PlasticPills - Philosophy & Critical Theory Podcast (Plasticpills)

@Plasticpills, Matt McManus, Erik, and Marion offer a rundown of what we consider the most important concepts of Foucault's thought and doubles as an introduction if you're rusty.    Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on this and future episodes.    

In memoriam of the coalition state-building adventure in Afghanistan, we look to the inveterate morons who continue to ventriloquize the "humanitarian empire" of the United States, including Canada's own failed philosopher king: Michael Ignatieff. Way back in 2001, Ignatieff painted the picture of the Afghanistan project in the New York Times, which now deserves a second-look. Find the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/magazine/nation-building-lite.html     As always, all exclusive episodes and other content are available on Patreon at www.patreon.com/plasticpills.

If you've heard of Kojeve, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Althusser, Lacan, or Zizek, you have heard some version of the dialectic of recognition. No surprise, it originates with Hegel. We have Borna back with us again to guide us through the Phenomenology of Spirit and beyond.   Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on this and future episodes.   Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: https://amzn.to/2Fw7Qjq Kojeve's Lecture on Hegel: https://amzn.to/2Cw84Wv  

Pill Pods 124 & 125 cover a paper written by Pills, which argues that despite banishing figurative language for the sake of "clarity", Western philosophy has forgotten it was founded on a metaphor equating reason with vision, a metaphor we unknowingly reiterate on the daily. The episodes are available to patron subscribers at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Get the full episode, many others, and all the other exclusive content by supporting the podcast at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Fascism, folk music, Bannon and Dugin: the Pill Pod's Matt and Victor interview Benjamin Teitelbaum, a scholar of contemporary European radical nationalism, to discuss his new book, War For Eternity (Find it at https://amzn.to/38QrC5q) Follow @PodPill @Victorbruzzone @Mattpolprof @BenTeitel for more work. Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on exclusive episodes.  

Kids be getting Tourette's from TikToK? This episode features Pills, Victor, and Erik taking on mass sociogenic illnesses from the phenomenological perspective, then a dash of psychoanalysis for good measure.    Get this episode and all our exclusive content by supporting us over at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

One of those guys we rarely think about but who single-handedly pulled the track lever in the history of philosophy, it's Rousseau. We read Discourse on the Origin of Inequality this week and appraised its significance. Get all our exclusive episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

The midwives of the soul discuss conspiracy brain--not individual conspiracies, but the political, psychoanalytic, and semiological dimensions of conspiracy including covid-5G and lizard aliens. Throwin down some Lacan, Deleuze, Baudrillard, but no Philip K. Dick. Our guest is the resplendent Matt McManus @mattpolprof

Matt and Victor are joined by Meagan Day (@meaganmday) to discuss Michael Brooks' ambitious proposal for cosmopolitan socialism, its relation to particularity and difference, and what it could mean for the future of the left. Find Meagan's article Unions are Essential for Eliminating Racism here www.jacobinmag.com/2020/07/multiracial-solidarity-unions If you've finished the public feed, all of our exclusive episodes and bonus video are up at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Before we can get to the other stuff we like in 20th century philosophy, we have to go back to the synthesizer of modern philosophy, the philosopher's philosophy, Immanuel Kant, to lay some groundwork. This is our best attempt to liven up the very dry Critique of Pure Reason.  Listen to this episode and all of our other bonus content on Patreon, at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Mike Watson of the Acid Left (@_leftaesthetics) joins Matt (@mattpolprof) and Pills (@plasticpills) to talk about Acid Communism, Adorno, and The Memeing of Mark Fisher, Mike's new book (due out September 2021).   As always, all the extra content is still at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Returning to the Frankfurt School, the Pill Pod (@mattpolprof, @t8erik, @plasticpills) + guest SHALON, figure out a plan for using a few small Neo-Marxist books to stop the tsunami of popular music, film, art, and news. No problem! Find Shalon's blog and site at: https://www.shalonvantine.com/secondasfarce. Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on exclusive episodes.

Spoiler warnings: That new DC film, Fight Club, Starship Troopers. This is a performative attempt to theorize the relationship between popular cultural, moral totems, and a libidinal economy. Follow @PodPill and check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to dose up on exclusive episodes and video content.  

Plato has had it too easy. We take an hour and a bit to divide the philosophers from the sophists.   This is what we do every week at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

What was a niche, inter-feminist fight in the 90s proves to be prophetically relevant this week. Pills and Victor narrate Martha Nussbaum coming at Judith Butler and almost split the difference. Get access to the full episode and many more at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

This week the pod hosts Matthew Flisfeder (@MattFlisfeder), the Zizek/Hegel/Lacan/Jameson scholar who organized the Peterson vs. Zizek debate. He's working on a book about renewing humanism in opposition to some recent trends in philosophy of the posthuman/anthropocenic variety: new materialisms and object oriented ontology.   The article discussed can be found at http://www.pomoculture.org/2021/12/17/renewing-humanism-against-the-anthropocene-towards-a-theory-of-the-hysterical-sublime/    

The Pill Pod is still off this week for mental recuperation, so please enjoy this unlock of one of our locked episodes: our fourfold discussion of Heidegger's Being and Time, his relationship to Husserl, existentialism, hermeneutics, and everything else concerning early Heidegger we could channel into being in fewer than 90 minutes.   For more good theory video and audio content, join the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Brace yourselves for two and a half hours focused on Lacan's psychoanalytic method. We are joined partway through by Director/Auteur Richard Ledes, who has brought Lacan to the silver screen in a film we're proud to hype up: ADIEU LACAN.   To watch the film, (which is pretty safely the only decent depiction of psychoanalysis we've ever seen) you can find it on Amazon and Apple in English, or go to https://www.richardledes.com/films to watch it in other langauges.   If you enjoy our content, help us keeping making it by sharing, algo-boosting, rating or joining our Patreon to get the other half of the episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills @plasticpills @victorbruzzone @podpill @ledesr

Today we discuss how to pet your professor's ego to get better marks, and review John Searles sassy attempt to take down Derrida by quoting Foucault gossip. Sources come from Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida and Limited Inc. https://amzn.to/3oIfJc0 More content—video and audio—at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

The Pill Pod takes on two definitive philosophers opposed to the fantasies of uploading consciousnesses into machines: John Searle and Hubert Dreyfus. Apologies in advance but we gotta burst your 20-year-old-cousin-who-retweets-Elon-Musk's techno-utopian bubble in a Chinese room.   If you've gone through the public feed there's more exclusive audio and video content on www.patreon.com/plasticpills

The party (@Mattpolprof, @plasticpills, and @victorbruzzone) discusses the fearsome cancel culture, the opposition fantasies of wokists and anti-wokists, and have a first read of the literati's Harper's letter.  Check out Patreon to support the Pill Pod and dose up on all future episodes  

Joe Rogan hosted JBP to discuss fracking, Abraham, and Nietzsche, and we are here for those hot and not-so-hot takes on our first in-person, video podcast episode. Before we bid adieu to the University of Toronto's melodramatic guru, we cover the hits of his latest interview. Our co-authored, deep read of JBP: https://amzn.to/34yIQF1 Follows: @plasticpills @mattpolprof @victorbruzzone @HoratioVictor All content, including how to read Nietzsche properly: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

In Round 4 of the Pill Pod's Fight Night, we feature a theoretical battle over the foundation of politics: is politics founded on the struggle for recognition? Or is it the aesthetic creation of a future? French Insurrectionist Jacques Ranciere pits himself against the chief of the Frankfurt School's third generation, Axel Honneth.   If you're partial to the format, you can find Round 1: (Baudrillard vs. Foucault) and Round 3: (Foucault vs. Derrida) over at www.patreon.com/plasticpills  

Zizek allegedly wrote an article on the problems of wokeness and we argued about it. Reactionary? Transphobic? Trolling? We don't agree (with each other). The article: https://compactmag.com/article/wokeness-is-here-to-stay The rest of our episodes are available at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Hey ya'll. Join us for a tour de Mark Fisher, as we read "Exiting the Vampire Castle" as well as  Tankies' comments on Matt's article on liberal socialism. Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to dose up on this and future exclusive episodes. Articles: Vampire Castle: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle Matt's article, "Socialist Don't Want to Destroy Liberalism": https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/socialism-liberalism-marx

It's easy to get all the bonus eps and a lot besides on www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Phenomenology is sometimes viewed apolitically, today we try to get a handle on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological Marxism.   The sections of the text we read of this ep can be found on Patreon (even if you're not a patron). That's at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Inspired by the new Netflix series, we read some Poe short stories and compared them to their TV adaptation. Victor Hainagiu (aka Litvic aka @horatiovictor) came on to help us put gothic horror into historical context.   Half our episodes are here, but if you want the other half check us out on https://patreon.com/plasticpills

The Pill Pod gets academic as our new volume is out, edited by Matt and featuring contributions Victor, Erik and our episode guest Ben (@benburgis) of Give Them an Argument. We argue that much of the antagonism between socialism and liberalism has been fabricated by internet creatures who want to piss off their dads. The exorbitantly expensive volume, meant to siphon money out of university library budgets, can be found here: https://amzn.to/3GjWJ8e

We embark on the notion of "the end of history" by trying to figure out if we have an idea of history. This is mostly inspired by our reading of Fukuyama's book (https://amzn.to/3tPo5Bt) but the series won't be limited to it. Support our efforts and get the full series on https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Erik and Pills duo on Althusser, reading "Contradiction and Overdetermination" from the book For Marx. We read this anticipating a couple episodes trying to figure out what "post-marxism" could mean, and we don't want to strawman, and this is one of my (Pills') favourite bites attempting to delineate what Marxist theory can and cannot aspire to.

Get all the exclusive eps at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Our political half is joined by Jacobin Magazine founder Bhaskar Sunkara to talk socialist history, the Nordic Model, and what happens five minutes after capitalism ends—themes undertaken in Bhaskar's book, The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality (https://amzn.to/36FlwTO)

We've been leading up to it, and here is the first spectacle of 2 on Debord's popular book (https://amzn.to/3HRp0pj). Stay tuned for future spectacles. Get the full series on Debord and the Situationist International at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Pour a coffee, or something stronger, because this is a special one: a 5 course, two-hour-long discussion of Nietzsche, his significance to 20th century philosophy, our interpretations, and finally, the DANGER of his thought. Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on this and future episodes.

We are still on the lookout for some worthwhile post-marxisms, we found a dude who is post-everything. Our reading is from "Ironic Strategies" from Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies (https://amzn.to/3ZqeDhS), and it turned out to be a pretty seductive text all around. All episodes: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

In an attempt to foster Rational Discourse™, Matt (@MattPolProf) interviews Nate Hochman (@njhochman) to discuss topics including insanity, Truth, and the common ground of the non-institutional left and right.

Jordan DeJonge joins the pod to revisit the question "just how reactionary was Nietzsche?" as asked in Domenico Losurdo's newly translated intellectual biography: Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel (https://amzn.to/3mF15gS). While most left-wing intellectuals read Nietzsche selectively, this 1000 page tome opts to take seriously the implications of Nietzsche's anti-democratic thinking.

Is capitalism over? Whether or not it is, Friday is a good day to coin some new academic terms. We discuss making up words to advance your career and then a new term drop: techno-feudalism. Find the full interview with Zizek and Varoufakis here: https://youtu.be/XIgFnfHhcRc There are many vids and pods for you to consume at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills   Tell us what you think @podpill, @plasticpills, @victorbruzzone, @mattpolprof

The Year is 1963 and our Versus Series continues with Fight Night Round 2, in which a young challenger, Jacques 'Derridevil' Derrida, comes at Dr. Archaeology himself, Michel Foucault, accusing him of committing the cardinal cosmological sin: METAPHYSICS.   After a sound pounding through the first few pages, Derridevil lands a crippling blow, that Foucault's reading of Descartes was "naive," enough for Foucault to freeze him out for the next 20 years.   Tune in next week for Foucault's long-awaited defense from 15 years later...

The second first episode of the PlasticPills pod. There may be a reason to podcast on critical theory, and we try to figure out what that is through reading this article by Bruno Latour: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/89-CRITICAL-INQUIRY-GB.pdf   @plasticpills youtube.com/c/plasticpills

Pills and Erik celebrate Latour Day. Cracking one of our old favs (https://amzn.to/3O2fLVp), to discuss the theory island chain, the scheme of actor network theory, and why reality is more complex than theoretical models.  All our episodes are up at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Professor Ashley Frawley, author of The Semiotics of Happiness, joins us to discuss the cyclical history of some slippery signifiers: "self-esteem," "well-being," and "mental health," the only productive value of which is the generation of corporate consultants, conference panelists, and mind cops. In this interview, she explains how 'trauma discourse' reifies status quo politics.   Find Ashley on Twitter (@AshleyAFrawley) and her book here: https://amzn.to/3grRLex

This is our first in the reading series on the Idea of Communism conferences, covering Alain Badiou.   Our readings will come from The Idea of Communism I https://amzn.to/3xZJjMw, The Idea of Communism II https://amzn.to/3OkDYVd, and The Idea of Communism III https://amzn.to/3b8e3lb   Join up with us on Patreon to get all of the upcoming episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

It's a political theory day, speaking with the Know Your Enemy podcast's Matthew Sitman, a former young conservative. Starting with some Roe v. Wade, we then dive deep into the intellectual right's endless fascination with Straussian philosophy (that's Leo Strauss), its underlying esotericism, and its connection to the American right's current political projects. There's a lot of namedropping (both of individuals and institutions) in this episode, so if there are outstanding questions you can tweet them at @matthewsitman, @mattpolprof, and @victorbruzzone

Neil Vallelly (@NeilVallelly) joins Matt (@mattpolprof) for a cheery discussion of neoliberalism and futility, the central themes of Neil's new book, which can be found at https://amzn.to/32LjkLO or https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/futilitarianism.   Matt's full review is here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/12/neoliberalism-powerless-review-neil-vallelly-futilitarianism Some perhaps unfamiliar namedropping occurs in this episode, and a non-exhaustive list includes the utilitarians Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, along with critics such as Herbert Marcuse, Wendy Brown, Mark Fisher, Byung Chul Han, Jessica Whyte, and Jodi Dean. Join us at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills if you want content+.

As a supplement to Plastic Pills' new documentary on Project Cybersyn, the Pill Pod is joined by Marion, who is usually our Foucault correspondent but here in her capacity as a Mexican political theorist. We get through a segment on some unanswered questions about the documentary, and then an brief overview of Latin American politics, as well as some correction on the misconceptions and stereotypes about the region propagated by anglophones.   As always, our bonus content is available through Patreon (www.patreon.com/plasticpills) where you can also see the pre-release of the doc.

After our episode claiming that ChatGPT would destroy university education as it currently exists, we had to de-mythologize the dumb philosophy status quo of Silicon Valley and its weird mix of objectivism, stoicism, and effective altruism. References from https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-transhuman-singularity All episodes and exclusive videos at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills 

Ben Burgis joins the Pill Pod to discuss the divide between analytic and continental philosophy before analyzing the geneology of debatelordism from Richard Dawkins to Ben Shapiro to whatever is happening on Twitch.   Find links to Ben's Give Them An Argument Podcast, YouTube Channel, and other work at benburgis.com.   Check out our bonus audio and video content on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Welcome to Round 1 of our new series, which covers theorists' takedowns of other theorists. This episode features an exciting 1977 bout between the young iconoclast, Jean Baudrillard and the king of the French academy, Michel Foucault, as found in the provocatively titled: Forget Foucault. Can a well-timed tag team with Deleuze save Foucault? Or will Baudrillard be forever condemned to circle in the Disneyland teacups alone? Get access to this episode and all the other exclusives up on www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Join us as we argue about this article, where Agamben (critical theorist) says coronavirus isn't real, and this article, dunking on his take. We then call each other libs after recapping the Sanders campaign. youtube.com/c/plasticpills  

This is the first Pill Pod & Plasticpills co-release on the philosophy, cultural significance, and reception of Slavoj Zizek. Check out the video at www.youtube.com/c/plasticpills.   Keep up with us on twitter! @plasticpills @mattpolprof @t8erik @victorbruzzone Join the Patreon for more theory audio and video content www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Today we are #blessed by the presence of OG Deleuze scholar and translator Charles Stivale, who is descending to impart his wisdom on Deleuze and "The Deleuze Seminars." The translated transcripts of these rare audio recordings offer an indispensable resource into the collaborative environment which spawned Deleuze (and Guattari's) works, and will certainly help both new and experienced readers get a grasp of wtf is going on!   The Deleuze Seminars (English, Purdue University): https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/ Si vous pouvez comprendre le français, il y en a plus a la Bibliotheque Nationale de France  https://gallica.bnf.fr/html///und/enregistrements-sonores/gilles-deleuze-cours-donnes-luniversite-paris-8-vincennes-saint-denis-1979-0?mode=desktop Support the podcast for more of the good stuff: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills  

Pure theory. Join @plasticpills and @t8erik for an introduction to cybernetics and systems theory. Politics has tired us out so we are retreating to the high bastions of abstract thought--where we feel safe. The rest of this series, including the concepts of autopoiesis, feedback, and the perturbations of social media on our collective unconscious, will emerge on our Patreon soon at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills Here's the main book link: https://amzn.to/3kldF1V

We get asked this question frequently, and the answer is NO, DON'T GO (or maybe do it). This episode is required listening before making a life-altering decision that you can quite easily change at any time.   The Pill Pod is @plasticpills, @victorbruzzone, @mattpolprof, @t8erik. Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to dose up on exclusive episodes and other content.    

We'll be back on Friday with our regularly scheduled program, and here's a clip of this week's exclusive content up at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Professor Dale Turner joins Matt and Victor to discuss Wittgenstein, 'ways of life', and their application to indigenous politics and treaty relationships in settler states. Turner is a political theorist at the University of Toronto and author of This is Not a Peace Pipe: Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy https://amzn.to/3fettog

We are starting a series on the theorists and artists of the Situationist International and their most well-known export: The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Get all exclusive episodes, bonus content, and help support our efforts at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Diego Ruzzarin is back on the Plastic Pills Podcast to talk about mythologies of the Left and Right as analyzed by Roland Barthes in his 1957 book (https://amzn.to/47i5kpd). Our previous two episodes covering "Mythologies" (introducing the book and analyzing car commercials) are on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Despite the shadow of Gaza hanging over our consciences this week, we try to introduce Systems Theory via politics. The book is Political Theory in the Welfare State by Niklas Luhmann (https://amzn.to/48Q6I3g), and we hope to give you a glimpse of what it looks like in practice. This is the sixth episode on systems theory, some of which are on here and all of which are on patreon at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We are joined by our very own European* critic to discuss American civic religion and its textured mythos of religion, rebellion, and race.    

Today we discuss the pervasive pastiche and corny conservatism of all our favourite nerd culture products (but not Star Wars 'cause it sucks ass). Find the full episode and our other content on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Parts I and II comprise 3+ hours of discussion on Zizek's Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. Join up with us on Patreon to get it all and 30+ exclusive episodes www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Everyone speaking on freedom but nobody's asking what it means. "Freedom-from interference" is a 400-year-old definition that covers a few bases but not much beyond that. We looked to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology in this book (https://amzn.to/3OdpzwL) to give us something a little better.   Pill Pods #59, #60, #61, #62 are all about Merleau-Ponty in more detail.   Find all the episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

This week's episode is going to be late, because we are planning something a little different. This episode is an unlock from a This episode features an exciting 1977 bout between the young iconoclast, Jean Baudrillard and the king of the French academy, Michel Foucault, as found in the provocatively titled: Forget Foucault. Can a well-timed tag team with Deleuze save Foucault? Or will Baudrillard be forever condemned to circle in the Disneyland teacups alone? If you missed this the first time around and want the other 5 Fight Night episodes, everything we do that isn't here is at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We venture into the weeds of ignorance, science, and anthropomorphism, and not even immuno-responses can stop us. We look at posthumanism a la Francesca Ferrando (Philosophical Posthumanism), Donna Haraway (Staying with the Trouble), and James Lovelock & Lynn Margulis (The Gaia Hypothesis).  Get the full episode and many more at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Matt tricks the Pill Pod into reading analytic philosophy: "Personal Identity" by Derek Parfit (1971), who challenges intellectualist ideas of selfhood with thought experiments about splitting brains and sending your consciousness to Mars. Are you your soul, your memories, or nothing at all? Follow @PodPill and check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to dose up on exclusive episodes and video content.  

It's a political philosophy hour with @MattPolProf and @Victorbruzzone, who offer a leftist reading of John Rawls' concept of justice, and how it might be deployed in the organization of more equitable societies.   Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on this and future episodes.

The accusations fly again this week: Who's more crypto-normativist? Who has fewer implied premises? Who really has the moral high ground? Whence Nietzsche? Who even picked this episode topic anyway?   Follow @PodPill and check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to dose up on exclusive episodes and video content.

It's Culture War Day as the Pill Pod suits up to read the second worst take on Marxism ever, evidently served up to quell the debilitating anxiety of both conservative boomers and very-high-IQ 20-year-olds. From Quillette we read "The Challenge of Marxism" (https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/), which is at least as erroneous as it is popular.   Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on this and future episodes.

Matt and Victor interview Nate Hochman on conservative college campuses and America's new right.

Here is a preview of our second episode in the series on Cybernetics & Systems Theory, the rest of which will be up on the Patreon www.patreon.com/plasticpills. Otherwise, check back later in the week for more free content! Here's the main book link: https://amzn.to/3kldF1V

Join us for a relaxed topical episode discussing some of our local news, as well as the shifting place of "News" in the new media ecology, including its phenomenological effects on the embodied mind. We drop some Benjamin, McLuhan, and Merleau-Ponty, but this really serves as our collective detox of the last month or so. Chill vibes.        

We revisit Atlantis, the new one, in this Victor Hainagiu (Lit Vic) episode where we peer into the the early modern, colonial, proto-capitalist imagination. Find the short story here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2434/2434-h/2434-h.htm Follow Victor @HoratioVictor Get all our eps at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Victor (@victorbruzzone) interviews Professor Blake Wilson from California State University about the Rittenhouse trial, the legitimacy of law, and prison abolition.  Blake is a defense-attorney-turned-philosopher who writes and teaches on criminal justice and the philosophy of law. Visit his website here: https://www.mblakewilson.com All exclusive episodes can be found at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

The PillPod's bubbling civil war over political theory finally boils over into full-blown conflict. @Plasticpills and @T8Erik face off against @MattPolProf and @VictorBruzzone, debating the value of liberalism. Follow @PodPill and check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to dose up on exclusive episodes and video content.  

So we had some different interpretations as to whether Can't Get You Out of My Head is art, history, documentary, art-history, history-documentary or art-documentary. In any case, it's one of the more interesting media artefacts of the year.   Listen to this episode and our other bonus content on Patreon, at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Join us for our sophmore episode, from quarantine, in which we discuss Baudrillard, Derrida, and whether or not Covid 19 is real.

Find the whole text here https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200 Find LitVic on Twitter! @HoratioVictor Always looking for more suggestions for the lit stuff, someone suggested this several months ago and we bore it out! We are joined by LitVic for a literature episode, looking at the puzzling tale of the guy who gets turned into a bug. Find the whole text here https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200 Find LitVic on Twitter! @HoratioVictor Missed any eps? Want to support the podcast? join us at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Not to be called a n00b, Foucault slaps back at Derrida (eventually) with "My Body, This Paper, This Fire" defending his Madness and Civilization from Derrida's critique (see Pill Pod 42). Foucault claims Derrida can't read Latin properly, and more substantively, that Derrida includes subsumes madness under the dreaming philosopher, while Descartes juridically separates them so as to exclude madness from meditation.   Listen to this and all exclusive episodes over at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Here's 10 minutes of a 100 minute episode on how Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the Schneider case forever changed the philosophy of mind. Get all our exclusive eps, including this one, at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Evoked by no less than Agamben, Byung-Chul Han, Deleuze, and Zizek's wardrobe, Bartleby is a compelling character. This week we are joined by Lit Vic to bust us into some literary analysis of a prophet of American capitalism: Herman Melville, in his text "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Read the text for free here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231 Anything you've missed is up at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

This episode topic was chosen by our patrons. Get the episode and have your say on the next one over at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Postmodernism has fallen. All hail the new dumbuy cult: METAMODERNISM. We took its FRESH NEW RADICAL academic wing out for a spin, as seen in this book: https://amzn.to/3So0kKH. Find tons of content from our all-powerful postmodern windmill at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

No politics, no metaphysics, no grand narratives, as this week, and for the following weeks, the Pill Pod is going back to the things themselves. That's right—we are talking phenomenology. Our touchstone text will be Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but we do not expect to stay within the lines. Today, we try to get a handle on "lifeworld", "horizon", and a few of MMP's particular goals as a phenomenologist. If this goes well, after a few weeks we hope to help you feel less insane as denizens of Feedworld. If there are sections of text attached to the public episodes (as there is for this ep), you'll be able to find them attached on Patreon, EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT A PATRON. That's at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills  

It's another literature corner episode, featuring The Purloined Letter and the interpretive stylings of the illustrious Lit Vic (find more of his utterances on Twitter @HoratioVictor). We discuss the short story as well as Lacan's psychoanalytic interpretation of it found in the seminar from Écrits.   Join us at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills if you like content.

Here's a brief introduction to The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han. Listen to this episode and all of our other bonus content on Patreon, at www.patreon.com/plasticpills Find the book here: https://amzn.to/3sW85IL

How many of the intellectual left were assassinated by the CIA? THE TRUTH WILL SHOCK YOU! Guy Debord's head inflates by the time he gets to his book written about his own book, Comments on the Society of Spectacle https://amzn.to/3lLEsLa then we argue over whether America or China is more spectacular, in this last episode of our series on the Situationist International. If you like this kind of content there's more at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

From 1957 to 1972, the Situationist International published a slew of articles, pamphlets, films and journals trying to bring theoretical Marxist debates into everyday life and change public consciousness. Today we read a few of these articles on topics including art, revolution, and the Los Angeles Watts riots to see what of their imagination might be recovered.   Links to Articles: "The Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of Revolution" https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/modernart.html "The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy" https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/decline.html Don't miss any episodes and support our work! https://patreon.com/plasticpills

It's been a while since we released an exclusive episode, but I thought this that this episode is as pertinent as it ever was, so enjoy this release from two years ago, and Merry Christmas. It's a discussion of The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (whom we had then recently discovered, by the sound of it). Find the book here: https://amzn.to/3sW85IL As always, get more of this every week by joining us at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Is the sky falling? The Pill Pod (@mattpolprof, @Victorbruzzone, @t8erik, @plasticpills) take down this top shelf topical episode considering CRISES: of capitalism, of the spectacle, of meaning and of ecology. Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on all our exclusive episodes.

Adjusted for inflation, Francis Fukyama received $1,311,814.68 to write The End of History and the Last Man (https://amzn.to/3tPo5Bt); we want to see what $1,311,814.68 is worth. Get the full episode and many more at https://www.patreon.com/plasicpills

Professor Jeremy Gilbert from across the pond gives a primer on his primer: Twenty-First Century Socialism. Gilbert gives a jargon-free explanation as to why buy-in to the system of consumer product bribery is no longer working, how "socialism" is being detoxified in the anglosphere, along with some proposed goals for socialists if we can avoid microwaving ourselves this century. Gilbert's (inexpensive) book: https://amzn.to/3k5CUZ3

This week we depart from the usual solemnities to diagnose the latest object of conservative hysteria: critical race theory. It's being banned from curricula, bounced around conservative media outlets, and kicking off the careers of some new fear-mongering pundits. But what actually is it? Find all our exclusive episodes over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Pills and Erik talk about transhumanism as opposed to posthumanism, and compare their positions on human technology and technics. Heidegger, McLuhan, Latour and Stiegler are all noteworthy theorists of technological posthumanism, the foundation of which we try to lay out here. Get a lot of content for not a lot of money at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

@Mattpolprof, @t8erik and @Plasticpills consider the value of "revolution" as a concept or as a political goal of left-wing politics. Starting with Alain Badiou, we discuss guillotines, Marxism, BLM, the sign economy, and the aesthetics of burning Wendy's.  

We noticed a few Fanon name drops so this week we decided to read "On Violence" from Wretched of the Earth and see whether it's a useful heuristic for the discourse of violence in Gaza. You can read the chapter here. If you want all our episodes they are on www.patreon.com/plasticpills

n the 80s, Laclau and Mouffe decided they wanted to succeed Marxism with discourse stuff and some identity politics thrown in. We read their apologetic for Post-Marxism and while Post-Marxism is interesting as a direction, this version of it leaves something to be desired. Find the full episode and many more on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Our colleague BORNA joins @mattpolprof, @t8erik, @plasticpills to attempt the impossible: explain Hegel's politics of the State. Is Hegel the bad Walmart of philosophy? Or may his ethics yet have emancipatory potential for left-minded thought? We sometimes offer definitive answers and even evidence in accordance with the historical development of our freedom. Check out www.patreon.com/plasticpills to support the Pill Pod and dose up on exclusive and future episodes.

The Pill Pod is off this week for mental recuperation, so please enjoy this unlock of one of our episodes from back in the summer: a 5 course, two-hour-long discussion of Nietzsche, his significance to 20th century philosophy, our interpretations, and finally, the DANGER of his thought.   For more good theory video and audio content, join the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills