PlasticPills - Philosophy & Critical Theory Podcast

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René Girard on Blood Sacrifice // 270 Oct 16, 2026

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René Girard is known mainly as someone Peter Thiel mentions in between deranged analogies, but he also wrote some books on some typically French topics such as desire, the symbolic, and anthropological historiography. This is his take on sacrifice from Violence and the Sacred (https://link.amazon/B0aOFZum7).

Learning Fake Economics in a Fake Economy // 268 Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

We ask Cahal Moran what leftists need to get straight on economics, talking through "orthodox" vs. "heterodox" economics, the labour theory of value, Mark Carney, and the AI Bubble.
Visit Unlearning Economics on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4V_jMdRbbTrmBVJB6FDzgw
Cahal's Book: https://link.amazon/B0aL5NcCd
All podcast episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Fit Fascists v. Fat Foucauldians // 266 Sep 13, 2026

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Another discourse has hit the timeline. Find all episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
Is health fascism? Is Ozempic Zyklon-B? Should Gabriel Rockhill have to approve every leftist monograph prior to publication? All this and more, in what what was supposed to be the intro to our episode on collective violence

Palantir's "Marxist Critical Theory" CEO // 263 Aug 25, 2026

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The business press has pushed the "leftist-outsider-dishevelled-genius" about Palantir's CEO Alex Karp for a decade. This episode we explore Karp's relationship with critical theory and the mythmaking that has produced his significance.
NYT pushes the mythology of Alex Karp https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/style/alex-karp-palantir.html
Adorno and the Palantir Manifesto https://smtsmtpostmodern.substack.com/p/palantir-flunks-out-of-the-frankfurt
Palantir Goes to the Frankfurt School https://www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/

Today is' Arday // 264 Aug 18, 2026

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The Pill Pod debates the academic and ethics perspectives' following the terminal end of the Jason Arday plagiarism scandal.

The Right's Recycled Mythology of Far-Left Terrorism // 261 Aug 14, 2026

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Ad-free listens (even with no subscription) at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio are calling The Left strange combinatory insults, such as ugly-terrorists and dark-cancers. We review these old signifying chains and Erik introduces Stuart Hall's explanation from last time this happened, when back in the 60s when they said The Left were all gay muggers planning to rob civilized people on their way home from church.

Nature's Leftist Conspiracy against Western Civilization: Contemporary Mythology // 260 Jul 21, 2026

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Socialist are to blame for the Forest Fires. Antifa caused Algae to take over the reflecting pool. Conservatives believe that nature has allied with their enemies to undermine their authority and Western vicilization. We discuss many instances of the opposition of culture/nature in recent news, political theory, and most importantly Twitter discourse.
Video essay referenced: https://youtu.be/ZFOSdqhpuaI?si=86JJOjAuxQl7lrhv
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LLMs prove Structuralism was Correct all Along // 258 Jul 07, 2026

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There's only been about a century of structuralism. It had a day, then in the 80s haters celebrated its falloff. But today, the LLMs designed according to the precepts of structuralist linguistics have proven Saussure's intuitions were more accurate than even he could have suspected. We read the argument from Language Machines by Leif Weatherby (https://amzn.to/4bipjYu)

Chinese Room LLM // 257 (preview) Jul 02, 2026

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This week we evaluate a paper written by a Google DeepMind engineer which, in effect updates the Chinese Room Thought Experiment (Searle, 1980) to modern LLMs.
Get this episode and hundreds more https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

AI Will Fail Because Heidegger // 256 Jun 29, 2026

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Hubert Dreyfus loved recounting how he was maligned for his AI skepticism, which was informed by applications of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and turned out to be correct as of 2007. Is he still correct in the age of LLMs and self-driving cars?
Link to article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370207001452

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