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 are the structure of discourses, and this episode we hypothesize that they're the best explanation of the growing rift in conservative politics.
Continuing Travels in Hyperreality by Umberto Eco (https://amzn.to/46rtU8Z) in comparison with Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (https://amzn.to/4h6fApS). Today it's supermarkets, potemkin villages, and church.
2025-11-03 21:34:46 +0000 UTC View Post
The Pill Pod reads Daniel Kolitz' anthropology of the gooners in Harper's Magazine https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-porn-masturbation-loneliness/ and we find it's all connected man Other sources cited included Lacan Seminar X, Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Baudrillard Transparency of Evil
2025-10-31 17:19:12 +0000 UTC View Post
We conclude our Lacan series with what Fink says is the desired end of Lacanian psychoanalysis. And, the ends of psychoanalysis coincide with some valuable insights for Lacan's theorizing beyond psychoanalysis (because, tbh we aren't paying for that).
Works cited are Fink's Lacanian Subject (ch. 5) and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (ch. 10).
2025-10-24 21:01:47 +0000 UTC View Post
The last constellation in the Psychoanalytic Zodiac is the Hysteric, which statistically includes most women. This marks our completion of the structures of desire.
For this one we read the Neurotic chapter in Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Sketching Travels in Hyperreality by Umberto Eco (https://amzn.to/46rtU8Z) in comparison with Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (https://amzn.to/4h6fApS).
2025-10-15 02:58:55 +0000 UTC View Post
By popular demand, we cover MEN—or at least men's most frequent desire-other structure, i.e. the neurotic obsessive.
For this one we read the Neurotic chapter in Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
2025-10-10 18:36:06 +0000 UTC View Post
The Pill Pod looks at the structure of the Pervert.
Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar X, "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious", Ecrits
Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
2025-10-03 20:59:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Speculating about the American Right-Wing's reactionary medievalism from Travels in Hyperreality by Umberto Eco (https://amzn.to/46rtU8Z)
2025-09-26 22:37:48 +0000 UTC View Post
The Pill Pod looks at the chatbot psychosis phenomenon and compares it to Lacan's clinical structure of psychosis.
Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar III
Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
"People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies," Rolling Stone:
https://www.rollin...
Thank you guys for supporting me here; this one is special. I first started a script for "The mythology of soap" in June 2019, but never finished it. Here it's finally done 6 years later.
In 1957 Roland Barthes wrote an essay on the mythology of soap ads in Mythologies(https://amzn.to/4ghfDyI). French soap ads in the 1950s conveyed a religious structure including ritual cleansing and purity. Fast forward to toda...
Starting with an overview and an intro to Umberto Eco via his book Apocalypse Postponed: https://amzn.to/481RmKT
2025-09-06 04:27:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Episode III on Bruce Fink's Lacanian Subject (1995). We crack chapter 5 to discuss the Other, mOther, Big Other, and importantly, why Disney's "Tarzan" sucks from a Lacanian analytic.
This is the book: https://amzn.to/4oubPxQ
We return to Bruce Fink's Lacanian Subject (1995) and jump to chapter 4 to discuss the barred subject and why Disney's "Inside Out" and Jungian theory suck.
This is the book: https://amzn.to/4oubPxQ
In lieu of an intro, here's some news about what makes the news: Sidney Sweeney, Cracker Barrel, and Apocalyptic Intellectuals.
2025-08-26 20:57:00 +0000 UTC View Post
I've wanted to put together a visual production of the reflections on the sociology of religion, ideology, and embodied habit themes we cove
I've wanted to put together a visual production of the reflections on the sociology of religion, ideology, and embodied habit themes we covered last year—this is an attempt at synthesizing Durkheim and Althusser, and even Merleau-Ponty, while also using as little theory jargon as possible!
If this makes no sense to you check out pill pods ...
1Dime joins Erik and Victor to discuss a book Erik has never read before—Fisher's Capitalist Realism. We cover the popularity of the book, what the term means, and then wonder whether left-populist electoral campaigns perform the same cathartic function as anti-capitalist TV shows.
2025-08-22 20:27:21 +0000 UTC View Post
We wanted to review some Lacan because everybody be desirin, and Bruce Fink's Lacanian Subject (1995) is quite often touted as the best unofficial intro, and it is easy to see why. We tried to talk about the book without referencing direct page numbers so it's recommended but not required reading. As always, let me know how it hits!
This is the book: https://amzn.to/4oubPxQ
In a recent interview with the New York Times Peter Thiel, one of the world's most powerful men, gave ample indication that he should be institutionalized before he hurts anyone else.
Link to the full interview https://youtu.be/vV7YgnPUxcU?si=qSLrUmKeEblb4jYS
2025-08-08 19:56:39 +0000 UTC View Post
In a recent interview with the New York Times Peter Thiel, one of the world's most powerful men, gave ample indication that he should be institutionalized before he hurts anyone else.
Link to the full interview https://youtu.be/vV7YgnPUxcU?si=qSLrUmKeEblb4jYS
2025-08-08 19:33:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Pills and Erik reflect upon the image apocalypse and read a critique of Agamben (and Heidegger) from Georges Didi-Huberman.
2025-08-01 17:30:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Pills is back, we discuss the media coverage of Epstein and Gaza before a seamless transition into a discussion of Agamben's concepts of 1) Sovereignty 2) Bare Life and 3) States of Exception.
The FULL OMNIBUS edition of homo sacer is here, but the sections are also available separately.
2025-07-25 20:21:59 +0000 UTC View Post
I spent way too long on this though I hope it shows. It's an hour-long thesis on Reality 2025.
I spent way too long on this though I hope it shows. Back when, I started out looking for a thesis statement for Reality 2025, and it evolved into this feature presentation. Anyway, thank you for your patience, there are enough positions buried in here to get the gears going hopefully. After the Simulation—then what? Not just post-truth, but post reference, and best of all, narratively, I fo...
2025-07-22 18:09:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Lots to say about this concept but I (pills) became suddenly indisposed an hour before call time. In lieu, Erik and Victor break down the concept of "The State Of Exception" in two political philosophers, Carl Schmitt (Political Theology, 1922) and Giorgio Agamben (Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life 1998), and see if there are any relevant applications.
2025-07-18 19:55:33 +0000 UTC View Post
While Pills is away, 1Dime came to play. Tony rejoins the pill pod to excavate the terms "woke right" and the semiotics of "woke" more broadly. We attempt to deduce which conservative faction is accusing which other of wokeness, although it is sometimes tough going figuring what they mean by the term.
Articles:
https://americanreformer.org/2024/05/is-there-a-woke-right/
<... 2025-07-11 03:52:07 +0000 UTC View Post
We close out with a duo of Erik and Pills on the end of White Mythology, and we get to, finally, what he meant all along...
2025-06-28 13:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
The central metaphors that explain the value of meaning are coins, the sun and flowers. In this episode we go in on the sun. It's not an easy one but if you look at the attached text it'll make better sense (we read up to sec. IV for this episode).
2025-06-20 22:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
This week we looked into OG critic of fascism Wilhelm Reich, who wrote The Mass Psychology of Fascism right after the Nazis were elected in 1933. Reich was among the first "neomarxists", and believed that Marxists need to understand psychoanalysis to understand Fascism.
Link to text
2025-06-14 03:18:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay so we have not covered Derrida his due. This is a pretty hard read, it perhaps does not convert well to podcast "content", but it changed my entire understanding of philosophy when I read it, particularly the relation between expression and truth. If you have time for homework, I hope you'll give the essay a shot.
2025-06-07 04:42:00 +0000 UTC View Post
It is funny and sad how many people bought this bullshit https://youtu.be/IXR9PByA9SY?si=wJvEmeukxAjbjA2y.
So, a) They are not fleeing Trump and b) They are not fascism experts, except maybe one. c) They are spectacle. We review their research and confirm our suspicions that they are lib-horseshoe-theory-spectacultists.