On the crisis in literacy.
Poet, podcaster and teacher, C. Derick Varn – who has taught in Mexico, Korea, Egypt and the US, at various levels – joins Alex and George to interrogate the coming "post-literate society".
What do we mean when we say 'post-literate'?
This seems a global problem – so is it a problem of the education system?
Is it as simple as blaming smartphones?
How else has education become degraded? How have progressives and conservatives combined to do this?
Are we becoming on oral culture again? What are the consequences?
For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast
Links:
Are we becoming a post-literate society?, Sarah O'Connor, FT
Have humans passed peak brain power?, John Burn-Murdoch, FT
Visible Learning (synthesis of meta analyses), John Hattie
Why Knowledge Matters, ED Hirsch, Harvard
Seven Myths about Education, Daisy Christodoulou
Insensitivity Readers!, Nina Power
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59:48
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59:48
/520/ Conspiracy Culture & Paranoid Styles ft. Catherine Liu
In this special episode, we present talks given by contributing editor Catherine Liu and co-host George Hoare on the paranoid style at a recent conference at UC Irvine, co-hosted by the Palm Springs School for Social Research.
00:01:23 – Catherine Liu: Opening Remarks, on Richard Hofstatder’s classic essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”
00:12:18 – George Hoare: The Paranoid Style in British Politics
00:36:06 – Catherine Liu: "Zombies Clowns and Gangsters"
For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast
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12:21
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12:21
/519/ Reading Club: White Collar & Post-Mass Culture ft. Dustin Guastella
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 on The Wilson Quarterly/Russell Lynes 1949
For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast
Does Mills' account of the “economic psychology” of the White Collar worker still ring true today?
What about their "political psychology"?
What is the state of White Collar trade unionism today?
Is there no possibility of the middle class leading a political movement?
Do the distinctions of high- middle- and low-brow still make sense today, in our era of levelling-down and slop?
Should we defend democracy in the economy and elitism in culture?
Readings:
White Collar: The American Middle Classes, C. Wright Mills, 1951 (esp final two chapters)
Highbrow, Middlebrow, Lowbrow, Russell Lynes, Wilson Quarterly, 1976 reprint of 1949 article (pdf attached)
Post-Mass Culture, Dylan Riley, Sidecar
Unionizing the “Cultural Apparatus”, Nelson Lichtenstein, Jacobin
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31:07
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31:07
UNLOCKED: /497/ Are We Living in Fast Times? ft. James Hughes & Eli Sennesh
On technology, transhumanism, and progress.
James Hughes (Exec Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) and Eli Sennesh (postdoc, Vanderbilt) present a futurist approach to Alex and contributing editor Leigh Phillips.
What is wrong with the acronym TESCREAL?
Why is it wrong to worry about future transhumanism when we need to grapple with the technologies of now?
What are the limits of bourgeois futurism? What is an alternative futurism?
Has AI changed everything? Will it?
Are we actually living in an age of rapid technological advance?
Links:
Conspiracy Theories, Left Futurism, and the Attack on TESCREAL, James Hughes & Eli Sennesh
/306/ AI Capitalism: Inhuman Power
/335/ AI & the End of the End of History
/446/ The Techno-Fantasy of Perfect Freedom ft. Amber Trotter
/488/ Homo-Techno, Homo-Solo ...Post-Homo? ft. Alex Gendler
The Obama-to-Yarvin Pipeline, Geoff Schullenberger, Compact Substack
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1:08:22
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1:08:22
/518/ We Have Never Been Postmodern ft. Geoff Shullenberger
On free speech, the tech right, and politicisation.
Geoff Shullenberger, managing editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to talk about Peter Thiel, René Girard, victimhood and the antichrist.
Does it make sense to talk of "right-wing cancel culture"? Is it different from the left's?
Is countercultural trolling in tension with "defending Western civilisation"?
What does René Girard argue about mimesis and scapegoating? Why have his theories become popular?
Is right-populism still politicising? How does it relate to libertarian anti-politics and hard-right militarisation?
How has Silicon Valley libertarianism adapted to the new state-capitalist disposition?
For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast
Links:
René Girard and the Rise of Victim Power, Geoff Shullenberger, Compact
The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession, Laura Bullard, Wired
The Faith of Nick Land, Geoff Shullenberger, Compact
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