Podcast · Society & Culture
by Plasticpills · English · Society & Culture
The Pill Pod is hosted by a group of PhDs offering their irreverent (and unsolicited) takes on critical theory, philosophy, culture, and politics.
13 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 2 minNew
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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4V_jMdRbbTrmBVJB6FDzgw Cahal's Book: https://link.amazon/B0aL5NcCd All podcast episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
13 Sep 2026 · 41 min
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, in what what was supposed to be the intro to our episode on collective violence
25 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
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 and the mythmaking that has produced his significance. NYT pushes the mythology of Alex Karp https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/style/alex-karp-palantir.html Adorno and the Palantir Manifesto https://smtsmtpostmodern.substack.com/p/palantir-flunks-out-of-the-frankfurt Palantir Goes to the Frankfurt School…
18 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 23 min
The Pill Pod debates the academic and ethics perspectives' following the terminal end of the Jason Arday plagiarism scandal.
14 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
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 Erik introduces Stuart Hall's explanation from last time this happened, when back in the 60s when they said The Left were all gay muggers planning to rob civilized people on their way home from church.
21 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 31 min
Socialist are to blame for the Forest Fires. Antifa caused Algae to take over the reflecting pool. Conservatives believe that nature has allied with their enemies to undermine their authority and Western vicilization. We discuss many instances of the opposition of culture/nature in recent news, political theory, and most importantly Twitter discourse. Video essay referenced: https://youtu.be/ZFOSdqhpuaI?si=86JJOjAuxQl7lrhv Join up for more content https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
7 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 16 min
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 structuralist linguistics have proven Saussure's intuitions were more accurate than even he could have suspected. We read the argument from Language Machines by Leif Weatherby (https://amzn.to/4bipjYu)
2 Jul 2026 · 20 min
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
29 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 12 min
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 correct as of 2007. Is he still correct in the age of LLMs and self-driving cars? Link to article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370207001452
9 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 22 min
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 drones to please be nice to us. This episode we evaluate whether Christian Humanism has any juice left. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
4 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 14 min
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 that perpetuated them. https://amzn.to/4uWyVAg
3 Jun 2026 · 23 min
Hear our Lasch series at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills After three episodes reading Culture of Narcissism we conclude that despite a unique perspective, it's way overrated.
12 May 2026 · 1 hr 12 min
jk it's just fake news that duped conservatives yet again. This viral lie claimed that a remote Amazon tribe fell apart the instant they discovered internet pornography, but in the end it says a lot more about us than it does about the Marubos. go to patreon to never miss an episode https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
29 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 19 min
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
28 Apr 2026 · 18 min
For hundreds of hours of content like this, it's https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
16 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 20 min
Find all episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills This week we read Sloterdijk's 1999 "Rules for the Human Zoo" (https://web.stanford.edu/~mvr2j/docs/Elmauer.pdf) which was the source of immediate controversy and accusations of fascism and eugenics. We see what the hype was about.
10 Apr 2026 · 59 min
Find All Episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills. We read the eminent The Gift (https://amzn.to/3NAenx3) by Marcel Mauss which is important to later theorists including Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Derrida. (originally recorded 08/24)
6 Apr 2026 · 54 min
Find All Episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills. We read Durkheim's Elementary forms of Religious Life (https://amzn.to/4c1ubkB) and try to get a hold on a primordial concept, what for Claude Levi-Strauss exemplifies the floating signifier: it's MANA (originally recorded 08/24).
2 Apr 2026 · 16 min
This is a preview but you can find all our episodes and other work ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills . In this episode we read Sloterdijk's proposal for how to fix Philosophy from The Critique of Cynical Reason.
1 Apr 2026 · 11 min
This is a preview, find all our episodes and other work ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills . In this episode we cover Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason and why Philosophy needs to incorporate disrespect, sacrilege, and fart jokes if it is ever going to be relevant again.
31 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
Find all our episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/c/plasticpills Peter Sloterdijk wrote a philosophy bestseller in 1983 called The Critique of Cynical Reason . In this episode, we try to communicate what he means by cynical reason. https://monoskop.org/images/7/7b/Sloterdijk_Peter_Critique_of_Cynical_Reason.pdf
30 Mar 2026 · 23 min
This is a preview but you can find all our episodes and other work ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills . In this episode we cover the Cynical school of Diogenes and contemporary philosophers in his lineage.
3 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
We discuss the proposition of hyperreal fascism as presented in this video essay (https://youtu.be/R9fpm-lorIU) and its relationship to current events and the Trump Administration
17 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 11 min
Jeffrey Epstein is not primarily known as a philosopher, but his emails illustrate that he had higher ambitions than pedophilia. We explore both the latent and manifest content of Jeffrey Epstein's theorizing, as well as who enabled him, and come to realize that he was the victim of a rare psychotic illness. Join our patreon to get the epsidoes not posted here https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
2 Feb 2026 · 54 min
Everyone is talking about Canada leading the charge into the New World Order. Are we excited yet? Watch the glorious father of our nation deliver the goods at Davos, or not. Join us on Patreon to get all our eps ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
26 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 18 min
Stoicism is on its comeback among dumb 20 year olds, which is too bad because Epicureanism is the superior Athenian philosophy. We discuss hedonism, happiness, and the Swerve™. Only half of our episodes are posted here! Find the other half ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
10 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 32 min
The history of Stoicism is long and complicated, and we didn't want to end with AI alpha male YouTube channels, so here is a rundown focused on Greek Stoicism, some comparisons to Buddhism, and whether or not this philosophy could help in 2026. Get all episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
6 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 36 min
From Zero to hero: Samantha Fulnecky has been honoured by the Oklahoma government and named "an American hero" for her paper submission to her Psych course in which she claimed it is demonic to believe in more than one gender. Still, the Pill Pod heats up over whether she deserved the grade she received… More Pill Pod: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills Read Samantha's essay and the instructors' comments here: https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/education/2025/11/25/ou-oklahoma-samantha-fulnecky-read-essay-gender-bible/87463858007/
29 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 36 min
It's the bi-yearly event in the ongoing race war between analytic and continental philosophy. Philosophers of all stripes invited themselves to partake in the latest and stupidest skirmish, and so we have undertaken a reading of the match that lit the powder keg: How Continental Philosophers "Argue": On the Unseriousness of the Discipline ( https://benthams.substack.com/p/how-continental-philosophers-argue )
14 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
Access exclusive episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills A Signifying Chain (or symbolic chain, or signifying web) is a structuralist concept developed by Jacques Lacan and others ("The Agency of the Letter"; https://amzn.to/4p6wx6l). Signifying chains structure discourses and we believe, explain the growing rift in conservative politics.
The Pill Pod is hosted by a group of PhDs offering their irreverent (and unsolicited) takes on critical theory, philosophy, culture, and politics.
PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy is a English society & culture podcast from Plasticpills. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
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