Episode notes
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Karl Marx's posthumously published Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 , colloquially known as the 1844 Manuscripts. They begin by discussing how teachable and approachable the text is before underlining the book's core arguments. While not intended for publication by Marx, this text nonetheless offers a highly structured look at Marx's developing thoughts on capitalism, alienation, and the legacy of Hegel. Toward the end of the episode, the hosts draw out the tension in the text between Marx's reading of Hegel as a philosopher of history…
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Why Theory
Why Theory · Film & TV · English
Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.
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9 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
Lacan's Seminar 18: On a Discourse...
On this episode, Ryan and Todd continue their series of commentaries on Lacan's Seminars, this time bringing their attention to Seminar XVIII: On a Discourse that Might not Be a Semblance , which was recently published in an official English translation by Bruce Fink for Polity . The hosts work through the stakes and questions of this "morning after" seminar for Lacan's toward the quadratic formulation of the Four Discourses that will define his late work. Ultimately, the hosts see a stark break in the non-relation developed and insisted upon in XVIII from the signifying chain that had…
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26 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 12 min
Voice
In this episode, Ryan and Todd complete their Gaze & Voice duology. While gaze & voice both enter into psychoanalytic theory as objects through Lacan's work at the same time, voice has received less critical attention since. The hosts put voice through a theoretical wringer, analyzing it at the levels of everyday life, aesthetics, and politics. Ultimately, the episode takes up the question of whether and to what extent voice can be mobilized as an emancipatory political concept.
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12 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 24 min
Gaze
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss one of psychoanalytic theory’s most influential ideas: the gaze. The hosts talk about how Laura Mulvey’s gloss on “the male gaze” made the idea widespread across film theory and cultural studies in different formulations. Yet often missing in these accounts is how the gaze is a challenge to mastery, rather than a confirmation of it. The hosts work through two of Lacan’s examples to this effect, found in Holbein and Velázquez, before offering several of their own as they try to hone in on what makes this idea both evergreen and elusive.
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28 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 41 min
Robert Redford
In this episode, Ryan and Todd pay tribute to the recently deceased film actor, director, and producer Robert Redford. Working through dueling top ten film lists, the hosts draw out a political and moral throughline that distinguishes Redford's long career. As the hosts contend, Redford's filmography is defined by an exploration of Kantian moral law and the nonverbal expression of an excess that cannot be named.
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15 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In this episode, Ryan and Todd conclude their Marx duology by working through the excellent Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . The hosts focus on Marx's narrative and progressive understanding of history as well as the famous notion of repetition expressed in the work's first two lines. The discussion concludes with a critical engagement with Marx's concept of the psyche and the peasantry.
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17 Aug 2025 · 1 hr 14 min
The End of History
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the so-called "End of History" in Hegel's thought. Francis Fukuyama's 1989 essay "The End of History?" thrust Hegel unexpectedly into mainstream political conversation. The first half of the episode discusses the legacy of Fukuyama's essay and considers how appropriate it is to regard the End of History as a purely Hegelian notion. The second half discusses issues with extracting any lesson--political or otherwise--from the publications collected as Hegel's lectures. Finally, Ryan and Todd offer their own takes on how to think the end in Hegel.…
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4 Aug 2025 · 1 hr 51 min
Top Ten TV Series of the 21st Century
In episode 201, Ryan and Todd work their lists of the Top 10 Television Series of the 21st Century. The hosts operated by the following rules: 1. Only completed series. No currently in production series. 2. No series could be included, even if completed, if there is pre-production or production being done on a continuation to the original series. (Not a total spoiler but spoiler-adjacent comment: one of Todd's selections just about clears this on the basis of a related reboot rather than continuation being in production.) 3. At least 51 percent of the series had to take place in the 21st…
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20 Jul 2025 · 1 hr 47 min
Top Ten Films of the 21st Century
In Why Theory's 200th episode, Todd and Ryan work through their own respective lists of the Top Ten films of the past 25 years not know what the other person's picks are. No spoilers in the episode description. Thanks to everyone who has listened over the previous 199. You mean the world to us.
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7 Jul 2025 · 1 hr 27 min
The Musical
In this episode, Ryan and Todd return to their film genre series to discuss the musical through interlocked analyses of The Jazz Singer, Top Hat, The Wizard of Oz, Singin' in the Rain, and Carmen Jones. The hosts' theoretical intervention focuses on the musical as vehicle for technological innovation in Hollywood history, as well as how the genre operates as a site for excess becoming integrated into seeming normality.
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22 Jun 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
Common Sense
On this episode, Ryan and Todd put the idea of common sense through the theoretical wringer. Working through examples both banal and world threateningly serious, the hosts present the argument that changes in what we often refer to as common sense fundamentally alter one's relationship to the everyday and that this is vital terrain for articulating a politics of liberation.
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