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

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wwsvx-19bb5b0 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…

/459/ Reading Club: Place 2 – Augé

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-r6aa9-177c477 On Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity [For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership] We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Marc Augé's…

/458/ The Society of Pure Vibe ft. Anna Kornbluh

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ivpg4-1773e44 On immediacy, representation, and anti-politics. Anna Kornbluh, professor of English and author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism talks to Alex about the cultural, political, and economic changes she refers to as 'immediacy'. We discuss: Is…

/443/ Nations, Globalisation & De-development: Reading Club (sample)

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-vii7f-16fd8c4 On Nations & Nationalism since 1870. [Patreon Exclusive] We start by dealing with your questions regarding last month's RC, on Stalin, Zhukhov and WWII. Then we read and discuss Eric Hobsbawm's classic work in which he emphasises that nations…

/432/ Median Left Thought and its Monsters ft. Ben Burgis (sample)

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-a67mc-16a7817 On Naomi Klein & Naomi Wolf and "political diagonalism" Episode in association with Damage magazine. Patreon Exclusive. Ben Burgis talks to Alex and George about his review in Damage of Naomi Klein's Doppelgangers. We discuss: Whether Naomi Klein is…

/429/ Reading Club: Treason of the Intellectuals (sample)

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-2n4a6-1690080 On Julien Benda's famous 1927 work. [Patreon Exclusive] We continue on the theme of 'Intellectuals and the Public' by discussing the often cited by little read The Treason of the Clerks. We ask: If Benda was responding to the…