The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 52 Surely you've noticed that the Woke movement doesn't build anything or accomplish anything productive. There's a reason for that. The only thing they bring to the table is protest, which is to say destruction. Disrupt, dismantle, deconstruct, subvert, and then "reimagine"; that's their whole program. This has been summarized here on the New Discourses Podcast under the slogan "Communism doesn't know how" (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/04...
Nov 05, 2021•1 hr 55 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 51 You may have noticed that times are turbulent and that something very nefarious seems to be afoot. You're not wrong, of course. That's exactly what's happening, and it presents a dangerous time for humanity. The question is why it's happening because the answer to that question informs us significantly on our prospects going forward. On the one hand, and this is correct, a global push for a kind of communo-fascism is underway: a power gra...
Oct 20, 2021•1 hr 25 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 50 Sustainability is going to be the buzzword of the century. Everywhere we turn, we hear about sustainable practices in business and industry, sustainable foods and agriculture, sustainable energy, and so on. Businesses and governments sign on to "Sustainable Development Goals," and so civil responsibility is framed in terms of this seemingly simple idea: sustainability. What does sustainability entail, though? What informs it? In this epis...
Oct 06, 2021•1 hr 30 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 49 Critical Theory evolved out of a pathological hatred. This hatred isn't just what you expect. Yes, the Critical Theorists hated capitalism, like all Marxists, but they hated something new about capitalism compared against their predecessors. They hated that capitalism works. Critical Theory, the tool of neo-Marxism, therefore grew out of the pathological hatred of the fact that "advanced capitalism," as they call it, which is protected ag...
Sep 24, 2021•1 hr 31 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 48 Liberation Series, Part 4 of 4 We live in Herbert Marcuse's world. In a previous series on the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay made that clearer than ever by reading through all of Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance" (https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html), which served as a basis for the strong double standard enjoyed by radical Leftism today (check out the first part in ...
Sep 03, 2021•1 hr 47 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 47 Systemic racism is said by Critical Race Theorists "ordinary, not aberrational—'normal science,' the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country." As such, virtually everything is systemically racist, from schools to the SAT to businesses to every policy they can think of to teachers to hobbies like walking, hiking, and being outside to books to birds, fish, and even rocks. Ever...
Aug 27, 2021•35 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 46 Liberation Series, Part 3 of 4 The more one reads of Herbert Marcuse, the father of the New Left, the less there is to recommend his ideas and more there is to recommend learning about them. This is because thanks to the New Left that he spawned, we live in Herbert Marcuse's twisted world, which may now be in the early stages of collapse. This episode of the New Discourses Podcast features James Lindsay taking us through the third part in...
Aug 18, 2021•2 hr 32 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 45 Critical Theories are almost embarrassingly simple. There's almost nothing to them. A Critical Theory of anything can easily be made by one of two routes. One: Take an existing Critical Theory of something, substitute the domain-specific jargon of some other thing, and then publish. You're a genius revolutionizing (pun intended) your field! Two: Just understand the basic anatomy of a Critical Theory and do the same thing. In this episode ...
Aug 13, 2021•51 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 44 Liberation Series, Part 2 of 4 Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential Leftist thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s, and for that reason he is often regarded as the father of the "New Left," which is reaching something of a crescendo in the Woke Movement of today. His goal was straightforward: liberation. In 1969, he wrote an influential essay (or short book) called "An Essay on Liberation" in which he explains what liberation looks lik...
Jul 16, 2021•2 hr 40 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 43 What's happening in our schools? It's obvious to everyone that Critical Race Theory (and the other Theories of Critical Social Justice) have been incorporated into them at virtually every level and in most subjects all across the nation, but the line is that "Critical Race Theory isn't being taught in our schools." To unpack this lie, we have to understand that Critical Theories require praxis, so while the formal and narrow theory of Cri...
Jul 12, 2021•30 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 42 Many of you will already be very familiar with the fact that the Woke manipulate language, often by meaning more than one thing by a term. One meaning will be quite milquetoast; the other quite radical. Much of Woke activism works by equivocating between these two meanings in a strategic way: boring everyday meanings to gain access and win arguments; specialized meanings to do their activism once they have the power. Among the words that ...
Jul 06, 2021•1 hr 11 min
This episode of the OnlySubs Podcast with James Lindsay is available for FREE to everyone! To get access to all past and future episodes, consider becoming a contributor. Learn more by clicking here: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/announcing-new-subscribers-only-podcast-james-lindsay/ Critical Race Theory tries to bill itself as the continuation of the Civil Rights Movement, which was a true achievement of the American Experiment, but is it? Of course it's not (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/...
Jun 23, 2021•40 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 41 The Critical Theorist and neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse was one of the most influential radical Leftist thinkers of the 20th century, and this fact is evident throughout his writing. The depth of his radicalism can be seen quite clearly in several of his essays, including his 1965 "Repressive Tolerance" (https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html), which has been featured on the New Discourses...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 46 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 40 It is not normally appropriate to liken one's ideological opponents to something like a virus, but what should we do when the people who hold that ideology liken themselves to viruses like HIV, Ebola, and SARS? This circumstance may seem strange and unlikely, but it is exactly what we encounter with Critical Social Justice. In 2016, two feminist scholars, Breanne Fahs and Michael Karger, both of Arizona State University, published a bizar...
Jun 12, 2021•2 hr 2 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 39 One of the more peculiar features of the Theory of Critical Social Justice for many people is why it is acceptable under Theory to be trangender but absolutely forbidden to be transracial. The short answer to this question, which is sometimes given (usually after someone steps on the landmine of thinking they can pull off a transracial argument or identity), is that Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory approach the issue of identity diff...
Jun 10, 2021•2 hr 39 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 38 At the heart of the "Woke" (Critical Social Justice) movement is the abuse of language, which is perpetrated in order to abuse power. Therefore, at the heart of the New Discourses project is a Critical Social Justice Encyclopedia, Translations from the Wokish (https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/), that documents these abuses and helps to decode them so that everyday people won't be taken in by them. One of the projects...
Jun 03, 2021•1 hr 17 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 37 Is Critical Race Theory Marxist, as many insist, or is it not? What is the relationship between Marxism, neo-Marxism (Critical Theory), and Wokeness? All three criticize one another, and yet all three have a great deal obviously in common. Is there some common underlying thread between these clearly similar yet obviously different worldviews? The answer is yes, and by tracing back to one of the most influential speculative idealist philos...
May 28, 2021•3 hr 50 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 36 Elite overproduction is a concept that was forwarded by the anthropologist Peter Turchin to attempt to explain some part of why we face growing social instability in today's society. This is an insightful concept that deserves serious consideration in our present circumstances. It is characterized by a society engaging in practices, like sending too many people to college or for advanced degrees, that create conditions for potential elite...
May 20, 2021•1 hr 10 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 35 Not gonna lie, the title of this episode of the New Discourses Podcast is a bit of a bait-and-switch, so I hope it doesn't put you off. The thing is, there is a principled reason to be hesitant on the Covid-19 vaccine, and, far from positioning people as "anti-vaxxers" for holding that position, it is perfectly reasonable and needs articulation. Put simply, it's this: people should have to be convinced, not coerced or forced, into accepti...
May 17, 2021•1 hr 4 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 34 Society depends upon the people in it being able to rely upon expectations about how it and the other people in it will function. This requires a sense of what is and isn't reasonable. Some of this is, as the Woke contend, socially constructed, perhaps even partially arbitrary and up for debate. Much of it isn't. Wokeness doesn't agree, however. By having adopted a strict adherence to Critical Theory and the social constructivism of postm...
May 07, 2021•1 hr 26 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 33 Following in the footsteps of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the University of Texas, Austin, has initiated a campus-wide plan to force diversity, equity, and inclusivity into the administrative operation of the university, particularly in hiring, promotions, recognition, and awards. This is a bold step by the university administration in making the university functionally religious and, more importantly, unmaking the...
May 03, 2021•1 hr 38 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 32 Wokeness exists in a crisis of authenticity. This is no surprise since both of its main philosophical predecessors, neo-Marxist Critical Theory and postmodernism, are both their own forms of reaction to a perceived crisis of authenticity in the world. For the postmodernists, the real is remote, inaccessible, and simulated. Meaning is infinitely deferred. Authenticity, which is to say being who you are when you're not attempting to be anyo...
Apr 28, 2021•1 hr 15 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 31 At the heart of communist and communistic thought is faith in a kind of historical trajectory toward utopia that's driven by social alchemy. There are many reasons why this fails in practice, but the simplest thing to say is that communism fails because communism doesn't know how communism will succeed. The fundamental belief driving communists is that once enough people become true believers that the communist utopia lies on the other si...
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 25 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 30 What is the end-game of the Woke ideology? It's a hard question to answer, mostly because it's hard to tell where it will stop, but a proximate answer to that question is easy and needs to be understood. The immediate goal of the Woke agenda is to turn everything into a Woke organ. That's it. This is more alarming than it may sound, however. You may be Catholic or Protestant, a scientist or a doctor, a rockclimber or a musician, but if th...
Apr 19, 2021•31 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 29 If we are fortunate enough to leave Wokeness and Critical Theory behind us, we need a map. We need to know what a post-Woke world would look like and, more importantly, which values will get us there. In a recent essay (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/03/values-post-woke-world/), James Lindsay presented four values he thinks are core to the establishment of a post-Woke world, which can repel Wokeness anywhere they are adopted. These are tr...
Apr 13, 2021•1 hr 22 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 28 The agriculturalist Trofim Lysenko should be a household name throughout the world in roughly the same way that Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong are or should be. That is, Lysenko shouldn't be known for his successes, which are none of his legacy, but for his catastrophic failure. He was the agriculturalist of the Soviet Union, first under Stalin, and his ideological biology (Lysenkoism) led directly to the deaths of tens of mil...
Apr 09, 2021•1 hr 41 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 27 There is a fair amount of criticism of my recent book Cynical Theories (https://amzn.to/3sEJF5X) (written with Helen Pluckrose) out there now, mostly from philosophers who aren't up to the task. It is both fair and correct to say that the book isn't perfect. Given their inability to criticize the book adequately, however, I decided to take matters into my own hands and am discussing the issue at length in this episode of the New Discourse...
Apr 01, 2021•1 hr 2 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 26 As most New Discourses fans will know, back in October 2018, James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose burst onto the scene with a scandalous expose of Critical Social Justice scholarship within academia. This effort to show the world what was going on in the humanities and (to lesser extent) social sciences research literature was billed the "Grievance Studies Affair" (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/academic-grievance-studi...
Mar 26, 2021•1 hr 23 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 25 In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay continues his abridged reading of Kimberlé Crenshaw's famous (or infamous) paper, "Mapping the Margins," which appeared in the Stanford Law Review in 1991. While not the birthplace of intersectionality, this paper is the first full-throated appeal for its application, not just in the world but also in the movements from which it was born: radical feminism and black liberationism...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 47 min
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 24 "Mapping the Margins," by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is an academic law paper that changed the world (abridged pdf here). It was published in the Stanford Law Review in 1991 and makes the case for putting intersectionality into all cultural analysis. It is also more or less unambiguously the birthplace of Wokeness, as in this paper, Crenshaw indicates explicitly that, to her, intersectionality is "a provisional concept linking contemporary politi...
Mar 10, 2021•1 hr 12 min
