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Phi Fic LogoPhi Fic means Philosophical Fiction. Each episode, we have a candid dicussion on a heady work of of fiction, full of SPOILERS. Join host Nathan Hanks and readers Cezary Baraniecki, Daniel St. Pierre, Laura Davis, and Mary Claire, plus the occasional guest.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Refer your friends to us at PhiFicPodcast.com!

Originating from The Partially Examined Life’s Not School and its Philosophical Fiction group. Sign up for a small recurring donation for access to many more discussions!

Phi Fic #0 “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy

April 29, 2016 by Nathan Hanks 4 Comments

We talk about the novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy with Nathan Hanks, Jordan Payne, and special guest Dylan Casey from the Partially Examined Life Podcast. This origin/zero-episode is taken from an older (2013) recording of the Philosophical Fiction group, before our current group of readers got together. Worth Mentioning: No Country for Old Men/The Crossing/Cities of  Continue Reading …

Not School Digest #4: Sartre, Heidegger, Zizek, Marx, and Theater

February 28, 2014 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

Not School

Excerpts from PEL podcaster & listener discussions on Sartre's Nausea, Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology," Slavoj Zizek's Year of Dreaming Dangerously, Marx and Engels's "Communist Manifesto," Peter Schaffer's play Equus, and Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form. Plus an interview with Hillary Sydlowski, leader of the Not School  Continue Reading …

Not School Theater Group: Cormac McCarthy’s “The Sunset Limited”

February 1, 2014 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Billed as a "novel in dramatic form," The Sunset Limited reads like a sort of twisted Socratic dialogue. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, and Carlos Franke. Recorded Feb. 1, 2014. McCarthy gives us two characters, known only as "Black" and "White," who proceed without compromise to make their respective cases for life and death. When the play opens, White has just  Continue Reading …

Not School Digest #3: The Future of Work, Blood Meridian, Embodied Mind, and Heidegger

August 22, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 5 Comments

Not School

Excerpts of discussions about Frithjof Bergmann's New Work, New Culture, Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and Martin Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism." Given rising economic productivity, we should all be working less, but we're not, and the job system is  Continue Reading …

Not School Fiction Talks about Blood Meridian

June 30, 2013 by Nathan Hanks 8 Comments

This June I met with Jordan Payne, Fiction-group regular, and Dylan Casey, of PEL-fame, to discuss Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian. We discussed the Judge, the kid, the landscape, the language, the title and touched on the same author's No Country for Old Men, The Road and The Crossing in just under two great hours. Here's the conversation. We cover a lot of ground  Continue Reading …

Not School Fiction Group Reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

June 1, 2013 by Nathan Hanks 22 Comments

This May, PEL's Not School Fiction Group read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, the author of No Country for Old Men (which PEL covered) and The Road. Blood Meridian is a dark masterpiece set in 1849 where a runaway kid joins a gang of scalp-hunters led by the Judge, a philosophizing warmonger. The Judge's views on existence come out in several stories and fire-side  Continue Reading …

A Belated Rant Against Literature as Philosophy (Featuring Murakami’s “IQ84”)

September 24, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 43 Comments

There's a long history of philosophers bashing poets, back to Socrates bashing rhetoriticians (poetry being a species of rhetoric, to him) for pursuing felicity of expression over an actual search for the truth. Though in the McCarthy episode, we were very upbeat about the utility of literature for conveying philosophical ideas, today I'm in a grumpy mood about it and feel the  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 63: Existentialist Heroes in Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”

September 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 56 Comments

This is a short preview of the full episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more  Continue Reading …

Episode 63: Existentialist Heroes in Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” (Citizens Only)

September 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On philosophical issues in McCarthy's 2005 novel about guys running around with drug money and shooting each other, and about fiction as a form for exploring philosophical ideas. What can morality mean for people who have witnessed the "death of God," i.e. a loss in faith in light of the horrors of war? For both the protagonist and antagonist in "No Country for Old Men,"  Continue Reading …

Topic for #63: Cormac McCarthy’s Novel “No Country for Old Men”

August 22, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 36 Comments

Following the path of reading novels (which we don't necessarily intend to make a habit of) begun with #62, we have now recorded our discussion of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. We had as a guest one of Dylan's teachers from undergrad, Eric Petrie, Professor at James Madison College at Michigan State University, who has been presenting a paper called "Promise  Continue Reading …

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The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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