Alex Taek-Gwang Lee

Angeliki Lysimachou

Dr Angeliki Lysimachou, Head of Science and Policy at Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, examines systemic failures in EU pesticide risk assessment that prioritise industry data over independent science. With a background in environmental toxicology, she scrutinises how regulatory loopholes—such as selective dismissal of genotoxicity, neurotoxicity, microbiome disruption, and low-dose carcinogenicity studies—enable the continued authorisation of hazardous substances like glyphosate despite IARC’s probable carcinogen classification and alarming findings from the Ramazzini Institute’s full-life-cycle trials showing increased leukaemia and tumours at supposedly safe exposure levels. Lysimachou highlights how corporate influence, ghostwriting, revelations from the Monsanto Papers, and statistical manoeuvering by conflicted experts undermine the precautionary principle embedded in EU law, resulting in “glyphosate deserts,” biodiversity collapse, and persistent PFAS metabolites like TFA contaminating groundwater for decades. Her analysis reveals a deeper structural bias where economic dependencies on pesticide fees, political pressures from member states, and industry lobbying trump public health protections, as evidenced by repeated 5- and 10-year renewals amid abstentions and U-turns like Germany’s. By mounting court challenges and pushing for agroecological transitions under the Farm to Fork strategy, she exposes how the current framework shields profitable broad-spectrum herbicides while externalising long-term costs of soil degradation, farmer health burdens (e.g. elevated lymphoma risks), and irreversible environmental damage onto society. Lysimachou’s critique underscores the tension between regulatory rhetoric and implementation, calling for genuine accountability and faster phase-outs of forever chemicals. Get full access to Savage Minds at www.savageminds.co/subscribe [https://www.savageminds.co/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Biljana Vankovska

Biljana Vankovska, a Macedonian professor of political science, international relations and peace studies at Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, delivers a sharp systemic critique of declining Western hegemony in this wide-ranging conversation. She interprets the recent conflicts in the Middle East, particularly the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz events, alongside the situation in Ukraine as structural turning points signaling the shift toward a multipolar global order. Rooted in her experience growing up in former Yugoslavia and the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement, Vankovska rejects mainstream narratives that reduce global crises to the personal failings of leaders like Donald Trump or simple kakistocracy. Instead, she argues that the world is witnessing the violent death throes of hyper-imperialism and a declining global capitalist system. She deconstructs the so-called rules-based international order as a euphemism for arbitrary US diktat that masks ongoing neo-colonialism while whitewashing historical atrocities. Vankovska contrasts the media-driven fear, paralysis and moral bankruptcy prevalent in the US and EU with the historical optimism and strategic stamina of the Global South. Evoking Antonio Gramsci, she balances a pessimism of the intellect with an optimism of the will, defending legitimate resistance against the military-industrial-media-academic complex. Ultimately, she views the tragedies in Gaza and Iran not as isolated failures but as painful birth pangs of a new cooperative world order grounded in mutual sovereignty, trust, and emancipation from empire. Get full access to Savage Minds at www.savageminds.co/subscribe [https://www.savageminds.co/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, professor of philosophy and cultural studies at Kyung Hee University in South Korea, examines the deep tensions between Western Marxism, Stalinist orthodoxy, and the possibilities for communist thought today. In a powerful critique of Gabriel Rockhill’s work, Lee argues that reducing Western Marxism to mere CIA manipulation is historically reductive and ultimately serves as a gift to right-wing anti-communists. He traces the vital lineage from Georg Lukács’ theory of reification and class consciousness through the Frankfurt School’s critique of the culture industry, defending cultural and philosophical analysis as a necessary extension of Marxism rather than a betrayal of it. Lee develops his own original concepts of “weak technologies” and “planetary cybernetics” to diagnose how late capitalism has reified technology, desire, and subjectivity itself, while rejecting both nostalgic defences of actually existing socialism and liberal accelerationist fantasies. Drawing on Deleuze and his earlier works such as Communism After Deleuze and Made in Nowhere, he insists that communism remains a living, transformative idea—an ontological openness that demands we invent new people and new modes of existence against the current master signifier of capital. This dense, philosophically rich conversation reframes longstanding debates on the left and offers sharp conceptual tools for understanding AI-driven capitalism and the future of radical politics in the 21st century. Get full access to Savage Minds at www.savageminds.co/subscribe [https://www.savageminds.co/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Jillian Spencer

Jillian Spencer, child and adolescent psychiatrist, examines the ideological transformation of modern medicine through her experience challenging paediatric gender treatment protocols and the institutional backlash by Queensland Health that followed. The interview evolves into a broader indictment of how liberal democracies increasingly discipline dissent behind the language of compassion, inclusion, and professional ethics. Spencer describes a medical culture where questioning the rapid expansion of gender-affirming interventions for minors became professionally dangerous, not because evidence had been conclusively settled, but because institutional consensus had already hardened into moral doctrine. The discussion repeatedly returns to the atmosphere of fear shaping hospitals, universities, and regulatory bodies, where clinicians privately express concerns yet remain publicly silent to avoid reputational destruction, accusations of bigotry or career ruin. What emerges is less a narrow debate over healthcare policy than a portrait of bureaucratic systems that reward ideological conformity while marginalising independent inquiry. Spencer depicts whistleblowing mechanisms as hollow structures incapable of functioning once institutions themselves become invested in preserving political narratives. The transcript also situates the controversy within a wider cultural shift across Western societies, where disagreement is increasingly pathologised and scientific uncertainty treated as social harm. Through Spencer’s account, medicine appears transformed from a field grounded in skepticism and evidence into one governed by managerial orthodoxy, emotional language, and activist pressure. Beneath the clinical specifics lies a darker warning about the shrinking capacity of public institutions to tolerate ambiguity, contested evidence and moral independence without resorting to professional punishment or social exclusion. Get full access to Savage Minds at www.savageminds.co/subscribe [https://www.savageminds.co/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Ida Susser

EJRkJKXYJbDiJ69cKu3ZIda Susser, distinguished professor of anthropology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, examines the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement in France as a volatile yet transformative response to the deepening crises of neoliberalism, democratic erosion, and social fragmentation across the West. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork in Paris, Saint-Denis, and provincial France, Susser argues that the movement disrupted conventional political binaries by creating forms of solidarity that exceeded traditional distinctions between left and right. Through concepts such as “commoning” and “thresholding,” she describes how precarious workers, retirees, migrants, and politically disillusioned citizens forged provisional alliances grounded less in ideology than in shared experiences of dispossession, police violence, economic exclusion, and social abandonment. Susser situates the movement within a broader historical trajectory of grassroots resistance, linking the Yellow Vests to Occupy Wall Street, the Indignados, Black Lives Matter, and earlier traditions of horizontalist organizing. She explores how the protests exposed the consequences of gentrification, rural decline, and the hollowing out of public life, while simultaneously generating new forms of mutual aid, including food collectives and neighborhood support networks during lockdown. The conversation also confronts the contradictions embedded within contemporary progressive politics, including disputes surrounding feminism, immigration, populism, and state authority, as Susser reflects on the increasingly unstable boundaries between emancipatory and reactionary movements. Framing the present moment as one marked by the resurgence of authoritarian tendencies and the normalization of state repression, she argues for the urgent construction of a new “historic bloc” capable of defending democratic space through collective struggle, civic participation, and radically inclusive visions of social justice. Get full access to Savage Minds at www.savageminds.co/subscribe [https://www.savageminds.co/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]