I talk to Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson about the incredibly depressing mess the 2024 election is already shaping up to be and take a few calls. Nathan has written about the distinct possibility of Trump being re-elected: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/05/donald-trump-could-well-be-the-president-again ...and co-written an article with Lily Sanchez about why RFK, Jr. is so far from being the alternative to Biden we desperately need: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/05/rfk-jr-is-a-lying-crank-posing-as-a-progressive-alternative Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Callers ask me about toxicity on the Left, the Twitter Files, Ana Kasparian, how to pick your battles in arguments, Judith Jarvis Thomson's abortion essay, Norman Finkelstein's take on Philip Roth's novel American Pastoral, Philippa Foot, Kant's Categorical Imperative, and more. This was a very good time. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Right-wing pundit Curtis Yarvin wrote about Matt McManus on his Substack a little while back. Today, Matt joined me to read through the screed and respond point-by-point to a much as we could in an hour and change. There will be a Pt. 2! Yarvin's Substack on Matt: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-historical-guilt-of-the-old-regime?utm_source=post-email-title Matt's original article on Yarvin: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/curtis-yarvin-thiel-carlyle-monarchism-reactionary Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
One my very favorite recurring guests joins me to chat about his forthcoming Sublation article and the state of the American left. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Ethan from the Confronting Capital channel is going to give me his best pitch for why I should be more worried abut AI safety, and we'll take your calls. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I didn't try to put a chapter listing on this sine (a) it's my birthday and publishing this was the last work task I had to do today, and (b) it's all kind of a piece, but this actually was a pretty interesting one! I argue with anarchist Brent Lengel about an essay and he doesn't by Marx's collaborator Friedrich Engels--"On Authority": https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm For the other side of the argument, see Marx and Engels's factional rival (the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin)'s essay "What Is Authority?": https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/authrty.htm Link to Brent's indiegogo (more about that at the end of the episode): https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/durruti-shadow-of-the-people-1-2#/ Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
University of South Florida graduate student Sam Badger joins me to discuss his recently completed dissertation on the normative dimension of Marxism and take your calls. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Stefan Bertram-Lee joins me to talk about their Sublation essay "Money Over Moralism" and take your calls. You can read the essay itself here: https://www.sublationmag.com/post/money-over-moralism Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Kuba Wrzesniewski of This is Revolution podcast joins me to talk about the current state of the war in Ukraine and take your calls. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Djene Bajalan of This is Revolution joins me to chat about various subjects and take a few calls. We start with my essay “I Know This Will Shock You, But Karl Marx Would Not In Fact Have Been a MAGA Guy”: https://benburgis.substack.com/p/i-know-this-will-shock-you-but-karl Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson joins me to talk about his new article "Democratic Voters Want To Get Rid of Biden—But Will The Party Let Them?" and take some calls. You can read Nathan's piece here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/02/democratic-voters-want-to-get-rid-of-biden-but-will-the-party-let-them Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
[Note: Very sorry about the audio issues on this one. I considered not publishing as a result but I think this is important enough that I wanted to get this particular conversation out there despite the audio and tech hiccups.] I'm talked to Ryan Zickgraf about his Jacobin article on the disturbing terrorism charges filed after clashes between protestors and cops in Atlanta: https://jacobin.com/2023/01/domestic-terrorism-charges-cop-city-protests-atlanta-georgia Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Musician, podcaster, and freshly minted Sublation Magazine columnist Jason Myles is joins me to talk about his last essay for the magazine ("Trump Is Having His Chinese Democracy Moment") and the one he's working on now ("Is the Contemporary Left a Lifestyle Brand?") and take some calls. You can read Jason's work at Sublation here: https://www.sublationmag.com/writers/jason-myles Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
My chat w/Jacobin columnist Ryan Zickgraf about his Compact piece on Prince Harry + just a little bit of guillotine talk! You can read the article itself here: https://compactmag.com/article/the-prince-of-cringe Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
The great Daniel Bessner—-historian, podcaster (American Prestige, co-hosted w/Derek Davison), and Jacobin Contributing Editor—joins me to take your calls and talk about his new New York Times op-ed on the intersection between the end of history (as an academic profession paying a living wage) and the increasing importance of history to contemporary political debates. (Sorry about the abrupt ending! Turned out to be the only halfway reasonable place to cut it off.) You can read the piece here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/opinion/american-history-college-university-academia.html Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Matt McManus just wrote a devastating profile of right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin for Commonweal: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/curtis-yarvin-thiel-carlyle-monarchism-reactionary Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
A lot of great calls in this one on subjects ranging from going on Joe Rogan to a possible primary challenge rom the left to Biden in 2024 to abortion rights to Christopher Hitchens's debate with William Lane Craig on the Existence of God. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Varn Vlog host C. Derick Varn & I talked about enough subjects that I won't try to summarize them here--see the chapter listing!--and took a few calls. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Kurdish-British political commentary, university professor, podcast, and man-about-town Djene Bajalan joined me for a free-wheeling conversation about everything from Brazil to Battlestar Galactica to the myths of meritocracy. Buy tickets to the This is Revolution/GTAA/Left Reckoning live show ft. special guests Bhaskar Sunkara, Emma Vigeland and Sam Seder in NYC on January 22nd: https://www.ticketweb.com/event/this-is-revolution-left-reckoning-cutting-room-tickets/12706315 Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
The one and only Jason Myles--musician, author, video essayist, and host of the This is Revolution podcast--joined me for a late-afternoon-on-the-West-Coast AMA. We ended up talking about his new video essay on kayfabe, how politicians brand themselves, the relationship between music and politics, why Jason & I think Force the Vote didn't really make sense (some of the listeners disagree!), and more. Buy tickets to the This is Revolution/GTAA/Left Reckoning live show ft. special guests Bhaskar Sunkara, Emma Vigeland and Sam Seder in NYC on January 22nd: https://www.ticketweb.com/event/this-is-revolution-left-reckoning-cutting-room-tickets/12706315 Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com