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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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  • 30 episodes
  • Avg 56 min
  • English

Episodes 30

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  • Today · 40 min

    Bubble Metaphysics

    MORE https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills or https://www.youtube.com/@PlasticPills/membership Topics: bubbles, reality is analogical, gambling psychosis, temporality, conspiracy theory, ataraxia This is an experiment with format to do more thematic...

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  • Friday · 1 hr 7 min

    Electoral Representatives will Always Betray You // 274

    all episodes: https://www.patreon/com/plasticpills from Language and Symbolic Power https://link.amazon/B02PDsduF by Pierre Bourdieu We return to Pierre Bourdieu to help us break down the USA midterms, discussing the Oracle Effect and Political...

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  • October 29 · 1 hr 11 min

    Hermès Burning // 272

    All episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills We discuss cannibalism, the communicative value of rioting, and the English news coverage of the French riots. The paper "Can Riots Represent?" can be found here:...

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  • October 23 · 21 min

    The Scapegoat - René Girard // 271 (preview)

    Listen to the whole episode on patreon https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills René Girard is known mainly as someone Peter Thiel mentions in between deranged analogies, but he also wrote some books on some typically French topics such as desire, the...

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  • October 16 · 1 hr 8 min

    René Girard on Blood Sacrifice // 270

    René Girard is known mainly as someone Peter Thiel mentions in between deranged analogies, but he also wrote some books on some typically French topics such as desire, the symbolic, and anthropological historiography. This is his take on sacrifice...

    • Transcript
  • October 13 · 1 hr 2 min

    Learning Fake Economics in a Fake Economy // 268

    We ask Cahal Moran what leftists need to get straight on economics, talking through "orthodox" vs. "heterodox" economics, the labour theory of value, Mark Carney, and the AI Bubble.  Visit Unlearning Economics on YouTube...

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  • September 13 · 41 min

    Fit Fascists v. Fat Foucauldians // 266

    Another discourse has hit the timeline. Find all episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills Is health fascism? Is Ozempic Zyklon-B? Should Gabriel Rockhill have to approve every leftist monograph prior to publication? All this and more,...

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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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Showing 1–20 of 30 episodes