Episodes
Friday Nov 03, 2023
A PIVOTAL MOMENT FOR OUR FUTURE? - INTERESTING TIMES 70
Friday Nov 03, 2023
Friday Nov 03, 2023
In this podcast, we reflect on recent events in Gaza. We pay particular attention to huge pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations across the earth, as well as geo-political shifts that are taking place this moment. We plead for immediate ceasefire. [Free. 1 hour 6minutes.]
Sunday May 21, 2023
NAT-C OR NAZI? INTERESTING TIMES 65
Sunday May 21, 2023
Sunday May 21, 2023
In this rather long podcast, we analyse various moments from the National Conservatism conference which was recently held in London, and some of the commentary that has ensued. We focus on the ideological substrate of the organising group, The Edmund Burke Foundation which is named after the 18th Century writer and Parliamentarian who is often hailed as the founder of both UK and US conservatism. [This despite Burke belong to the Whigs rather than Tories.] We ask, is this movement fascist and/or dangerous?" [Free. 96 minutes.]
Tuesday Sep 21, 2021
REMARKS ON FREUD PART 2 - THE TOPOGRAPHICAL MODEL
Tuesday Sep 21, 2021
Tuesday Sep 21, 2021
This podcast continues with our series of Freud's thought. It focusses on Freud's lecture Dissection of the Psychical Personality (1933), outlining it and critically appraising it's main features. [Free. 55 minutes.]
Tuesday Jun 29, 2021
REMARKS ON FREUD PART 1 - THE UNCONSCIOUS
Tuesday Jun 29, 2021
Tuesday Jun 29, 2021
This podcast is the first in an ongoing series on Freud and psychoanalysis which is meant to be useful to our series on fascism and reason, as well as to our many considerations of the workings of propaganda and ideology. Here, give some background to Freud's intellectual journey and elucidate the notion of 'the unconscious' and its significance for humanity's self-image. [Free. 34 minutes.]
Wednesday Feb 03, 2021
REASON ON REASON 4 - MADNESS
Wednesday Feb 03, 2021
Wednesday Feb 03, 2021
In this podcast we examine madness or the loss of reason to further our picturing of reason. We start out with the fact that madness, like reason has a history which offers us a variety of causal explanations of madness, treatments for it, and accounts of its meaning. We also give a brief account of nosological drift. Both of these preliminaries serve to cast suspicion on the notion that we can discern madness through contrast with a supposedly sane consensus reality. Accordingly, we are drawn to consider madness in terms of suffering people and to appraise crazy social and political situations through the employment of a critical awareness rather than accepting the status quo understanding as a yardstick. That critical awareness, we claim, entails acquaintance with ones own potential for irrationality. [Free. 54 minutes.]
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
REASON ON REASON 2 - THE ANTECEDENTS TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
In this second episode of our series on reason, I take a broad brush to outline
some of the main antecedents to the so-called European Enlightenment, also know as 'The Age of Reason'. I focus on the rise of experimental science in the contexts of church power and violence against those who contradict its doctrines, the rise of the bourgeoisie, and advances in mathematics. The figures of Descartes, Galileo and Newton loom large but Aristotle, Aquinas, Copernicus, Kepler and others also have parts. [Free. 44 minutes.]
Friday Oct 02, 2020
WHAT IS FASCISM? 1 - HISTORICAL EXAMPLES
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Friday Oct 02, 2020
In this first of a series on fascism, I identify eleven prominent features of the historical forms of fascism of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, describe them and show how they inter-relate. I make the point that the features can give rise to varied surface appearances and that we shouldn't expect future manifestations of the 'syndrome' to look like Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. I propose to see, in future podcasts of this series, to see if we find any of the crucial feature incipient or actually present in the contemporary situation of the USA and the UK. [Free. 54 minutes.]
Tuesday Sep 01, 2020
COVIDIOCY: WHO BENEFITS? - INTERESTING TIMES 10
Tuesday Sep 01, 2020
Tuesday Sep 01, 2020
In this podcast, we analyse the covid-is-a-hoax movement which demonstrated recently in London, demanding the abandonment of all remedial measures against the global pandemic. We do so primarily by asking the question that we identified in a recent podcast [Grassroots and Astroturf] 'Who benefits from this movement?' The question proves revelatory of how this movement plays to the far right and upholds the status quo, whilst claiming the contrary. The involvement of far right parties in the loose coalition of new-agers, antivaxers, climate deniers, and adherents to fantastic conspiracy theories is not accidental. These elements are stitched together by irrationalism. [Free. 24 minutes.]
Friday Aug 28, 2020
AGAINST FLAG-SHAGGING - INTERESTING TIMES 9
Friday Aug 28, 2020
Friday Aug 28, 2020
In this podcast, we argue that patriotism is ideological, irrational, based on arbitrary boundaries, implicated in the weaponisation of history, employed by dead-cat culture wars, and rooted in a pathological narcissism. We suggest how those afflicted with it might return to health. [Free. 27 minutes.]
Friday Jan 26, 2018
ON TABOOS
Friday Jan 26, 2018
Friday Jan 26, 2018
This podcast is a rambling discussion which seeks to elucidate the nature of taboos. This involves considering law, superstition, transgression, the unconscious and Freud's metapsychology. We find ourselves questioning the coherence of the notion of the unconscious whilst at the same time finding it almost indispensible. Do we have to have taboos? We conclude that theoretically a society could be without taboos but that it is unlikely in the near future. However, minimising the play of irrational forces is thought to be desirable. The one thing that taboos have in their favour is their connection with the transgressive element in erotic jouissance. Contains a discussion of swearing and an account of a tantric exorcism. [Free. 38 minutes.]