Varn Vlog
C. Derick Varn
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About This Podcast
Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
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Recent Episodes
S2E64 Hellworld And The Broken Labor Map with Phil Neel
What if “reindustrialization” delivers fabs, data centers, and subsidies—but not the jobs? We sit down with Marxist geographer Phil Neel to unpack Hell World, a sweeping account of how…
S2E63 From Mills To World-Systems: Tracing Wallerstein’s Path with Sam Chian
What if the most consequential “Marxist” of a generation refused to call himself one—and was more consistent for it? We dive into Immanuel Wallerstein’s intellectual journey, from C. Wright Mills’s…
S2E62 Popular Or United Fronts Explained with Brandon Lightly
Coalitions promise power, but what if they mostly deliver blame? We dig into the sharp difference between a United Front and a Popular Front, trace their roots from the Second International through…
S2E61 Crisis As Decision In German Thought with Timothy Schatz
Crisis didn’t always mean endless catastrophe. In German thought, it once meant a turning point—a judgment that forces choice. We dig into why that word saturated late 19th‑century philosophy and how…
S2E60 From Dawn to Decadence, Part 5
Start with the symptom: everything still moves, yet less gets done. We unpack decadence as a live condition—where empires posture with airstrikes instead of strategy, markets float on bubbly…
S2E59 Punditry Without Memory with Sudip Bhattacharya
Start with a word we all hear too much: fascism. Now ask why, with the term everywhere, our understanding keeps getting worse. That’s the puzzle we dig into as Sudip Bhattacharya joins C. Derick Varn…
S2E58 Can Dignity And Science Share A Banner Without Becoming A New Elite with Daniel Tutt
Daniel Tutt returns to continue our series on intellectuals. The hardest truths are the ones that feel personal. We take Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” into the engine room of the SPD and…
S2E57 Renaissance Without the Myth with Ada Palmer
What if the Renaissance wasn’t a rebirth at all, but a survival strategy dressed in marble and Latin? We sit down with historian and novelist Ada Palmer to unwind the stories that turned a chaotic,…
S2E56 Inside Iran’s Impasse And Syria’s Shadow Wars with Djene Bajalan
Start with the headlines and everything looks simple: a “crown prince” trending on social feeds, viral clips of pre-revolution Tehran, and bold claims that one more round of pressure will tip the…
S2E55 Socialism, Anti-Politics, And Power Today with Joseph Sciortino
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…
S2E54 Rewriting The Chumash War with Joe Payne
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.…
S2E53 Pierre Bourdieu, Academic Power, And Class Reproduction with Daniel Tutt
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…
S2E52 Language, Brains, And The AI Mirage with Eli Sennesh
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…
S2E51 Jamie Merchant on the Many, Many Current Crises
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…
S2E50 Rent-Seeking, Platforms, And The Myth Of Techno-Feudalism with Alex Hochuli
What if the “techno-feudalism” boom is a symptom of our confusion rather than a diagnosis of the age? We sit down with Alex Hochuli (Bungacast, American Affairs) to interrogate the feudal metaphor…
S2E49 Liberalism At The Brink with Dillion From Untrodden Podcast
Politics feels louder than ever and somehow emptier too. We open the hood on liberalism—what it claims to be, how it actually behaves, and why Trump’s rise didn’t just bend norms but exposed tensions…
S2E48 Why Capitalism’s “Mute Compulsion” Isn’t The Whole Story with Nicolas D. Villarreal
Start with a simple question: if investment drives productivity and growth, what happens to a society that keeps choosing consumption over capacity? We trace a straight line from Marx’s core…
S2E46 America’s Battle Over The Intellectual with Daniel Tutt
What if America’s “anti-intellectualism” isn’t a decline in smarts but a culture built to distrust theory? We trace that paradox from Puritan moral rigor and pragmatist “cash value” truths to the…
S2E45 Why Easy Answers Fail: From Riots To Reproduction And What Comes Next with Heatwave Magazine
The hardest problems don’t fit into a slogan. We invited the editors behind Heatwave Magazine to unpack why national fixes can’t solve planetary crises, why tariffs and “reindustrialization” won’t…
S2E43 Ross Wolfe Contra Domenico Losurdo
What if the renewed fascination with Domenico Losurdo says more about our appetite for stability than about Marxism’s future? We sit down with Ross Wolfe to unpack how a Verso‑to‑Monthly Review…
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Varn Vlog has published 383 episodes since May 2021, covering topics in Education, News.
Varn Vlog is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 1h 48m.
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