Varn Vlog

Jason, a recurring Regrettable Century contributor who debates decadence and social reproduction, and Chris, a Regrettable Century interlocutor focused on geopolitics and political economy, dig into decadence as a live condition. They map military hollowing, shifting imperial reach, falling profit rates and fictitious capital. They also discuss cultural inflation, elite overproduction, and the collapse of social reproduction.

Sudip Bhattacharya, writer and political commentator, critiques how punditry flattens history and recasts complex politics into buzzwords. He dissects cable news spectacle, mislabeling of authoritarianism, Israel as settler colonialism, weaponized antisemitism, and the Cuomo vs. Mamdani race. Conversations turn to elite decay, new right alliances, and how multiethnic organizing and institutions can turn energy into power.

Daniel Tutt, scholar of intellectual history and left politics, returns to probe why emancipatory organizations often calcify into elite rule. He contrasts Michels’ iron law with Rancière’s worker poets. Short takes on proletarian vs bourgeois intellectuals, organizational capture, Chile’s provisional leadership lessons, and practical guardrails like rotation, sortition, recall, and para-academic spaces.

Historian and novelist Ada Palmer dives deep into the Renaissance's true nature, challenging its myth as merely a 'rebirth.' She reveals how 19th-century nationalism twisted historical narratives and why Italy wasn't a unified nation but a chaotic region. Explore the surprising role of libraries and culture as powerful political tools and how prominent figures like Machiavelli critiqued the era's ideals. Palmer asserts that peace, not crisis, fosters true innovation and advocates for a nuanced view of historical beginnings, likening them to a river's gradual flow.

Djene Bajalan, a regional expert on the Middle East, dives deep into Iran's complex internal dynamics and Syria's ongoing conflicts. He reveals how sanctions create a siege economy, fueling despair among the youth and complicating reformist efforts. The discussion highlights the limitations of foreign support from nations like Russia and China, while exploring Kurdish separatism and the shifting political landscape in Syria. Bajalan critiques the role of propaganda and misinformation in shaping narratives, emphasizing the need for genuine solidarity and cautious analysis.

A lot of people call it populism, but the engine driving today’s politics is anti-politics: the organized channeling of frustration without a stable program for governing. Joseph Sciortino of the Rabble Report and I dig into why that matters for socialists, progressives, and anyone trying to turn protest into power—and why the effort so often stalls once it hits the wall of debt, police unions, and low-turnout city halls. Using New York and Zohran Mamdani as a focal point, we unpack DSA fractures, backroom deals, and the deeper contradiction of running as a disruptor while needing the very machinery you promised to challenge.From there, we widen the lens. We trace the rise and fall of mass parties into today’s catch-all, cartelized party systems that govern the state more than they represent society. That shift helps explain why left populism rarely lasts in office, why the right is often better positioned to capitalize on anti-state sentiment, and why the working class keeps drifting from parties that talk redistribution but deliver management. Along the way, we compare Corbyn and the Brexit realignment, Macron’s narrowing options against the French far right, and Morena’s pragmatic coalitions in Mexico—an uncomfortable, useful counterexample for American left expectations.We also wrestle with the hard stuff: policing and recallability, standing armies versus civic defense, NGOs as pseudo-public power, and the fiscal constraints no mayor can wish away. If socialism is society’s self-organization—not just nationalization or technocratic administration—then the first task is rebuilding institutions and habits that live outside state offices. Without that base, anti-politics only deepens; with it, opposition can become leverage instead of mere posture.If this conversation helps you see the terrain more clearly, tap follow, share it with a friend who’s frustrated by “vibes” politics, and leave a quick review. Your notes shape what we dig into next.Send us a text Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

A “small revolt” doesn’t topple an institution—people do. We dive into the 1824 Chumash uprising and show why it belongs with the era’s great revolutions, not the margins of a mission field trip. With historian-journalist Joe Payne, we map how three missions became a battleground for emancipation, how labor withdrawal and horse control shattered the mission economy, and why a four-pound cannon and a privateer raid still echo through California’s historical memory.We zoom out to the age of independence to read Alta California against Mexican constitutional turmoil, counter-revolution, and the casta system that structured everyday power. You’ll hear how Franciscans trained militias they couldn’t control, why disease and livestock were imperial weapons, and how Chumash technology—canoes, acorn processing, shell currency—supported dense settlements and regional politics that Spanish officials struggled to categorize but quietly feared. The story doesn’t stop at the gates: inland flight, alliances, and repeated uprisings helped doom the mission system itself.We also confront how the past is staged. Rebuilt missions and tidy exhibits often freeze the Chumash at contact and sideline their leadership, while modern policy offers “sanctuaries” offshore and roadblocks on land. Joe details present-day sovereignty fights, internal debates over identity, and the promise of Chumash-run cultural centers that tell a living story in their own voice. Along the way, we question European categories like nation and state, challenge simplistic gender readings, and make room for complexity without losing the plot: indigenous history is ongoing, and this revolution still speaks to power, place, and who gets to define both.If this conversation expands your map of California, share it with a friend, subscribe for more deep dives, and leave a review telling us the biggest myth you were taught about the mission era.Send us a text Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

In Part 2 of our series on intellectualls, Daniel Tutt returns to talk  Bourdieu. Start with the feeling that “merit” is natural and fair—and then watch it fall apart. We take Pierre Bourdieu’s sharpest tools—habitus, field, cultural capital, symbolic power—and use them to expose how universities, media, and taste quietly reproduce class while insisting it’s all about talent. From Homo Academicus to Distinction to the Algeria studies, we clear up the biggest misconceptions: cultural capital is more than style, symbolic violence is more than rude behavior, and habitus is embodied history adapting to shifting fields.Our conversation travels through the crisis of the scholarly habitus—leisure packaged as labor, prestige buffered by adjunct exploitation—and the awkward truth that DEI can deepen stratification when it diverts resources and legitimizes existing hierarchies. We connect Bourdieu’s hysteresis to today’s culture wars: fields change fast, bodies adapt slow, and the resulting frustration feeds irrationalism. His study of Heidegger becomes a cautionary tale about stalled elites and seductive anti‑rational philosophies. Meanwhile the working class loses a stable habitus in a gigged‑out economy, making organizing harder and resentment easier to weaponize.We balance Bourdieu with a Marxist insistence on production and power. The best use of his map is practical: reveal the hidden rules, rebuild class independence, and design para‑academic and organizing projects that out‑perform the academy on rigor and relevance. Expect clear definitions, concrete examples, and straight talk on credentialism, elite infighting dressed as populism, and why making class legible again is the first step toward changing material life. If you’ve ever felt the system deny its own history while sorting your future, this conversation will give you language—and a plan—to push back.If this resonates, follow the show, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review with the sharpest insight you took away. Where do you see symbolic power at work today?Send us a text Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

What if today’s most powerful AI systems are closer to a free-floating hippocampus than to a thinking mind? We dive into the messy borderlands between neuroscience, semiotics, and political economy to ask what LLMs really do, why they feel authoritative, and where their limits begin. Along the way, we explore how humans negotiate meaning in real time while models operate in a frozen field of correlations, why that matters for education and writing, and how the surveillance stack turns our lives into tidy sequences for machines to memorize.Together with our guest, we unpack grid cells, place cells, and the hippocampus as a vivid analogy for sequence modeling. Then we press on the big claims: can a next-token engine think, or does it merely interpolate? Why do these models stumble on math unless we bolt on tools? And how did the training corpus—heavy with ad copy, business speak, and now model-made text—nudge outputs toward a bland, consensus voice that can be tuned to institutional aims?None of this unfolds in a vacuum. We follow the money to examine power costs, chip monopolies, and a rush to constant capital that favors server farms over genuine productivity gains. The result looks like a bubble stitched to state-capital priorities and fragile cloud infrastructure, not an inevitable march toward “superintelligence.” If planning is back on the table, we argue it needs new objectives: replace the one-size value function with interpretable quotas for health, learning, resilience, and ecological limits, and design cybernetic feedback that respects agency instead of erasing it.Curious about a future where meaning stays alive and tools stay honest? Listen, share with a friend who’s wrestling with AI’s promises and pitfalls, and leave a review to tell us where you stand.Send us a text Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

Jamie Merchant, the author of Endgame, joins us to talk about the current chaos. Start with the spectacle and you miss the structure. We step past the daily outrage to map Trumpism as a regime built by a new insurgent fraction of capital—tech oligarchs, private equity, and venture investors—who are eager to smash norms, rewrite rules, and route public money through tariffs, defense contracts, and boutique industrial policy. Their rise squeezes out the old asset-management establishment, pushes it toward the Democrats, and locks the opposition into a politics of “normality” that cannot mobilize the base or contest power.We trace the media’s role in this shift: a long slide from public-service reporting to algorithmic engagement that rewards emotional spikes and partisan framing. Biden’s term tried to stabilize the system with CHIPS, infrastructure, and managed globalization, but even light-touch AI regulation, the SVB collapse, and worker pushback inside tech drove Valley elites rightward. Meanwhile, the stock market’s euphoria masks a real economy straining under a profitability crisis. AI’s massive data-center build may juice capex and energy demand, but unless it raises productivity broadly, we’re sitting on a bubble that deepens monopoly dynamics without delivering shared growth.Zooming out, we argue we’re living through a new state-capitalist era with less capacity: the government takes bigger stakes, centralizes power in the executive, and leans on tariffs as revenue, even as planning expertise and administrative muscle erode. The postwar managerial state—Keynesian levers, technocratic confidence, public legitimacy—is gone. That’s why policy-first left populism keeps hitting a wall. Without a living, rooted class subject, electoral surges can’t endure. We sketch a different route: rebuild working-class civil society—mutual aid, cultural institutions, education, and cross-sector networks that bridge immigrants, service workers, industrial remnants, and professionals. Strategy begins where the regime is weakest: in the social substrate it can’t manage or monetize.Hear candid takes on the investor realignment behind Trumpism, the AI bubble loop, why Democrats are structurally stuck, and how to make organizing matter when the state can’t—or won’t—govern for the whole. If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review to help others find the show.Send us a text Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian