Ben Burgis takes calls, answers questions, and argues about anything that seems interesting. Should be a good time.
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
A couple of weeks ago on Twitter, Glenn Greenwald faulted "the Bernie/AOC Left" for not opposing the national security state. Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic pushed back, they got into it a bit, and I invited both of them to come on and talk about their disagreement here. While I'm sure there were times when everyone involved found it frustrating, overall I think it was an interesting and productive discussion. Here's the link to the GTAA episode w/Krystal Ball & RM Brown I mentioned at the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icxYZA5v1FI Here's the link to get tickets to the joint GTAA/Left Reckoning/This is Revolution live show happening in New York on January 22nd w/Bhaskar Sunkara, Emma Vigeland and Sam Seder: 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
Rob Larson--the people's econ prof--joins me to talk about inflation, socialism, the ruling class, and more. Follow Rob on Twitter: @IronicProfessor Get tickets to the joint GTAA/Left Reckoning/This is Revolution "Give Them a Revolution" live show at the Cutting Room in NYC at 7 PM on January 22nd w/Bhaskar Sunkara, Emma Vigeland, Sam Seder, and many more guests: 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
Starting today, these things are going to be 4 PM West Coast/7 PM East Coast every day unless I can't for whatever reason any given day, and my goal is to shut up after the first 5 minutes (or first 10 at the outside) and let them be caller-driven. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Ended up taking a lot of calls about philosophy, which was fun & appropriate because of the launch of my new Philosophy for the People Substack: benburgis.substack.com We also talked about the ways the show is going to be changing in the New Year. Generally speaking, it's going to be at 4 PM West Coast/7 PM East Coast every day unless I'm out of town or for some other reason can't so people know when to expect it and we can try to make it a lot more caller-driven (no more than a few minutes of me blathering on at the beginning). Looking forward to getting that schedule going! Get tickets to the joint GTAA/Left Reckoning/This is Revolution "Give Them a Revolution" live show at the Cutting Room in NYC at 7 PM on January 22nd w/Bhaskar Sunkara, Emma Vigeland, Sam Seder, and many more guests: https://www.ticketweb.com/event/give-them-a-revolution-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
If you're on the West Coast where it's not insanely late yet and you're up late wrapping presents or whatnot, listen/call in! I'll probably start out talking about my Yarvin article in Jacobin: https://jacobin.com/2022/12/curtis-yarvin-right-wing-blogger-democracy-monarchism Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'll be taking a few calls and talking about my article a couple days ago in The Daily Beast on the Twitter Files ("The ‘Twitter Files' Are Too Serious to Be Left to Elon Musk's Pals"): https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-files-are-too-serious-to-be-left-to-elon-musks-pals Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I just wrote an article for the Nation on Josh Hawley's attempt to score populist points by condemning Dems' (very real) betrayal of the rail workers--I'll talk about it and take some calls. Here's the article itself: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/josh-hawley-rail-strike/ Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Taking a break (mostly) from politics today to talk about the work of science fiction writer and self-described "fictionalizing philosopher" Philip K. Dick with the PKD scholar who runs the "Total Dick-Head" blog: http://totaldickhead.blogspot.com/ Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Link to the NYC live show: https://www.ticketweb.com/event/this-is-revolution-left-reckoning-cutting-room-tickets/12706315 This was an AMA. We addressed all the topics above. It was fun. You should listen. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Going to talk about this article and take some calls: https://www.thedailybeast.com/joe-biden-and-democrats-have-betrayed-rail-workers-and-unions-after-house-and-senate-vote Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Jacobin's Branko Marcetic joins to me to discuss his article on why it's so absurd for both people who love Elon Musk and people who hate him to portray him as some sort of free speech zealot--he's nothing of the kind--and take your calls. Here's Branko's article: https://jacobin.com/2022/11/elon-musk-twitter-crackdown-left-wing-accounts Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
It's been a while, but Kuba Wrzesniewski once again joins me for an update on the war in Ukraine. Call in w/questions, thoughts, denunciations, or whatever else! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I said I'd do something Marx-y I'm going to be talking about an article I wrote a little while back for Jacobin and never did a Callin about--"Ben Shapiro Thinks 'Marxism'Can't Work in America.' He's Very Confused."--and taking some calls! Here's a link to the article: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/ben-shapiro-is-wrong-about-socialism Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'm going to talk about my new article (out today in the Daily Beast!) "Jordan Peterson's Politics Make Life Harder for Young Men" + take some calls. Here's a link to the article: https://www.thedailybeast.com/jordan-petersons-politics-make-life-harder-for-young-men Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'm going to talk about my Daily Beast article "The Left Needs a Better Message on Crime" and take some calls! You can read the article here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-left-needs-a-better-message-on-crime Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'm going to be talking about my new Jacobin article examining Ben Shapiro's odd views about how visitors from Mars would oppose gay marriage--and arguing that the best way to help people start families isn't by dissolving gay people's marriages but by providing universal economic security--and taking some calls. You can read the article itself here: https://jacobin.com/2022/11/ben-shapiro-gay-marriage-equality-family-support Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Our good friend David Griscom just wrote a Jacobin article about Texas Governor Greg Abbot's power grabs and how politics in the Lone Star State are very bad for working-class people right now. I'm going to interview him about it and take some calls! Here's the article: https://jacobin.com/2022/11/greg-abbott-reelection-governor-democratic-election-strategy-texas Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'm going to talk about my Daily Beast article "Why the Hell Haven't We Ended the Cuba Embargo Already?" and take some calls. Here's a link to the article: https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-hell-havent-we-ended-the-cuba-embargo-already Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'm going to talk about my Daily Beast article about the election results and take some calls: you can read the article here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-averted-disaster-but-the-working-class-did-not Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'm going to be talking about my brand new article in Jacobin--"I'm a Socialist. Joe Biden Is Not"--and taking some calls. Probably inevitable that we'll talk some about the midterms too. You can read the article here: https://jacobin.com/2022/11/joe-biden-socialism-government-spending-tpusa Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic is going to join me to take some calls and talk about his excellent article "Republicans Are Planning an All-Out Assault on the Working Class If They Win Next Week": https://jacobin.com/2022/11/republican-midterm-victory-plan-policies-far-right Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
We're completing the trilogy tonight with this weekend's third consecutive chat about Marx's theory of history and G.A. Cohen's explication and defense of it! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
This is just going to be a follow-up to yesterday's room on Marx's theory of history. You can listen to the published version of that one here: https://www.callin.com/episode/friday-night-chat-about-marxs-theory-of-history-dWjiGClMOS I'll throw open the lines to calls at the very beginning so anyone who was still waiting to call in when I had to cut off the episode last night can call in then, and after taking any calls we have to start with I'll go back through some of the material on G.A. Cohen and Marx's historical materialism we didn't get to in Pt. 1! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Haven't done one of these yet this week and I've been thinking about Marx's theory of history because of a paper I just wrote about it for a collection Conrad Hamilton and Matt McManus are editing called "Flowers for Marx"--so let's talk about that! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Elon Musk's record gives us exactly no reason to trust that he'll be true to his word on free speech. I strongly support taking our digital public square into public ownership. But some liberals are freaking out for exactly the opposite reason. In this one before I open it up to calls I'm going to go through this truly awful New Republic article Chapo-reading-series style: https://newrepublic.com/article/168309/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-ruin-america Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I just finished writing an article for Jacobin about the Brett Favre welfare scandal--which was a direct result of the grotesque and frankly Dickensian "welfare reform" law signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 to fulfill Big Dog's 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it." Turns out that welfare as we then knew it was a whole lot less corrupt. I'll kick off the episode by talking about that and then take some calls (about that or whatever else is on everyone's minds today). Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Anarchist activist Myles Bragg once again joins me to chat about areas of agreement and disagreement on both larger ideological assumptions and practical politics. This was a lot of fun last time and I'm looking forward to rolling in the deep on some of this stuff again today. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I'm having my good friend and frequent collaborator Matt McManus on the show to explore where we agree and where we might disagree on how the Left should approach the Ukraine war. You can check out several articles I've written to see what I think, e.g.: https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-the-cuban-missile-crisis-can-teach-the-us-about-how-to-deal-with-russia-and-ukraine https://www.thedailybeast.com/noam-chomsky-is-right-us-should-work-to-negotiate-an-end-to-the-war-in-ukraine https://jacobin.com/2022/07/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-ukraine-russia-putin https://jacobin.com/2022/04/antiwar-internationalists-isolationists-eugene-debs-russia-ukraine https://www.sublationmag.com/post/ukraine-and-the-specter-of-christopher-hitchens Matt mentions some of his thinking on this in his review of Michael Millerman's Dugin book: https://merionwest.com/2022/04/13/review-michael-millermans-beginning-with-heidegger-strauss-rorty-derrida-dugin-and-the-philosophical-constitution-of-the-political/ I'm not sure what all the nuances of Matt's position are, but my reason for thinking we might see this differently is primarily this tweet: https://twitter.com/mattpolprof/status/1579870780137279488 If you read the rest of the thread, there's enough nuance there that I'm not sure we actually disagree on any of this but I am curious and since I've never had a bad conversation with Matt I figured it would be both more pleasant and informative to have an actual conversation about this than to try to hash it out on Twitter. If we get calls, we'll take them at the end. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
Haven't done this in the last couple weeks (sorry! a lot going on) so let's do one and chat about, for the most part, whatever people want to call in and talk about. But I'm working on an essay on G.A. Cohen and "Analytic(al) Marxism" so we'll start there! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
I just finished teaching today's session of a class I've been doing on Capital, so we ended up talking about Marx's analysis there for a while, then that shaded into labor rights talk, then the rail workers. Enjoy! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
"Deep State Kuba" from the This is Revolution podcast and I both wrote articles about Gorbachev in the last week so we thought we'd get together to talk about them and take some calls. You can read Kuba's here: https://www.sublationmag.com/post/goodbye-gorby ...and mine here: https://jacobin.com/2022/09/mikhail-gorbachev-legacy-transition-postsocialism-ussr Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com
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