Episode notes
On this episode, Ryan and Todd theorize the adaptation as a form of film. The episode takes its point of departure the continuing conversation over Nolan's Odyssey. Film adaptations, according to the hosts, must represent an intervention to the source text. This intervention can happen at a number of different levels but the most common is that film technology or conventions of filmmaking are altered, introduced, or changed in order to make a dynamic adaptation. The hosts discuss examples of film adaptations that bring a reading to bear on the source material and use the affordances of film…
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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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11 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 11 minNew
Future of an Illusion
On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Freud's Future of an Illusion , a text that would become overshadowed by his subsequent publication, Civilization and Its Discontents . The hosts discuss the relationship between the two texts--paying close attention to how the drive becomes figured and then reconfigured in the latter text--but are careful to stamp out where Illusion departs in focus and in substance from one Freud's most well-known works. The hosts also work through Freud’s thoughts on religion in Illusion and compare it against his later thoughts in Moses and Monotheism and more…
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27 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 18 min
Neo Noir
On this episode, Ryan and Todd return to their film genre series to discuss the neo noir . As opposed to the classic noir period, which is named retroactively by French film critics (1941-1958), neo noir films were aware of how they fit into a specialized genre. Does this mean the Neo noir is more of a genre than the class noir? Less of one? Is it just a style? What unique affordances hold the genre together now that these films are made post-Code? This episode discusses these questions and more with extended reference to: The Long Goodbye, Body Heat, One False Move, and The Last Seduction…
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13 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 11 min
Divine Violence
On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the notion of divine violence. The conversation draws principally on an encounter staged between the term's evocation in Walter Benjamin's 1921 essay, "Toward a Critique of Violence" and the term's later deployment by Slavoj Žižek in his book On Violence . The conversation also touches on Giorgio Agamben's use of "bare life" (a phrase used, though translated slightly differently, by Benjamin in his essay) and how recent podcast conversations on Frantz Fanon overlap or depart from the concerns of divine violence. The Vader Sessions
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30 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
Wretched of the Earth
On this episode, Ryan and Todd complete their Frantz Fanon duology by talking about his final completed work, Wretched of the Earth. The episode focuses on Fanon's "stretching" of both Marxism and psychoanalysis to ground his unique decolonial intervention.
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17 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 22 min
Black Skin, White Masks
On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Frantz Fanon's decolonial classic, Black Skin, White Masks . The hosts work through the conversation surrounding his credentials as a psychoanalyst, his engagement with Freud, Lacan, Octave Mannoni, and Carl Jung, and his dialectical relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism and his Marxism.
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19 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 25 min
The Odyssey
On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Christopher Nolan's recent film. The conversation begins with Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey that Nolan consulted and adapted to the screen. Much of the conversation is focused on teasing out the consequences of the changes Nolan makes to the poem's narrative. It's spoiler-town so be wary after about 35 minutes. Apart from experiencing the technical feat of the film, the reason to see it is to see and consider the changes and alterations Nolan makes to the epic, its most famous sequences, and well-known characters. Referenced in this episode:…
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6 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 28 min
Theorizing the World Cup
On this episode, Ryan & Todd theorize the World Cup as a public event that enables the non-expert to see complex theoretical notions, such as Alain Badiou's conceptualization of the event and Jean-Paul Sartre's idea of self-transcendence. The episode also discusses how the World Cup offers complex ways to view our relationship to the law, nationalism, and climate change. (Quick note: Thank you to every very early listener who noticed the previous upload was incorrect! Hope everyone enjoyed just Ryan's side of the audio. Todd said that probably made the episode better but, alas, we're back to…
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21 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 21 min
What Is Literature? (Literature and Existentialism)
On this episode, Ryan and Todd complete their Sartre inflected trifecta of episodes by engaging his 1947 essay series What Is Literature? The hosts begin by talking about how much Sartre's method has meant to them respectively before moving on to engage the text's most famous claim: literature appeals to the reader's freedom. Sartre's diagnosis and prescription is that literary works--as opposed to poetry, music, and visual arts--must uniquely enact a praxis of "committed writing." For Sartre, committed writing is constant and conscious political awareness. Each text, according to Sartre,…
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7 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
Michael Clayton
On this episode, Ryan and Todd cover writer-director Tony Gilroy's 2007 political thriller masterpiece, Michael Clayton . The hosts weave in Sartre's notion of committing oneself to a project from the previous episode and work through the narrative and formal elements that make Michael Clayton 's intervention exceptional for Hollywood film.
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24 May 2026 · 1 hr 16 min
Existentialism Is A Humanism
On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Jean-Paul Sartre's 1945 lecture titled "Existentialism is a Humanism." In it, Sartre answers criticism that existentialism has received from lay people, concerned Christians, and Marxists, and clarifies what existentialism means and (more importantly) what it hopes to do and inspire in action. The existential method that Sartre advocates is universal and optimistic, advocating for political change by encouraging everyone to see that their individual actions include every other person in them. Ryan and Todd discuss the main thrust of the lecture,…
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