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The Pill Pod is hosted by a group of PhDs offering their irreverent (and unsolicited) takes on critical theory, philosophy, culture, and politics.
Episodes
Friday Jan 20, 2023
Friday Jan 20, 2023
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
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Friday Jan 20, 2023
Friday Jan 20, 2023
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
Friday Dec 23, 2022
Friday Dec 23, 2022
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
Saturday Dec 17, 2022
Saturday Dec 17, 2022
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
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Friday Dec 09, 2022
Friday Dec 09, 2022
Not with a whimper, but with a bang: it's time for another crisis of the Humanities. Students, then teachers, then administrators will realize that AI has nullified our current evaluation methods in academia. In this episode we discuss the implications of OpenAI for essay writing, and how to prevent universities from devolving into AIs reading AIs.
Get access to all the episodes and other media at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
Friday Dec 09, 2022
Friday Dec 09, 2022
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
Friday Dec 09, 2022
Friday Dec 09, 2022
We glance at Ranciere's Hatred of Democracy which suggests that hatred, not equality, is the animus of so-called democracies, and then debate whether or not the term even matters anymore.
Get access to the full episode and many more at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
Friday Nov 04, 2022
Friday Nov 04, 2022
It's a "party" for our 100th episode! Thanks for everyone who helped us reach this milestone by listening, guesting, supporting us on patreon, or whatever else, and special thanks to everyone who submitted voice clips.
To find out what everyone's working on mentioned in this episode:
Diego: @DiegoRuzzarin https://diegoruzzarin.com/Chris: @aufgehendeRest https://epochemagazine.org/56/the-influence-of-plato-on-schellings-living-cosmos-the-timaeus-the-freedom-essay-and-ages-of-the-world/
Matt: @MattPolProf https://areomagazine.com/2022/04/11/is-postmodernism-neo-marxist/
Victor: @victorbruzzone
Pills: @plasticpills https://www.youtube.com/c/plasticpills
Erik: No fixed address
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Today we read Freud's nephew, the "Father of PR," Edward Bernays' book "Propaganda" and compare his theory and practice to other opinions on the purpose of propaganda, and how it compares to the later neo-marxist conception of "ideology" and whether theorizing about democracy matters at all when private interests run the state.
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Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
This resembles one of our FIGHT NIGHT episodes, except the whole of it is mediated by another philosopher, Richard Rorty. We give a bit of background to philosophical pragmatism before trying to get a read on what philosophy is for according to each of these three authors. Is it for self-help? Can it solve 'real' problems? Or is philosophy just cope?
Find the public link on our patreon page https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills