The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog
Get teased re. Mark and Wes’s post-finale, spoiler-filled continuation of the discussion of the show.
How does its conclusion affect its overall political message? Does it make sense to be performing feminist critiques on a show based on the premise of people murdering each other for power?
To hear the full discussion, become a PEL Citizen or $5 Patreon supporter. For more about these options see partiallyexaminedlife.com/support. Listen to our part one first, of course.
Mark and Wes continue discussion of the TV show after its finale. Listen to our ep. 216 first.
Yes, of course this is now full of spoilers. How does the end of the show affect its overall political message? Was it really (as George R.R. Martin depicted) about the irreducible complexity of politics (given that any character named or unnamed can actually make a difference, at least destructively) or qua TV Show is it forced to zero-in on a select set of powerful characters that we are meant to identify with? Also, does it make sense to be performing feminist critiques on a show based on the premise of people murdering each other for power?
We welcome your feedback re. future treatment of pop culture topics (via a spin-off podcast?).
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!
Sponsors: Check out Bill Nye’s Science Rules and thegreatcoursesplus.com/PEL
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.
Phil founded New Zealand’s Split Enz with Tim Finn in 1972, recorded a seminal punk single with Suburban Reptiles, had an Australian #1 hit with The Swingers, then moved to solo and soundtrack work until 2006, since which he’s recorded five thickly textured solo albums including extensive one-man-band work.
We discuss the title track from Flightless Bird (2019), “Kite Flying Day” from Play It Strange (2014), and “Lamplight” by Schnell Fenster from The Sound of Trees (1988). We conclude by listening to “No One’s Best Man” from Novelty Act (2016). Intro/outro: “Sweet Dreams” by Split Enz from Second Thoughts (1976).
Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon. Check out Mark’s new album.
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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.
Get the commemorative T-shirt, and save $10 with the coupon code revealed at the beginning of the Citizen Edition of this episode. Please support PEL! Contact us to share your PEL stories.
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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.
PEL Citizens get $10 off the commemorative T-shirt.
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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Danny drummed with Chicago from its founding in 1967 through 1990 and wrote several songs for the band during the mid-late ’70s, often with David “Hawk” Wolinski.
We discuss “Little One” (and our intro music, “Take Me Back to Chicago”) from Chicago XI (1977), “Street Player” from Chicago 13 (1979), and “Devil’s Sweet” from Chicago VII (1974). End song: “The Real World” by California Transit Authority from Sacred Ground (2013). For more, see dannyseraphine.com.
Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon. Check out Mark’s new album.
Sponsors: Bandzoogle for 30 days free and 15% off a year of a great band website (use promo code NEM), and skylightframe.com (code NEM) for $10 off a great Mother’s Day gift.
Constellary Tales presents an audio production of “Ambassador,” cover story of Issue #2. Then story author Michael Adam Robson joins us for an interview.
Get more Constellary Tales podcasts, and read original sf in the magazine at constellary.com.
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.
Don’t wait for part 2. Get the full, ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!
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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.
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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Andrew has put out nine albums and a few EPs of piano-and-vocal-based pop using various band names since he was in high school in the late ’90s.
We discuss two of his Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness tracks: “Blue Vacation” from Upside Down Flowers (2018) and “Synesthesia” from The Pop Underground EP, then “Me and the Moon” by Something Corporate from North (2003), and conclude by listening to “Swim” by Jack’s Passenger from The Glass Passenger (2008). Opening music: “I Woke Up in a Car” by Something Corporate from Leaving through the Window (2002). For more, see andrewmcmahon.com.
Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon. Check out Mark’s new album.
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!
Don’t wait for part 2! Get your ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!
Sponsors: St. John’s College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi. Listen to the Hi-Phi Nation podcast at hiphination.org.
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!
End song: “Sacrilicious” by Hedflux, i.e., Steve Young, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #92.
Join Cezary Baranieckli, Laura Davis, Nathaniel Hanks, Daniel Johnson, and Jennifer Tejada, as we spend a very long (and with audio issues) episode deconstructing and being reshaped, by our reading of this unspeakably remarkable novel.
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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Stevie has been recording pop tunes and/or wild experiments nearly continually since the late ’60s, with hundreds of albums, many of them compilations of home recordings.
We discuss “Pop Music” and “Take Back” from Afterlife (2019) and “The House Is Not in Order” by R. Stevie Moore and Alan Jenkins and the Kettering Vampires from The Embodiment of Progressive Ideals (2018) and conclude by listening to “I H8 Ppl” by R. Stevie Moore and Jason Falkner from Make It Be (2017). Bonus songs: “Pervert” from World War 4 (2016) and (at the end) “Goodbye, Piano” from Phonography (1976). Intro: “I Like to Stay Home” from Glad Music (1986). For more, see rsteviemoore.com.
Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon. Check out Mark’s new album.
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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