Casement's Leftovers

To celebrate 75 episodes of pure socialist republican slurry, we thought we would kick off Season 2 of Casement's Leftovers by returning to the man who first brought us all together: Mark Fisher. The Weird and the Eerie – published just weeks before Fisher's death by suicide in January 2017 – is a work of literary criticism that has always seemed strange to us. We get together to try to make sense of this final work, whic...

Helen and Matt finally conclude their famed Berlin trilogy by speaking to Caoimhe of The Irish Bloc Berlin. A "Berlin-based platform for Irish solidarity with Palestine", the Irish Bloc has been on the frontlines of opposition to Germany's continued support for Israel and the Berlin police's brutal repression tactics. We talk to Caoimhe about the group's organising efforts, but also dig deeper into just why...

We continue our German urlaub with a very simple question: what the fuck is going on in Europe??

There is no one better to help us with this burning question than Ciarán from the fantastic Corner Späti podcast. Ciarán (like somebody else we know) is an Irish podcaster currently living in Berlin, but he also happens to be the only person in the world who actually understands the EU (editor's note: we fact-checked this...

The housing crisis is the definitive social issue of our time, affecting almost everybody across the West in varied and horrifying ways. But how do we go about. solving it?

One seemingly novel idea has been put forward by housing activists in Berlin: simply take properties out of the hands of the massive landlords and place them back under tenant control. In this, the first in our mini-series of episodes recorded live from...

The moment you've all been waiting for: Helen's first solo episode! They're joined by Mark Malone from The Hope & Courage Collective (formerly The Far Right Observatory) to talk about the far right in Ireland. 
They talk about the influence of the British far right, the key actors and funders, the gains they made in the local elections and crucially; how to tackle them. 
(We had a few technical issues rec...

The whole gang is back together for a quick catch-up and a dive into what each has been reading. Glen brings us on a culinary trip through the history of Ireland via Margaret Hickey's Ireland's Green Larder., Helen finds God in John Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, and Matt disproves the labour theory of value through the divine power of tunes in Jacques Attali's Noise: A Political Economy of ...

Helen’s on holiday this week but Glen and Matt bravely soldier on without them, as the news isn’t going to react to itself. Tune in to the world’s only male-exclusive podcast as we perform our semi-regular temperature check on the state of Western civilisation.
 
The U.K. is having an election, the U.S. is entering a home, and Germany’s brain is unfortunately gone totally kaput. We also talk about Ireland recognising Palest...

During the middle of the 20th century, the Third World movement represented the desires of billions for agency and justice. As the old colonial empires collapsed and new power structures were emerging,  there was a brief moment of hope for a world in which the Global South stood strong, united and liberated.  This was until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the solidification of US-led liberal capitalist democracy as the dominan...

What happens when scions, aristos, tycoons, speculators, moguls and tech gets thrown into a blender? We’re living it.

In this episode of Casement’s Leftovers; Helen, Matt and Glen come together to chat Techno-feudalism. When so many of the global hyper rich are treated like deities and given unprecedented access to policy and power, can the serfs push back? What organisational strategies have worked in the past? Is blowing the taxi ...

With an almighty Helen-shaped hole to fill, Glen and Matt recruit culture journalist Gary Grimes for a Boys Only episode on Pitchfork, and the culture media landscape in general. We talk lay-offs, the devaluing of culture writing, the changing tide of popular music, the artifice of celebrity, the cancer of fake authenticity, Stan culture, and the future of music & culture journalism. Do people even read articles anymore? How do...

Last Friday, January 26th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its provisional ruling in South Africa’s case against Israel, ruling that there is a “significant risk of Genocide” in Gaza. Both supporters of Palestine and Israel have declared the outcome of the case as a victory, while there has been disappointment that there was no order for an immediate and total ceasefire. So what are we to make of the ICJ’s ruling? C...

Bob Cratchit. Ron Weasley. Daniel Blake. Working class characters are often painted as humble folk, morally pure and deserving of our sympathy. But what if they're...not?

Join us as we discuss truly progressive portrayals of the working class in film. Instead of patronising, what if films instead gave people agency over their own lives? Instead of portraying poverty as a purifying force, what if films were honest about the nega...

Ever wondered why so many gays throughout history are so tragic, resilient and brave? This month Casement's Leftovers set fire to condescending stereotypes with incomparable author and historian Huw Lemmey. 

Huw  -along with his co-host and author Ben Miller- have released the essential read; "Bad Gays", which explores identity formation and some of the more icky homosexuals which didn't make the draft ...

The decade from 2010-2020 saw more mass protests around the world than at any other point in history. But why did, so often, these huge movements result in the exact opposite of what they had set out to achieve?

We are joined by American writer and journalist Vincent Bevins (of The Jakarta Method) to discuss his new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. We have long been fans of Bevins&apos...

Happy Halloween! We’re bringing you the scariest thing imaginable: an off-the-cuff episode. Glen, Matt and Helen challenge each other to watch their favourite horror movies (except Glen who doesn’t understand genres) and lap up each other’s reviews. We talk Freudian fears of violence and technology on the collective subconscious (guess the director), the limits of experimental arthouse horror and the bone-chilling terror of ending ...

On reclaiming the history of the 1970s rent strikes

We were delighted to be joined by Fiadh Tubridy & Aisling Hedderman from CATU to discuss the latest CATU publication Rent Strike, which tells the untold story of one of the great Irish tenants' struggles. We discuss the details of NATO (National Association of Tenants Organisations) and the success of the rent strikes themselves, but also we try to apply the lear...

On a critique of political economy for Ireland 

We were delighted to welcome researcher & author Conor McCabe on to the podcast to discuss the political economy of Ireland and its importance for the Irish left. This is a long but incredibly insightful discussion, as Conor refocuses our attention to the things that matter: who has power in Ireland? What is the real class makeup of the country? And why is everything abou...