THE BUNTZCAST

Foreign policy expert, frequent CSPAN viewer, radical feminist, fiction writer, and future Chicago mayoral hopeful Grace Morgan pops into the Buntzcast to engage in media training for her political career and air her nuanced and often surprising views. This is a conversation that can justly be described as "wide-ranging": we cover the Sunni-Shia split, contemporary feminism, the curious habits of Germans, the shorter works of Tolstoy, and more. (I also probably share more autobiographical information than I have on previous podcasts.)

Switching things up. Normally, the Buntzcast is a Marc Maron/Terry Gross style podcast, in which the guest distills his or her essence for the audience. We’re doing it a little different this time: this is the first installment of the Buntzcast Book Club.

Boschian Belle (https://x.com/boschianbelle) pops into The Buntzcast to discuss Thomas Mann’s epochal novel of ideas, The Magic Mountain, in which the protagonist, Hans Castorp, experiences “the intoxication of ideas and the lure of eros.” You don’t want to miss this one.

(If you plan on reading the novel, I’d recommend only listening to the first half though because we do give a lot away.)

The next installment of the Buntzcast Book Club will be on Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Read it with us.

Poet moonandmouth pops into the Buntzcast to chat about the paranormal, chaos magick, precognitive visions, the secret occult currents that flow through Texas, and much more. A feast of reason. She also gives us a sneak peek of her new poetry collection, Cataclysm Moves Me I Regret to Say.

Noah Kumin, editor of The Mars Review of Books and author of the new novel Stop All the Clocks, pops into the Buntzcast. We take a deep dive into the world of literature and publishing. We talk about New York, Chicago, the "Old Man of the Mountains," J.D. Salinger, Dimes Square, Noah's book, and much more. Want to learn how to become a successful author of mass produced Romantasy? Or perhaps your aspirations are more "literary." In either case, we've got you covered.

Georgina Rose (aka Da'at Darling), a popular Youtuber, podcaster, and expert on all things magical and occult, drops by the Buntzcast. We have a wide-ranging and intriguing discussion, touching on the best places to do magic, planetary influences, the perils of casting love spells, finding your true will, meditation, paganism and polytheism, and much more. A banquet of gnosis.

Filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko pops by the Buntzcast to chat about his upcoming film "The Code," starring Dasha Nekrasova and Peter Vack. We also cover his childhood amongst Russian émigrés in Brighton Beach, the magical abundance of American buffets, the future of the film industry, and his prior body of work, including the movies "Spree" and "Wobble Palace."

I don't know if you're prepared for this episode. Not sure how deep you want to go... In part two of my discussion with RFH, we cover the mysteries of Saturn's hexagon, RFH's Ayn Rand phase, the true purpose of Aztec human sacrifices, the secrets of the Jesuits, the false messiah Sabbatai Zvi, the weirdest dream RFH ever had, and much more.

The internet's most famous anonymous radical feminist, RFH, drops by the Buntzcast for a wide-ranging tour of religion, spirituality, esoteric secrets, and conspiracy theories. Our conversation takes many whimsical and unexpected turns, diving into topics such as Mormonism, reincarnation, why Chicago is secretly a spiritual Mecca, hollow earth theories, flat earthers, and the horrifying truth about what is happening under the Antarctic ice... This is part one of a two part conversation.

Artist and writer August Lamm pops into the Buntzcast to explain why you don't need a smartphone. We discuss her new pamphlet "You Don't Need a Smartphone," the joys and challenges of living without one, the devious designs of our tech overlords, the differences between life in the UK and the States, her forthcoming novel "Lambing Season," and much else besides! This was a great conversation. You can buy August's pamphlet online and "want" her book on Goodreads through the following links:

https://augustlamm.com/shop/you-dont-need-a-smartphone-digital

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213174145-lambing-season