Michael Clayton

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 parity now.)

On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the World Cup and its status as a unique theoretical object. As the hosts argue, the World Cup is a spectacle where the lay reader can and does see the sport (and sport in general) just as clearly as the heavily invested viewer. Their discussion includes reference to Badiou's theory of the event, Sartre's notion of self-transcendence, and the complex positioning on nationalism and one's relationship to the law that the World Cup affords.

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, situates the author to their political temporal moment. The hosts discuss how this text presages his later movement toward thinking the "group-in-fusion" of the more Marxist and much less existential Critique of Dialectical Reason some thirteen years later. Ultimately, the hosts find that while many of Sartre's claims are untenable (or even abandoned by Sartre himself), the tension points his argument presents are fecund for developing the podcast's on claims about the transcendence of literary works and the importance of separating urgency from immediacy.Quick note: to avoid any confusion, this text has also somewhat recently been reproduced as Literature and Existentialism. We refer to it exclusively by its more common and canonical name throughout the episode but it's possible some listeners may have a copy of this by a different title.

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.

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, Sartre's eventual shift to Marxism (covered in the Critique of Dialectical Reason episodes), how psychoanalytic theory intersects with and pushes back on Sartre's ideas, and why Total Recall is the perfect Sartrean film.

On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Freud's idea of the "impossible professions." First articulated in 1925, Freud is drawn to the idea that psychoanalysis is like government and education in that it proposes a necessary function without end. The intrinsic endlessness to the impossible professions often leaves them ripe for tendentious scrutiny. As we've seen over the last decade, those with roles in education, government, and medicine have had their expertise routinely ridiculed and undermined. The hosts each add an idea to Freud's initial proposition with Ryan offering that each of the impossible professions has a necessary tie to the public trust that, in our era, must be won back while Todd offers that transference holds the impossible professions together and excludes others that might be included.

Following up some of the discussion points introduced in the previous episode on Ambition, this episode takes a stab at the deadly sin of Avarice. Beginning first with a historical and etymological look into Avarice and Greed, looking at when Greed overtook Avarice in common parlance and when the word moved from referring to a wider programming of miserly hoarding to a specific rapaciousness toward financial accumulation. Unsurprisingly, with the global adoption of capitalism, Avarice dropped out of common parlance and Greed saw a rebranding, with accumulation and self-interest becoming virtues rather than vices. Ultimately, Ryan and Todd try to move discussion of Avarice as a deadly sin away from strictly moral terrain and move it toward the political. (Episode may be triggering for former lifeguards at municipal pools.)

On this episode, Ryan and Todd tackle the fading specter of ambition as a tragic or negative quality. Far from being a minor rhetorical or social phenomenon, the two trace the embrace of ambition to the broader injunction to sell oneself as a brand. This episode will lay some theoretical groundwork down for the following episode which will be on Avarice (a return to long fallow Seven Deadly Sins series).

On this episode, Ryan and Todd return to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to discuss the Transcendental Analytic section of the text. Topics include: form and content, Kantian causality, whether example(s) can work for exploring Kant's philosophy, the subject vs. subjectivism, simultaneity, and Super Metroid. Plus Ryan makes an Announcement. (Bonus points go to any listener who currently lives in a house boat.)

On this episode, Ryan and Todd take a short break from their Kant Odyssey to discuss one of the podcast's most admired filmmakers: Rob Reiner. Coincidentally being released on Oscar's Sunday, the hosts dedicate their time to Reiner's first seven films--This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally..., Misery, and A Few Good Men. While discussing each film individually, the pair articulate and build upon the following claim: the same things that made Reiner unique as a filmmaker were the exact same things that made him easy to overlook as an auteur.