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I like listening to podcasts, but I'm not aware of that many podcasts from a left political stance. There's Doug Henwood's, but I don't really listen to that one.

One podcast I do think is good, however, is Douglas Lain's Diet Soap podcast. It's billed as a philosophy podcasts but there's plenty of episodes where Douglas and whatever guest is on get to grips with substantive, Marxist issues. He's had Brendan Cooney of Kapitalism 101 several times as well as Andrew Kliman.

He's also had another podcast, with C. Derek Varn, called Pop the Left, which has explored the political problems of the Left, such as why Anarchism seems "sexier" than Marxism and how the Left has forgotten about Dual Power.

If you only listen to one episode of either podcast, I'd recommend Diet Soap episode 189, where Lain and Varn discuss the recent Chomsky-Zizek "feud". The only real downside of listening to any of these shows is that it's easy to come out of them thinking any kind of Left action is kind of futile, since Varn in particular does not pull any punches with respect of the shortcomings of the actual-existing Left.

Yeah, Varn does seem to have his s**t together. And he has a solid knowledge of the history of the left too.

Of course, in and of itself, it doesn't help much, since any solutions even the best can think of are pretty broadbrush.

I'm pretty cynical myself, about the symbolic actions like protest marchs....but, Jesus Christ. neutral

Well, anyway, I've found a podcast that has only two episodes so far, though I'm like 95% sure it's satire. "Turlough Rooney" as far as I can tell, is a character.

Turlough Rooney's Revolutionary Insights

Turlough Rooney Defends a Fallen Comrade

They're both kind of funny. I don't think "Turlough Rooney" understands what Zizek's doing, though.

That's probably a misconstrual of his so-cslled "breakup letter" with political Marxism mentioned on the "Breaking Marx" episode. Rumours like this need to be taken with a grain of salt until there's actual substance to them.

I found this just a few minutes ago:

http://symptomaticcommentary.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/the-rumors-of-my-fascism-are-greatly-overstated/

And besides, ultraleftists are perenially....infantile, as a great leftist once put it.

Yes, it only refutes accusations that he's a fascist, and not other ones.

Then again, so what? I wouldn't be surprised if in five years time or so Varn will still be more or less where he is now and a few of these ultraleftists will have wound up going rightist.

I could see him drifting rightwards in a highly protacted and self-conscious manner though. I'm thinking specifically of the late Paul Q. Hirst, whole started out as an Althusserian and finally wound up as a New Labourite slightly to the left of Tony Blair.

I dunno, if it's mp3, it should be able to be put on right?



Not really that are leftist, though R.U. Sirius has had a few wpisodes dealing with left subjects, like anarchism. He's even had a dude from the Revolution Communist Party on there before. You know, Bob Avakian's little Maoist sect.

Update. A new, important podcast has emerged, Symptomatic Redness, hosted by C. Derick Varn and Amogh Sahu. Episode 1 has economics critic Philip Mirowski on Neoliberalism.