

The Regrettable Century
Chris, Jason, Kevin, Ben
The old forms of the Left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that discusses the need to organize a Dialectical Pessimism and develop a salvage project capable of sparking a new workers' movement for socialism.
A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
Check us out on Patreon for regular Patron Book Clubs, Regrettable Geopolitics updates, Real Nerd Hours, and more...
Visit The Regrettable Century Merch Shop
A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
Check us out on Patreon for regular Patron Book Clubs, Regrettable Geopolitics updates, Real Nerd Hours, and more...
Visit The Regrettable Century Merch Shop
Episodes
Mentioned books

Dec 19, 2022 • 1h 38min
Unimaginable Horrors and the Terrors of the Global (Liquid Fear Part II)
Happy December, I just finished my semester and finally got around to mastering this episode that we recorded a couple months ago. We are revisiting this masterwork of left sociology by heavyweight Polish intellectual and dissident Marxist, Zygmunt Bauman who is a harsh critic of late capitalist modernity.
From the publisher's note:
"Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether its the fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of indiscriminate terrorist attacks, we live today in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. Fear is the name we give to our uncertainty in the face of the dangers that characterize our liquid modern age, to our ignorance of what the threat is and our incapacity to determine what can and can't be done to counter it."
We cover the two middle chapters of the book in this episode.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2006. Liquid Fear. Cambridge U.A.: Polity Press.
Music: Dimitri Shostakovich- Waltz No. 2
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Nov 30, 2022 • 6min
Patreon Preview: Neither Vertical nor Horizontal (Part III)
We are back with part three of our discussion of Rodrigo Nunes' new book on Verso. This week we talk about chapters three and four.
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and join the Discord to take part in the discussions.
Support the show (http://patreon.com/theregrettablecentury)
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Nov 22, 2022 • 1h 20min
Four Regrettable Years
We just turned four!
Looks like we have successfully fooled you into listening to us for another year. In honor of exiting the anal stage and entering our phallic stage of childhood psychosexual development as a podcast, we decided to do an episode about it.
Please enjoy the very last episode of year four. Year five will be worse for humanity and likely better for our podcast. See you in season five!
Music: The Dead Kennedys- Kill The Poor
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Nov 6, 2022 • 1h 18min
Meming Prometheus and the Continuing Tragedy of the Worker (II of II)
This week we continued our discussion of The Tragedy of the Worker by the Salvage Collective and discussed the implications of looming climate collapse. Once again we ask: what kind of world do you want to build in the post-apocalyptic wasteland?
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3727-the-tragedy-of-the-worker
Music: Bad Religion- Modern Man
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Nov 1, 2022 • 1h 15min
The Labor Theory of Apocalypse (I of II)
This week we read The Tragedy of the Worker by the Salvage Collective and discussed the implications of looming climate collapse. Once again we ask: what kind of world do you want to build in the post-apocalyptic wasteland?
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3727-the-tragedy-of-the-worker
Music: The Broadways- We'll Have a Party
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Oct 14, 2022 • 1h 22min
The Dialectics of Madness- With Adam from Subjective Conditions
The Lost Horizons gang is back together.
We welcome Comrade Adam back to the Lost Horizons network and discuss a couple of articles about Hegel, Foucault, and MADNESS.
The Good the Mad and the Ugly: Part I
The Good the Mad and the Ugly: Part II
https://www.patreon.com/subjectiveconditions
Music: Madness- One Step Beyond
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Oct 3, 2022 • 1h 59min
Fear of Evil, Dread of Death (Liquid Fear Part 1) -- Featuring the Return of Jason
Happy October! Its what they call spooky season so it is only fitting that we dive into a book about Fear. This is a work of left sociology by heavyweight Polish intellectual and dissident Marxist, Zygmunt Bauman who is a harsh critic of late capitalist modernity.
From the publisher's note:
"Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether its the fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of indiscriminate terrorist attacks, we live today in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. Fear is the name we give to our uncertainty in the face of the dangers that characterize our liquid modern age, to our ignorance of what the threat is and our incapacity to determine what can and can't be done to counter it."
We cover the introduction and first two chapters in this episode.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2006. Liquid Fear. Cambridge U.A.: Polity Press.
Music: New Model Army- 225
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Sep 21, 2022 • 3min
Patreon Preview: Hangin’ Out With Jason
Jason is out of the rehab facility and convalescing with our sister, so we decided to do a little test recording to see how it felt to be podcasting again after a coma and traumatic brain injury. We decided it went pretty alright and will be back soon with some episodes.
This isn't a real episode, but we have part two of our reading group coming soon and Jason and I will be recording part three of our Czechoslovak socialism series this month as well.
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Sep 12, 2022 • 2h 19min
Red Theology (Part V- Final): Revolutionary Christianity With East Asian Characteristics
Welcome to the fifth and final part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for a set of chapters dealing with the Taiping Revolution, Chinese Christian Marxism, and Christianity in the DPRK.
We are missing Jason on this podcast, but hopefully, he will be back some time this month.
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: Han Lei, Qi Jianbo, and Fan Xiaobin- The Vast Heaven and Earth
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Sep 9, 2022 • 8min
Patreon Preview: Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: Book Club (Part I)
Book Clubs are back, back in a temporarily diminished capacity, but back. This week we read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Rodrigo Nunes' new book on Verso. This book rhymes with concepts we have been discussing on the podcast for quite some time, so we were excited to dive in.
Nunes, Rodrigo. Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation. Verso, 2021.
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