Bungacast16 Touko 2023

/340/ How to Grow a Backbone ft. Russell Jacoby

On utopia and individualism.

Renowned intellectual historian and critic Russell Jacoby joins us to talk about his lifetime of left critique. We discuss his early criticisms of psychology in light of the advance of therapy culture over the past 50 years, before moving on to the question of utopianism.

Will the breakdown of the neoliberal era lead to new utopian thinking? Does enthusiasm for a universal basic income signal serious thinking about the nature of work? Or are we still in a world where only dystopian thinking is permitted?

The episode concludes by discussing how all the talk of diversity today obscures the reality of increasing homogeneity. What does this say about the individual? Is the way children are brought up today killing the capacity for imagination and making us all conformists?

Part two of the interview, and our After Party, is available at patreon.com/bungacast

Selected books by Jacoby:

Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology (Beacon Press, 1975; Transaction, 1997)
The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (Basic Books, 1987; new edition with new Introduction, Basic Books 2000)
The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in the Age of Apathy (Basic Books, 1999)
Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (Columbia University Press, 2005)
On Diversity: The Eclipse of the Individual in a Global Era (Seven Stories Press, 2020)

Jaksot(400)

/562/ No More Populist Shortcuts? ft. Daniel Tutt & C. Derick Varn

On dead ends and new beginnings. Socialist writers, teachers and podcasters, Daniel Tutt and C. Derick Varn, talk to Alex and George about their pamphlet, The People Are Not One: Socialist Strategy Af...

6 Loka 1h 18min

/561/ Who Actually Rules Brazil? ft. Juliano Fiori

On sovereignty and Brazil's election. Juliano Fiori, Alameda Institute director, talks to Alex about Lula versus (Flávio) Bolsonaro through the lens of internal and external threats to sovereignty. ...

29 Syys 58min

Nowhere Everywhere? Place in a Digital World. Part four.

A docu-series from Bungacast. This sequence of interviews, conversations and meetings were recorded mostly in New York – the capital of the 20th century – in order to ask what the future of place is i...

22 Syys 1h 17min

Nowhere Everywhere? Place in a Digital World. Part three.

22 Syys 1h 12min

Nowhere Everywhere? Place in a Digital World. Part two.

22 Syys 1h 33min

Nowhere Everywhere? Place in a Digital World. Part one.

22 Syys 54min

/560/ Indonesia's Putin ft. Vedi Hadiz

On oligarchy and the end of reform. Vedi Hadiz is back on to talk to Lee and Alex about Indonesia, amidst severe economic instability in the country. What does the ascendancy of Prabowo Subianto rep...

15 Syys 33min

/559/ Global Jihad: 9/11 at 25 ft. Philip Cunliffe

On the complex connections between globalisation and political Islam. The OG Bunga Boys reflect on the quarter-century since that spectacular terrorist attack, and talk about Phil's recent essay on th...

8 Syys 31min