(August 23, 2025) ["Can myth itself serve as a material force in struggles for liberation? Federico Campagna joins me to discuss how myth—too often dismissed as escapism or co-opted by reaction—can instead become a practice of imagination, solidarity, and survival. We look at myth’s place in anti-capitalist politics, its tension with materialism, and its role in resisting despair. What emerges is a vision of myth as a politics of possibility against history’s catastrophes."]
Ellison, Ian.
" Politics on Trial 100th Anniversary Special: Franz Kafka’s The Trial." Past Present Future (August 25, 2025) ["Today’s episode in Politics on Trial is about the most famous trial in literature and one that never actually takes place. David talks to writer and literary scholar Ian Ellison about Franz Kafka’s The Trial, first published in 1925. What is the meaning of a book about a legal process that never happens? How was it inspired by Kafka’s failed love life? Why has it given rise to so many different understandings of what makes our world Kafkaesque? And how did a work of fiction that is full of weird and wonderful ideas get associated with mindless bureaucracy?"]
Fuentes, Agustín.
"Sex is a Spectrum." Converging Dialogues (May 4, 2025) ["In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Agustín Fuentes about biological sex. They talk about the history of sex evolution, the importance of gametes, intersex individuals, and history of sex binary. They talk about gonads and hormones, sex variation in the animal kingdom, spectrum question, gender, gender and sports, gender and bathrooms, and many other topics. Agustín Fuentes is an anthropologist and professor of anthropology at Princeton University. His research focuses on the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. He has his BA/BS in Anthropology and Zoology and his MA and PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley. He has conducted research across four continents, multiple species, and two-million years of human history. His current projects include exploring cooperation, creativity, and belief in human evolution, multispecies anthropologies, evolutionary theory and processes, and engaging race and racism. Fuentes is an active public scientist, a well-known blogger, lecturer, tweeter, and an explorer for National Geographic. Fuentes was recently awarded the Inaugural Communication & Outreach Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the President’s Award from the American Anthropological Association, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of numerous books including the most recent,
Sex Is A Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary."]
Hughes, Chris. "Revealing the Secret Architects of Capitalism." Capita
Lucke, Jamie. "‘Kind and generous,’ Gurney Norman, Kentucky writer and teacher, dies at 88." Lexington Times (October 14, 2025) [Norman’s legacy — “the tail of his comet” — will live on in “all the writers to whom he’s been tremendously influential,” said Willie Davis, a writer in Lexington and creative writing teacher at Kentucky State University. “He was kind and generous with his time.” Davis said reading Norman’s work, especially “Kinfolks,” opened his eyes by depicting Appalachia in ways more alive and vivid than common stereotypical treatments. “He writes with such precision. His characters are so full of life. It really enraptured me. I told him if everyone wrote about a mountain like you write about a mountain, no one would ever tear another mountain down.”]
McRobert, Neil. "My Four-Legged Ode to Bravery & Joy." Talking Scared #258 (October 8, 2025) ["Ah the arrogance of writers. Now I am one, officially, I thought I’d better do something fitting. So I set up a whole episode of my podcast to talk about my own book – Good Boy! My debut novella about small English towns, the bonds between men and dogs, and a battle between bravery and monsters. Thankfully, I have friends who will facilitate this type of nonsense, so thanks to Nat Cassidy and Rachel Harrison for asking me questions and flattering my ego. We talk about literary and personal inspirations, about what I’ve learned from 5 years of interviewing authors, about local folklore and the composition of monsters… and of course, about dogs!"Other books mentioned: IT (1986), by Stephen King; From a Buick 8 (2002), by Stephen King; The Fisherman (2016), by John Langan; Any Human Heart (2002), by William Boyd; The October Film Haunt (2025), by Michael Wehunt]
Rosson, Keith. "The Real V Word." Talking Scared #253 (September 16, 2025) ["Do you like your vampires slick and suave or rugged and raging? If it’s the latter, you’ll very much enjoy Keith Rosson’s Coffin Moon. It’s a 70s-set bareknuckle revenge road trip of a book, with some of the meanest vampires you’ll ever meet (and love). Keith is back in the show for the second time in a year, to talk all about it. We get into his problem with ‘classic’ vampires aesthetics, the lure of backstory, taking hard advice from editors, and violence… a whole lotta violence!" Other books mentioned: Fever House (2023), by Keith Rosson; The Devil By Name (2024), by Keith Rosson; Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (2025), by V.E. Schwab; King Sorrow (2025), by Joe Hill]
Stanley, Jason.
"Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda." How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015: 1 - 26. ["Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us―not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy―particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality―and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]
West, Stephen. "Authenticity and the history of the self - Charles Taylor." Philosophize This! #239 (October 17, 2025) ["Today we talk about the work of the philosopher Charles Taylor. First, we trace the historical origins of how he views the modern self. From the Greeks to the Reformation. From Descartes to Rousseau. The modern self to him is something "irreconcilably multileveled". Then we talk about our modern focus on authenticity as a moral ideal and why Taylor thinks many people misunderstand what it requires." This episode focuses on ideas from Taylor's books The Ethics of Authenticity and Sources of the Self.]
---. "Byung Chul Han - The Crisis of Narration." Philosophize This! #232 (July 7, 2025) ["Today we talk about the book The Crisis of Narration by the philosopher Byung Chul Han. We talk about the history of storytelling. Walter Benjamin's distinction between a Paris fire and a revolution in Madrid. The effects of social media on memory. Story telling vs story selling. AI as pure Intelligenz lacking Geist. The ability for stories to give shape to suffering. The importance of boredom for self-discovery."]
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"Susan Sontag - Do you criticize yourself the way you criticize a movie?" Philosophy This! (March 1, 2023) [A discussion of Susan Sontag's
"Against Interpretation." "In this episode, we explore how Susan Sontag—a fierce cultural critic inspired by Simone Weil—challenged the modern obsession with interpretation, both in psychoanalysis and in art. Sontag admired Weil’s uncompromising stance against the status quo and echoed that same resistance by criticizing how analysis can distance us from the immediacy of lived experience. She warned that filtering emotions and art through normative theories often alienates people from their own reality, granting undue power to experts while reducing complex experiences to predictable patterns. Instead, Sontag called for an "erotics of art"—a renewed way of engaging with form and style that invites visceral, transformative encounters rather than detached interpretation. Through this lens, she argued, we open ourselves to art—and life—in ways that allow discomfort, openness, and even confusion to shape us. The episode closes by linking this sensibility to Sontag’s belief that truth demands sacrifice, and that progress requires voices from the margins, not just those who play by the rules of reason."]
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