Podcast Episodes | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

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Episode 216: Game of Thrones’ Fantasy Politics

May 20, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Discussing the TV show (2011-2019) based on the books by George R.R. Martin.

What’s the role of a mass-consumed fantasy series in today’s society? Is it our “fantasy” to have all these horrible things happen to us? Is this an edifying prompt to engage in public moral thinking, or a spectacular distraction of the kind that those Marxist theorists keep warning us about? We get into the function of fantasy and how a more “realistic” show plays with that, the extent to which we’re supposed to identify with the characters, depiction of moral complexity, low art vs. high art, identity issues, and more. With guest Sabrina Weiss.

End song: “Fire and Blood” by Sacrifice Feat. Mark Lint; hear the interview on Nakedly Examined Music #24.

Keep an eye out for a Citizen-only spoiler-filled follow-up discussion between Mark and Wes to be released this week!

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Episode 215: Brave New World: PEL Live 10th Anniversary Show

May 13, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

On Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel, recorded at Manhattan’s Caveat on 4/6/19, with audience participation.

If we harness the power of society to employ available technologies to really focus on making people happy, what would the result be? This is Huxley’s thought experiment, but is it in all respects a dystopia, and is it a fair test of the ideal of social improvement or merely of a flawed view of human nature? You can watch this episode instead.

End song: “Brave New World” by Mark Lint. Read about it.

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Episode 214: More Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Part Two)

May 6, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Concluding Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885).

What’s the wise way to live? We start in earnest into part three, treating the “spirit of gravity,” where socially imposed values cover over your uniqueness; omni-satisfaction vs. being choosy; “Old and New Tablets,” where Nietzsche explores various ethical and meta-ethical issues (e.g., is self-overcoming a matter of one-time self-actualization or is it continual?); and more on the Overman and eternal recurrence.

Listen to part one first, or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: “Upright Man” by Rachel Taylor Brown, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #91.

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Episode 214: More Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Part One)

April 29, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

On the remainder of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885).

How can we keep our spirits up and avoid nihilism? We consider Nietzsche’s “solution” of eternal recurrence, why he uses a poetic, allegoric style, and more.

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Episode 214: More Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Citizen Edition)

April 29, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

On the remainder of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885).

How can we keep our spirits up and avoid nihilism? We consider Nietzsche’s “solution” of eternal recurrence, why he uses a poetic, allegoric style, and his “new tablets” that tell us what habitual and destructive ideas we have to flush out of our systems before we can be vital and creative. And don’t count on reaching overman status; innovators are generally sacrifices to the future and only get the goal half right.

End song: “Upright Man” by Rachel Taylor Brown, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #91.

Episode 213: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Part Two)

April 22, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Continuing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, books 1 and 2 (1883).

We talk through Nietzsche’s symbolism (tightrope walkers and gravediggers and snakes, oh my!), the path toward the overman, his screed against the state, the Will to Power as the will to overcome oneself by reconciling oneself with the past, and more.

Listen to part one first or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

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Episode 213: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Part One)

April 15, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 7 Comments

On Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, books 1 and 2 (1883).

What is wisdom? In this text whose style parodies the Bible, we get pithy advice and allegorical imagery to guide us away from self-defeating, life-denying attitudes and orient us toward creative self-overcoming (i.e., exertion of the Will to Power). The Last Man who no longer knows how to give birth to a dancing star is a rotten egg!

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Episode 213: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Citizen Edition)

April 15, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, books 1 and 2 (1883).

End song: “Sacrilicious” by Hedflux, i.e., Steve Young, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #92.

Episode 212: Sartre on Literature (Part Two)

April 8, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Continuing on What is Literature? (1948).

Sartre gives a phenomenology of reading and writing that makes reading into a creative act of completing the writer’s work, and calls this cooperation ethical: the work is an appeal to the reader’s freedom, and also the reader’s responsibility to then know what the work reveals. Are you shirking, all you skimmers?

Start with part one, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition.

End song: “Things I Shouldn’t Have Told You” by Sam Phillips, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #90.

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Episode 212: Sartre on Literature (Part One)

April 1, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

On Jean-Paul Sartre’s What is Literature? (1948), ch. 1 and 2.

What’s the purpose of literature? Why write prose as opposed to poetry? Sartre argues that while poetry is about the words themselves, prose is about the ideas, so it’s necessarily political. A written work is essentially an ethical appeal for a reader to apply his or her own faculties and experiences to complete the work through the act of reading.

Continue on part 2, or get your ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

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Episode 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part Three)

March 25, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Moving finally on to Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Black Orpheus” (1948), where he introduces a book of black poetry by praising its revolutionary spirit as embodied in “negritude.” Is this a legitimate consciousness-raising exercise or a weird fetishization of blackness?

Listen to parts one and two first, or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition, which will also get you access to (sub)Text#5 on Checkhov’s Uncle Vanya. Please support PEL!

End song: “Punch Bag” by Godley & Creme as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #3.

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(sub)Text #5: Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (Citizens Only)

March 25, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Wes Alwan is joined by actress, podcaster, and educator Monica McCarthy to discuss Anton Chekhov’s 1898 play about family dysfunction and potentially wasting your life.

Listen to a preview of this episode.

Listen to more (sub)Text.

Episode 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part Two)

March 18, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

Continuing on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946).

Is there an “authentic” way to respond to persecution? As part of his critique of anti-semitism, Sartre criticized the responses of some Jews to this situation, e.g. denying that the persecution exists, pretending to not be Jewish, or in any way accepting the terms of anti-semitism and setting up one’s life in reaction to it. Sartre instead recommends solidarity and “concrete liberalism,” which we try to figure out.

Listen to part one first. Don’t wait for the last part; get the full, ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL! Join us for PEL Live on 4/6!

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Episode 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part One)

March 11, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and “Black Orpheus” (1948).

How can we best understand the psychology of racism? Sartre condemns anti-Semitism as denying the facts of the human condition: the responsibility for fixing problems and not blaming them on a demonized other. But he also criticizes “the democrat” for a humanism that pretends we’re in a post-racial world, calling instead for “concrete liberalism” that treats Jews not as abstract individuals but as real people in an an oppressed situation.

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Episode 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Citizen Edition)

March 10, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

On Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and “Black Orpheus” (1948).

How can we best understand the psychology of racism and reactions to it? Sartre not only condemns anti-Semitism as denying the facts of the human condition (the responsibility for fixing problems and not blaming them on a demonized other), he also thinks that the victims of oppression can be inauthentic by denying their situation or otherwise being reactive to the racist’s attitude. “Black Orpheus” further explores this idea in characterizing the “negritude” of black poetry and how uncovering one’s negritude leads to solidarity and hence political and psychological change.

End song: “Punch Bag” by Godley & Creme as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #3.

Episode 210: Frantz Fanon’s Black Existentialism (Part Two)

March 4, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Continuing on Black Skin White Masks (1952), starting with the influential ch. five, “The Fact of Blackness.” Are the successive coping strategies to racism (including “anti-racist racism” and embrace of negritude) that Fanon describes, necessary steps in a dialectic that should be encouraged, or would it be best to learn from his “mistakes” and jump right to the humanistic end-point? With guest Lawrence Ware.

Start with part 1 or get the ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! See PEL Live in NYC on April 6.

End song: “Malaika” by John Etheridge and Vimala Rowe; hear John interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #85.

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Episode 210: Frantz Fanon’s Black Existentialism (Part One)

February 25, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 7 Comments

On Black Skin White Masks (1952).

How does growing up in a racist society mess people up? Fanon’s “clinical study” includes phenomenology, poetry, and a lot of existentialism, which means that the “let’s embrace negritude in the face of bigotry” solution isn’t ultimately available to him: We’re all radically free, with no race-specific essence, whether positive or negative. With guest Lawrence Ware.

Don’t wait for part two; get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL! Don’t miss PEL Live in NYC on April 6.

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Episode 210: Frantz Fanon’s Black Existentialism (Citizen Edition)

February 24, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Black Skin White Masks (1952).

End song: “Malaika” by John Etheridge and Vimala Rowe; hear John interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #85.

Podchaser Interview of Mark Linsenmayer: Partially Examined Life and Nakedly Examined Music

February 23, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Morgan DeLisle, writer for the PodChaser “Behind the Streams Blog,” interviewed Mark for a feature of our podcasts. Learn about the origins of PEL and NEM, how we make the shows, and what’s coming up.

Listen to all of the PEL network podcasts at partiallyexaminedlife.com, or subscribe to them individually on Apple Podcasts or via your preferred player.

Episode 209: Francis Fukuyama on Identity Politics (Part Two: Discussion)

February 18, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 7 Comments

Continuing on Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (2018).

Fukuyama recommends a “creedal national identity” as a solution for tribalism; does this work? Is this “demand for recognition” that he describes foundational for the act of making an ethical claim? For self-consciousness itself? How does ideology prejudice the sort of theorizing that Fukuyama engages in?

Listen to part one first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: “Cornerstone” by Richard X. Heyman, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #61.

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