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Varn Vlog

C. Derick Varn

371 episodes

4 days ago

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 liv...

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Society & Culture,

All content for Varn Vlog is the property of C. Derick Varn and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

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 liv...

Show more...

Society & Culture,

Episodes (20/371)

Varn Vlog

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 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 capi...

3 days ago

2 hours 50 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 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 liv...

6 days ago

2 hours 2 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 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, pushe...

1 week ago

2 hours 2 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 and make a sharper case: we’re living through total capitalism’s decay, not a return to lords and serfs. That lens helps make sense of platform tolls, anti-market monopolies, surveillance, and institutional rot without pretending we’ve exited capitalism’s basic relations of production. We trace why...

1 week ago

1 hour 30 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 baked into the system. With Dillion from Untrodden, we trace the fault lines between liberal commitments to stability and civil discourse and the gravitational pull toward executive power, media spectacle, and anti‑politics. Step by step, we chart the historical map: from the 18th Brumaire and B...

2 weeks ago

1 hour 50 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 mechanics to Kalecki’s equations, then use that line to cut through fashionable theory detours—value-form shortcuts, communization fantasies, and techno-feudal hot takes. The result is a clearer picture of why profits can soar while real investment sags, why the dollar’s “miracle” masks fragility, and why...

3 weeks ago

2 hours 28 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 postwar professional class that speaks in a neutral tone while hiding its class origins. With Hofstadter, Lasch, and Gouldner as our guides, we unpack how speech codes, funding models, and media ecosystems shape who gets to be an “intellectual” and whose knowledge counts. We dig into Lasch’s portrai...

3 weeks ago

2 hours 28 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 restore a high‑wage equilibrium, and how social democracy keeps running headfirst into profitability and energy limits. We talk plainly about China’s energy transition and youth unemployment, Mexico’s narco‑capitalist dual power, and why so much left media looks away from contradictions that actuall...

1 month ago

2 hours 10 minutes

Varn Vlog

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 pipeline, a revived faith in China’s statecraft, and the polemical stretching of “Western Marxism” built a Dengist common sense on the contemporary left. The story runs through publishing politics, bad categories, and a philosophical move that recodes the twentieth century’s defeats as proof that the s...

1 month ago

1 hour 56 minutes

Varn Vlog

Boundless and Bottomless (Special): Jay Rogers on Dugin's Fourth Political Theory

What happens when a Protestant Christian delves into the philosophy of Russia's most controversial thinker? Jay Rogers, a heart transplant survivor and longtime student of Russian culture, takes us on a fascinating journey through his engagement with Alexander Dugan's Fourth Political Theory. Having traveled extensively throughout Russia and Ukraine during the pivotal post-Soviet years, Rogers brings unique firsthand experience to this conversation. He explains how his observations of Christ...

1 month ago

2 hours 1 minute

Varn Vlog

Iranian Diaspora and Political Identity with Keanu Heydari

What defines Iranian identity, both within Iran and across its global diaspora? In this thought-provoking conversation with historian Keanu Heydari, we peel back layers of complexity surrounding one of the world's most politically fragmented diasporic communities. Heydari, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan specializing in Iranian student activism in post-war France, offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective that avoids both regime apologetics and demonization. The Iranian diaspor...

1 month ago

1 hour 9 minutes

Varn Vlog

How Zoran Mamdani Surfed Anti-Politics To Beat A Party Machine with the Rapple Report

A shock win feels like a movement—until the math starts. We dig into Zoran Mamdani’s ascent with a clear-eyed look at why voters broke for him, what “anti-politics” actually signals, and how a mayor’s bold promises get squeezed by bonds, taxes, and thin state capacity. The story here isn’t a fairy tale of revival; it’s a patient autopsy of party cartels in decline, activist narratives colliding with ordinary voter motives, and a political entrepreneur who read the room better than the machine...

1 month ago

2 hours 17 minutes

Varn Vlog

The Subject Unbound: Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, and Revolutionary Consciousness with Andrew Flores, Jr.

What happens when the revolutionary fervor of Marxism meets the probing depths of the psychoanalytic couch? In this intellectually stimulating conversation, Andrew Flores (host of The Parallax Viewer) explores the fascinating and often contentious relationship between psychoanalytic theory and left politics. The discussion begins with a fundamental question: why should Marxists care about psychoanalysis at all? Flores argues that psychoanalysis doesn't just treat individual symptoms but addr...

1 month ago

1 hour 47 minutes

Varn Vlog

The Marxist Unity Group: Navigating DSA's Political Landscape

What does it mean to build a socialist party in America today? The Marxist Unity Group, a left caucus within the Democratic Socialists of America, offers their perspective on this critical question while unpacking the complexities of DSA's internal dynamics, electoral strategy, and revolutionary vision. Fresh from DSA's national convention, MUG members celebrate significant victories including the passage of their "Principles of Party Building" resolution and the election of three caucus mem...

2 months ago

2 hours 17 minutes

Varn Vlog

The Spectacle Society: When Nothing Means Anything with Dave Stockdale

In this riveting conversation with Dave Stockdale of Nightmare Masterclass, we dive deep into the crumbling foundations of media trust and how dark money shapes our information landscape. The discussion begins with a critical examination of the recent "Chorus" controversy, where progressive influencers took billionaire funding while decrying criticism as "misinformation" – adopting the very tactics they once condemned from the right. What makes this conversation particularly compelling is ho...

2 months ago

3 hours 46 minutes

Varn Vlog

The People's Era: How France Unbowed Reimagines Leftist Politics

What makes a radical left movement actually succeed in the 21st century? In this deeply illuminating conversation, Henry Wallis of New International Magazine breaks down how France Unbowed has become one of Europe's most significant left formations while avoiding the collapse that befell similar movements. Unlike traditional leftist organizations fixated on ideological purity or social democratic parties comfortable with existing institutions, France Unbowed has pioneered a "radical left" ap...

2 months ago

2 hours 48 minutes

Varn Vlog

(From the Patreon Archives) From Operaismo to Autonomy: Italian Radical Thought with P.H. Higgins

This episode was released patreon's only in 2021. Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri stand as towering figures in the forgotten history of Italian radical Marxism. Their theoretical frameworks - operaismo and autonomia - emerged from the unique contradictions of post-war Italy: a strong Communist Party trapped in parliamentary politics while workers sought more direct forms of resistance. What made these movements revolutionary wasn't just their militancy but their methodological breakthro...

2 months ago

1 hour 44 minutes

Varn Vlog

How Technology Could Transform Our Failed Economic Models with Victor Vernissage rom Humanode

What if blockchain technology could emancipate us rather than just enrich speculators? In this wide-ranging conversation with Victor Vernissage, researcher, economist, and founder of Humanode.io, we explore how emerging technologies might transform our economic systems if deployed with democratic values rather than purely capitalist structures. "Crypto is mostly about speculation. It's the main use case right now," Victor explains, cutting through the hype to address fundamental issues with ...

3 months ago

1 hour 28 minutes

Varn Vlog

Impossible Things: A Poet's Journey Through Loss and Translation with Miller Wolf Oberman

What happens when grief becomes inheritance? When poet Miller Oberman became a father himself, he suddenly understood something that had shaped his entire life: he had been parented by someone traumatized by the loss of a child. This revelation sparked an extraordinary poetic journey, driving him toward his father's unfinished memoir about the drowning death of his two-year-old son Joshua in 1972. "Impossible Things," Oberman's second collection, emerges from this intersection of personal an...

3 months ago

1 hour 29 minutes

Varn Vlog

Flowers for Marx Symposium, Part 2: Daniel Tutt and Matt McManus

From theoretical battles to publishing controversies, this episode dives deep into the fault lines dividing today's left through the lens of "Flowers for Marx," a new collection exploring Marxist humanism and scientism. Contributors Daniel Tutt and Matt McManus share the book's tumultuous journey—rejected by its original publisher because contributors appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast and wrote for Compact Magazine, revealing how cancel culture operates even within leftist publishing. At the h...

3 months ago

2 hours 1 minute