The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog
What’s the post-COVID future of movie theaters? Mark, Erica, and Brian compare past moviegoing habits and reflect on the big-screen vs. small-screen decision. How would we optimize the theatrical experience? We consider films affected like Tenet, Soul, etc.
For more, visit prettymuchpop.com. Hear bonus content for this episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.
Sponsors: Visit ExpressVPN.com/pretty to get three months free.
What explains the enduring appeal of Auden’s September 1, 1939? Was he right to repudiate it? Wes & Erin discuss.
On Reasons and Persons (1984), ch. 10-13. What makes a person persist over time?
After using various sci-fi examples to test the Lockean (personhood=psychological continuity), physicalist (same brain=same person), and Cartesian (same soul=same person) theories, Parfit concludes that the whole notion is incoherent and isn’t actually what we care about when wondering “will I die?”
Sponsors: Visit TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/PEL for a free trial of The Great Courses Plus Video Learning Service. Organize your Inbox: Get a free trial and save $25 at sanebox.com/pel. See headspace.com/PEL for a free month of guided meditations. Start a new monthly donation and have your first matched up to $250 at givewell.org/PEL (choose podcast and partially examined life at checkout). Learn about St. John’s College at SJC.edu.
Don started the NY-based Life in a Blender in the late 80s and has put out ten albums of tunes with off-kilter lyrics and increasingly elaborate arrangements. We discuss “The Ocean is a Black and Rolling Tongue” (and listen at the end to “Soul Deliverer”) from Satsuma (2020), “Falmouth” from We Already Have Birds That Sing (2014), and “Chicken Dance” from Two Legs Bad (1997). Intro: “Mounds of Flesh” from Welcome to the Jelly Days (1988). For more see lifeinablender.net.
Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon.
Sponsors: Get three months free Internet privacy protection at ExpressVPN.com/NEM. Get 15% off MasterClass at masterclass.com/EXAMINED. Get a month’s free trial of guided meditations at headspace.com/NEM.
Returning heroine Vi (now a grad student in comics history) joins Erica, Mark, and Brian to put the new film in context, bringing in the weird ideas of WW’s creator as shown in the 2017 biopic Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Do the new film’s themes actually make sense? We talk political ideals, truth, love, feminist utopias, ’70s TV, and more.
For more, visit prettymuchpop.com. Hear bonus content for this episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.
Sponsor: For a free audiobook and 30 days free, visit Audible.com/pretty or text pretty to 500-500.
One last take on John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), covering Book II, ch. 21 and 28.
What makes a moral claim true? Do we have free will? What makes us choose the good, or not? In this coda to our long treatment of Locke’s opus, we bring together all he has to say about morality, which is strangely modern yet also just strange.
Is suffering’s “human position” something that can be redeemed? Wes and Erin discuss Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts.
What explains the immense quarantine-time popularity of this quaint reality cooking show? What do we get out of watching talented amateurs bake things? Stephen, famous for playing Scar in The Lion King on Broadway, joins Erica, Brian, and Mark to consdier the format, context, and appeal of the show.
For more, visit prettymuchpop.com. Hear bonus content for this episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.
More on Book II (ch. 22-33) of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
On relations, then personal identity, with more on substances (spiritual and material), the various ways in which ideas can go wrong, and how mental association can entrench irrationality that disrupts clear thinking.
Listen to part one first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition, which will also get you the end-of-year PEL Nightcap that you’ll hear a preview for here. Please support PEL!
Sponsors: Visit HelixSleep.com/PEL for $200 off a mattress and two free pillows. Get $35 off meal delivery at SunBasket.com/PEL, code PEL. Visit TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/PEL for 14 days of free access. Start a new monthly donation and have your first matched up to $250 at givewell.org/PEL (select podcast and Partially Examined Life).
Recycling a great music discussion featuring a past NEM guest from Mark’s other entertainment podcast for the New Year!
Plenty of songs try to tell stories, but do the pop song format and narrative really mix? Rod Picott joins Pretty Much Pop to talk about classics by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, formative nightmares like “Leader of the Pack” and “The Pina Colada Song, borderline cases like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and more. How does this form relate to theater, videos, and commercials?
Subscribe directly to Pretty Much Pop at prettymuchpop.com. Get bonus discussion at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.
Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support NEM on Patreon.
What has the Internet done to comedy? Tiffany, purveyor of social media bits and song parodies, joins Erica, Mark, and Brian to think about new ways of making and consuming comedy over TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media. Maybe given current events we should describe the goal as something other than “going viral”?
For more, visit prettymuchpop.com. Hear bonus content for this episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.
Sponsors: Get 10% off a month’s counseling at BetterHelp.com/Pretty
On Book II (ch. 22-33) of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689).
Simple ideas get complex quickly when you put them into words, and can give rise to various philosophical problems that are either easily cleared up when you figure out how the complex idea is built out of simple ideas, or if they can’t be so broken down, then we really don’t know what we’re talking about and should just shut up.
Don’t wait for part two, get the ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!
Sponsors: Visit uber.com/pel for a $50 voucher credit. Learn about St. John’s college at sjc.edu/PEL. Have your donations matched up to $250 at givewell.org/PEL (select podcast and Partially Examined Life).
Join the office party, where Mark holds mini conversations on philosophy, art, and life with all PEL and PMP co-hosts, plus Ken Stringfellow, Jenny Hansen, and the members of Mark Lint’s Dry Folk, whose 12 tunes are presented in succession with nary a partridge in sight. Will these 12 spirits turn you (or Mark) from errant ways? BYOB!
What makes a film transcendently bad? A cult classic, as opposed to merely unwatchable? Child Jackey appeared in 1966’s Manos: The Hands of Fate, and she joins Mark, Erica, and Brian to discuss growing up in community theater, being reintroduced to her family movie by MST3K, and the over-confident auteur.
We also touch on Birdemic, Catwoman, The Happening, and Battleship, as well as films about the making of bad films: The Disaster Artist, Best Worst Movie, Ed Wood, and Dolemite Is My Name.
For more, visit prettymuchpop.com. Hear bonus content for this episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.
Sponsors: Get 10% off a month’s counseling at BetterHelp.com/Pretty. Visit ExpressVPN.com/pretty to get three months free.
A 2011 episode on John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government (1690), with a fresh introduction connecting it to the present.
What makes political power legitimate? Like Hobbes, Locke thought that things are less than ideal without a society to keep people from killing us, so we implicitly sign a social contract giving power to the state. But on Locke’s view, nature’s not as bad, so the state is given less power. But how much less? And what does Locke think about tea partying, kids, women, acorns, foreign travelers, and calling dibs? Featuring guest Sabrina Weiss.
Hear the full, new reconsideration of this episode by Mark, Wes, and Dylan on the latest Nightcap available via partiallyexaminedlife.com/support.
End song: “Lock Them Away,” by Mark Lint (2003).
Sponsors: Save $35 off meal delivery at SunBasket.com/PEL, code PEL. Have your donations matched up to $250 at givewell.org/PEL (select podcast and Partially Examined Life). Learn about St. John’s college at sjc.edu/PEL.
Brian and Jeff are joined by Michael Grenke, St. John’s College – Santa Fe, to discuss Lise van Boxel’s posthumously published book “Warspeak” from PoliticalAnimalPress.com.
Markus began composing as a teen, “found his tribe” in getting connected to King Crimson’s Robert Fripp in the early 90s, and has put out 40+ solo and collaborative albums of experimental music since 2000, including work in Stick Men with Crimson’s Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto.
We discuss “Swoonage” from Truce (2020), “Boon” by Marcus Reuter and the Matangi Quartet from String Quartet No. 1 ‘Heartland’ (2019), and “11-11” by Tuner (Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter) from POLE (2007), and end by listening to “The Cult of Bibbiboo” by centrozoon from The Divine Beast (2001). Intro: “Condition IV” from Falling for Ascension (2017). More at .
Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon.
Sponsors: Get three months free Internet privacy protection at ExpressVPN.com/NEM. Buy one MasterClass annual membership and get one free to gift at masterclass.com/EXAMINED. Get a month’s free trial of guided meditations at headspace.com/NEM.
Fred writes for Marvel and his own Evil Twin Comics, in both non-fiction (e.g. Comic Book History of Animation, Action Philosophers) and stories (e.g. Marvel Zombies, Cowboys vs. Aliens). He even wrote a play about Jack Kirby.
He joins Mark, Erica, and Brian to discuss playing in the Marvel sandbox, the role of humor, comic-to-movie transitions, and more. Learn more at fredvanlente.com.
For more, visit prettymuchpop.com. Hear bonus content for this episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.
Sponsor: Get 10% off a month’s counseling at BetterHelp.com/Pretty.
Continuing on Book II (through ch. 20) of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689).
How do we acquire our ideas of pain and pleasure, duration and motion? We talk primary (shape, size) and secondary (color, sound) qualities, the former of which are supposed to be actually in objects, and the latter just in our mind. Plus, is Locke really an atomist about experience?
Start with part one or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition.
Sponsors: Organize your Inbox: Save $25 sanebox.com/pel. See headspace.com/PEL for a free month of guided meditations. Have your donation matched up to $250 at givewell.org/PEL (choose podcast and partially examined life at checkout).
Hedda Gabler is not a fan of specialization: not in the professor she has married, and his esoteric scholarly interests; not in domesticity, and the specialized affections required by marriage and motherhood; not in any lover’s infatuated specialization in her; and perhaps not in the form of specialization arguably required by life itself, with its finite and confining possibilities. Is there any way, short of suicide, to transcend such limits? Wes & Erin discuss Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.
