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PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy

Plasticpills

The Pill Pod is hosted by a group of PhDs offering their irreverent (and unsolicited) takes on critical theory, philosophy, culture, and politics.

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  • 23 episodes
  • Avg 57 min
  • English

Episodes 23

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  • August 25 · 1 hr 9 min

    Palantir's "Marxist Critical Theory" CEO // 263

    Find all episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills The business press has pushed the "leftist-outsider-dishevelled-genius" about Palantir's CEO Alex Karp for a decade. This episode we explore Karp's relationship with critical theory...

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  • August 18 · 1 hr 23 min

    Today is' Arday // 264

    The Pill Pod debates the academic and ethics perspectives' following the terminal end of the Jason Arday plagiarism scandal. 

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  • August 14 · 1 hr 1 min

    The Right's Recycled Mythology of Far-Left Terrorism // 261

    Ad-free listens (even with no subscription) at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio are calling The Left strange combinatory insults, such as ugly-terrorists and dark-cancers. We review these old signifying chains and...

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  • July 7 · 1 hr 16 min

    LLMs prove Structuralism was Correct all Along // 258

    Join for ad-free and more episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills There's only been about a century of structuralism. It had a day, then in the 80s haters celebrated its falloff. But today, the LLMs designed according to the precepts of...

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  • July 2 · 20 min

    Chinese Room LLM // 257 (preview)

    This week we evaluate a paper written by a Google DeepMind engineer which, in effect updates the Chinese Room Thought Experiment (Searle, 1980) to modern LLMs. Get this episode and hundreds more https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

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  • June 29 · 1 hr 12 min

    AI Will Fail Because Heidegger // 256

    Join for ad-free and more episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills Hubert Dreyfus loved recounting how he was maligned for his AI skepticism, which was informed by applications of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and turned out to be...

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  • June 9 · 1 hr 21 min

    POPE vs. AI // 255

    All episodes are ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills While many had hoped for a Butlerian Crusade against the thinking machines, the Pope has instead released a lukewarm encyclical asking the mean machine men making automated murder...

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  • June 4 · 1 hr 13 min

    Michel Foucault: Technologies of the Self // 254

    More where this came from at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills People have not always had a self, our selves were invented. According to Foucault, our concept of self emerged from religious technologies, genres of writing, and the institutions...

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  • April 29 · 1 hr 18 min

    The Philosophy of Looksmaxxing // 249

    This week we inspect the latest form of anthropotechnics, its surrounding moral panic, and American Psycho comparisons (Baudrillard was right about everything). Get hundreds of hours more at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

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  • April 16 · 1 hr 19 min

    Sloterdijk on Trial for Eugenics // 247

    Find all episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills This week we read Sloterdijk's 1999 "Rules for the Human Zoo" (https://web.stanford.edu/~mvr2j/docs/Elmauer.pdf) which was the source of immediate controversy and accusations of...

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  • April 10 · 58 min

    Marcel Mauss - The Gift // 180 (unlock)

    Find All Episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills. We read the eminent https://amzn.to/3NAenx3 (https://amzn.to/3NAenx3) by Marcel Mauss which is important to later theorists including Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques...

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  • April 6 · 53 min

    Durkheim on MANA - The Original "Floating Signifier" // 179

    Find All Episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills. We read Durkheim's https://amzn.to/4c1ubkB (https://amzn.to/4c1ubkB) and try to get a hold on a primordial concept, what for Claude Levi-Strauss exemplifies the floating signifier:...

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  • April 2 · 15 min

    Why Critical Theory is Never Enjoying Anything // 246 (preview)

    This is a preview but you can find all our episodes and other work ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills. In this episode we read Sloterdijk's proposal for how to fix Philosophy from The Critique of Cynical Reason.

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  • April 1 · 11 min

    Why Philosophers Fear their own Farts // 245 (preview)

    This is a preview, find all our episodes and other work ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills. In this episode we cover Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason and why Philosophy needs to incorporate disrespect, sacrilege, and fart...

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  • March 31 · 1 hr 3 min

    The Critique of Cynical Reason - Sloterdijk // 244

    Find all our episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills Peter Sloterdijk wrote a philosophy bestseller in 1983 called The Critique of Cynical Reason. In this episode, we try to communicate what he means by cynical reason. ...

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  • March 30 · 22 min

    Cynicism (the philosophy) // 243 (preview)

    This is a preview but you can find all our episodes and other work ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills. In this episode we cover the Cynical school of Diogenes and contemporary philosophers in his lineage.

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Showing 1–20 of 23 episodes