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 W/ @damagemag's Amber Trotter on overmedicalisation and the crisis of authority. 🗣️ What is driving the explosion in mental health diagnoses? 🗣️ Does capitalism make us ill? Is blaming 'capitalism' abstractly part of the problem?

Our convo w/ Amber Trotter on overmedicalisation and the crisis of authority is out today! Here's what else is on deck in December: ☑️ (As always, subscribe to get the full slate of episodes)

If politics seem stuck in a doom loop, is there a possibility of a <gulp> hope loop? + more in our literary post about our oral and video podcast in which we lament the death of literacy. Got it?

🙋 What exactly do we mean by political legitimacy? We discuss w/ @BMStudebaker

The irony of progressive education is that it actually shuts people in their place rather than open doors. —@varnvlog

🤔 The problem with a post-literate society is that we don't have a model of an oral culture without memory. If the internet has fried our brain, how do we go back? Listen to @varnvlog on the newest Bungacast!

Time is a flat circle

🔥 SPECIAL EPISODE 🔥 Talks given by contributing editor @CLiuAnon and co-host George Hoare on the paranoid style. Richard Hofstatder’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” + The Paranoid Style in British Politics + "Zombies Clowns and Gangsters" 👇

"If we want to have a society that's flourshing, that society needs to be equal but it also needs to be excellent." Dustin Guastella on art and culture after postmodernism—when no one can say if Beethoven is better than Taylor Swift.

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 We discuss C. Wright Mills' White Collar w/ Dino Guastella. 🗣️ Does Mills' account of the “economic psychology” of the White Collar worker still ring true today? 👇

🗣️ Silicon Valley is attaching itself to the state like a leech says @g_shullenberger

📚 FROM THE ARCHIVES 📚 Revisit our conversation w/ Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser on the tensions between hating your national culture and wanting to leave it behind. The past really does not go away! bungacast.podbean.com/e/147-the-pa...

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 w/ @g_shullenberger on free speech, the tech right, and politicisation and the antichrist. 🗣️ Does it make sense to talk of "right-wing cancel culture"? 🗣️ Is countercultural trolling in tension with "defending Western civilisation"?

More “adventures in de-socialisation” in this month's recap. Maybe society really does need to be defended—but for real this time? 📖 buff.ly/DBN0vym

If enlightenment means disenchantment—maybe we need some form of re-enchantment? —@alex_1789

🧵 WONDERS OF THE MODERN WORLD 🌍 We still build colossal temples, mountains, and monuments — structures that are very big, that pretend to be ancient, and are mostly ugly. 👇

Contemporary wonders and monuments do exist — they just might not be very beautiful. — @pptamburelli

🔥 NEW EPISODE 🔥 w/ @pptamburelli Everyone is still making modern monuments but the new wonders of the world aren't so wonderful. Why?

Mood.

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 Seeing France through 4 moments w/ @lyrafred 🇫🇷 1995 – The last moment of classic class struggle; 🇫🇷 2005 – Riots in the banlieues 🇫🇷 2015 – Islamist terror 🇫🇷 2025 – government collapse.

The era of state capitalism is here, says @IliasAlami, the question now is how it's going to develop. 👇

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 Is the era of state capitalism upon us? We're joined by @IliasAlami to talk about the weakness of state and capital – and their fusion. 💬 Why is state capitalism not just a China story, but is global? 💬 How did globalisation and stagnation combine to give birth to it? 👇

Are urban spaces like expressways an abomination, the new nature, or somewhere in between? We discuss with Richard J Williams, author of The Expressway World

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 We're taking a road trip w/ Richard J Williams to talk about his new book, *The Expressway World* 🚗 How have cities adapted to the infrastructural legacies of the mid-20th century?

Loving the new Taylor Swift album...

📚 From the Archives 📚 Trump wants to bail out Argentina's Javier Milei. What are the politics around bailouts and defaults – in Argentina and beyond? Listen to our episode with Jerome Roos on sovereign debt. 👇

Is Trump really a Christian Nationalist or a Nationalist Classic?

If September was about decay and collapse, October asks: what rises from the rubble?

What to make of the transnational nationalism of the Right and the mirroring of the Left's worst tendencies? In our newsletter, we ponder this and look back at global politics in September and prepare a new Bungaverse for October. 📚 buff.ly/vgRxCAE

🎉 NEW EPISODE 🎉 w/ guest @GCasaroes on Bolsonaro's sentencing, Trump's tariffs on Brazil, and the bailout of Milei. 🗣️ Is Bolsonarismo the closest to MAGA among the global radical right? 🗣️ Will a "Populist International Order" follow the Liberal International Order? ⏬

🔥 NEW EPISODE 🔥 The Reading Club is back with a discussion on Göran Therborn's Dreams and Nightmares of the World’s Middle Classes. 🗣️ What politics do the middle classes generate? Is the middle-class dream increasingly only a dream? ⏬

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 If we're all distracting ourselves to death, as Neil Postman called it, should we at least do it with King of the Hill? Our conversation with @ryan_zickgraf on the power of the "boob tube."

Here's Orlando Patterson on the legacy of slavery that identitarians don't want to talk about. Patterson was our guest this week to talk about his recent book: The Paradox of Freedom ⬇️

Jimmy Carter's "I believe in the sanctity of ethnic neighborhoods" speech was the precursor to the modern identity politics movement. Orlando Patterson says now we get Trump's embrace of white ethnic identity ⏬

Jimmy Carter's "I believe in the sanctity of ethnic neighborhoods" speech was the precursor to the modern identity politics movement. Orlando Patterson says now we get Trump's embrace of white ethnic identity ⏬

Hey kids, here's a handy guide to the U.S. Congress...

📚 FROM THE ARCHIVES 📚 With Keir Starmer insisting Britain is not broken, revisit our 2020 discussion of the stakes involved in such claims. What is decline? Is it relative or absolute? When did it start? David Edgerton explains… 👇

Listeners! Here's a sneak peek at what's coming this month