SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK is back on the show to talk about his new book Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy. We’re talking Quantum Variations, Superposition, Wave Collapse, Catastrophe, & So On. Thank you to everyone for supporting our project and keeping us going. The series on Quantum History will continue with some more interviews and episodes with some great guests who have been working on all of these things and we’re looking forward to it! SUPPORT US ON PATREON! See you in Paris, Ž&…...
Jan 19, 2026•52 min
Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On , we’re beginning our new series on Quantum Physics in the work of Slavoj Žižek and for this week we have a SHORT SESSION taking a look at some of the work leading up to Žižek’s Quantum History. What does it mean for history to progress if every forward movement leaves something broken behind? Can a crushed possibility haunt the present? How does retroactivity work when Žižek is talking about QUANTUM HISTORY, is everything up for grabs? Where are all th...
Nov 24, 2025•27 min
Alright, Tim is stuck in the freezer again and we have TWO NEW EPISODES with good friend of the show and one half of the Why Theory Podcast with Todd McGowan, RYAN ENGLEY. Head over to PATREON to support the show and get access to all our other interviews, short sessions, and more! We’re talking canned laughter, the history of television and the aesthetics of television, memory, and forgetting. LISTEN TO EPISODE ONE HERE! LISTEN TO EPISODE TWO...HERE! Up next we have a series of episodes for Žiž...
Nov 03, 2025•14 min
Alright, welcome back to Žižek & So On, Tim is still away staring at the dot and this week we have PART ONE of our interview with good friend of the show and one half of the Why Theory Podcast with Todd McGowan, Ryan Engley! We're talking canned laughter, the history of television, the aesthetics of television, memory, and forgetting. Up next we have some episodes for Žižek’s forthcoming book QUANTUM HISTORY! See you in Paris, Ž&…
Oct 21, 2025•52 min
Alright, this week is PART ONE of our conversation with returning guest and friend of the show MATTHEW FLISFEDER author of Algorithmic Desire toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media . and his latest book The Hysterical Sublime: Humanism in the Age of Post-Human Capitalism . Matt is professor of Rhetoric & Communications at the University of Winnipeg and in this episode we’re talking about Slavoj Žižek’s Eurocentrism, concrete universality in his work, why universality appears from ...
Sep 23, 2025•1 hr 10 min
BUY THE ALBUM HERE! Alright, this week we’re drinking the blood from Oedipus’s eyes with returning guest and friend of the show, the great Russell Sbriglia to talk about his new album Critique of Pure Desire which, according to Ryan Engley, sounds like if King Crimson were throwing an Eyes Wide Shut party. The album is a psychedelic mix of philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and film through Slavoj Žižek, Lacan, Hegel, Hitchcock, Melville, Antigone, Hamlet, Poe, Blade Runner, Chopin, ...
Aug 26, 2025•1 hr
Alright, Michael Downs is with us again and Todd is back to talk more about his new book The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan . Listen to PART ONE HERE! We’re talking why the master signifier and the quilting point shouldn't be used interchangeably, the crucial difference between das Ding and objet petit a, and Lacan's three big missteps with the four discourses, sexuation, and the sinthome. We get into gambling theory, the "Joy Machine" at airports, Yahoo's gambling origins, whether we'...
Aug 04, 2025•56 min
Alright this week we’re back and joined by Michael Downs to talk with longtime friend of the show Todd McGowan about his brand new book The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan . This is a book a lot of us have wanted for a long time! McGowan's book on Lacan demonstrates yet again how right Lacan was when he insisted that people who are not clinical analysts can also be full members of his school. It's not that we philosophers should learn from clinicians - clinicians can learn from us what t...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr
Alright this is a PATREON PREVIEW & this week we’re back again with our series on Slavoj Žižek’s Against Progress with PART TWO of the long-awaited conversation with theorist and friend of the show Michael Downs, author of the Dangerous Maybe Blog on Medium and his new book Capital Vs Timenergy: A Žižekian Critique of Nick Land to discuss Žižek’s essay Accelerationism. LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! We’re talking Lacan’s theory of language and the co-evolution of the brain and the Big Othe...
Jul 07, 2025•19 min
Alright this week we’re continuing our series on Slavoj Žižek’s Against Progress with another long-awaited conversation with theorist and friend of the show Michael Downs, author of the Dangerous Maybe Blog on Medium and his new book Capital Vs Timenergy: A Žižekian Critique of Nick Land to discuss Žižek’s essay Accelerationism. Is Žižek an Accelerationist? In PART ONE of our conversation we’re talking accelerationism and degrowth, all things Nick Land, cyber-positivity, forced choices, the zero...
Jun 24, 2025•1 hr
Alright, this week Tim is shopping for two birds that look alike and we’re joined by friend of the podcast Jack Black whose latest book is The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism and Racialization and we’re talking through Žižek’s new book Against Progress . What becomes of squashed birds? We’re talking Slavoj Žižek’s work on quantum physics, collapsed wave functions, fetishistic splits, retroactive redemption, disavowal, Jack’s mother’s poetic swearing, and whether the only real op...
May 26, 2025•58 min
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, we’re back with another Patreon SHORT SESSION and this week Tim is at the shops buying a Tickle Me Elmo and we’re taking a look at some aspects of laughter in a few different ways. SHORT SESSIONS , variable length sessions, however you wanna put it, in these episodes we’ll wrap them up because of something that is said, rather than the tyranny of the clock. So what’s so ticklish about the ticklish subject? Can it tickle itself? We’re talking Žižek’s tota...
May 12, 2025•10 min
Alright, this week Tim is still away and certainly not obsessed with Anomancy a truth procedure which involves reading the folds and wrinkles of someones anus to discover profound insights into health, love, and destiny…he is rather off the wagon only to run someone down and will be back soon. In the meantime we’re talking to Alfie Bown author of Post-Comedy which is Alfie's latest book in the same series as Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupancic, Helen Rollins and many others. Get a copy of Post-Comedy ...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr 21 min
To listen to the FULL EPISODE head to our PATREON Alright, we’re back from the LACK Conference at Otterbein University and Tim’s still at the airport screaming that the queue is the destination. Great to see so many friends— Jack Black, Neo Winter Scott, Jon Hegglund, Matthew Flisfeder, Clint Burnham, Katherine Everitt, Todd McGowan, Anna Kornbluh, Russell Sbriglia, Ryan Engley, Derek Hook, Mikey Downs and the crew…too many to name and of course, Žižek himself. In this SHORT SESSION, we’re divin...
Apr 12, 2025•16 min
Alright, while Tim's busy making two minute noodles we're speaking with Helen Rollins! Check out her website here! Helen is a filmmaker, academic, and writer from Northern Ireland who writes and lectures on film and psychoanalysis. Her latest book, Psychocinema , was published in 2024 in the Theory Redux series. We’re talking the le non-duped err and messy bedrooms, the Gaze, the Master’s Discourse, the form of cinema, the politics of film as an industry today, and why film itself is a psychoana...
Mar 25, 2025•1 hr 9 min
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, we’re back with a new PATREON EPISODE while Tim's still on an island painting a face on a volleyball & we're taking another look at Todd McGowan's new book Pure Excess. Capitalism promises things beyond their usefulness, the enjoyment of a useless excess, an excess which is presented as pure when it is necessarily impure — there is always a hidden sacrifice. We're talking Jackie Kennedy's fake pearl necklace selling for $200,000, Paper Water and the ...
Mar 04, 2025•13 min
Alright, welcome back to Žižek and So On this time we’re talking again with old mate Todd McGowan. This was recorded on Valentines Day 2025 and Tim was busy shopping for eggs. We’re diving into Todd’s new book Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity to talk inutility and the promise of pure excess in the commodity form. Why can’t we have McDonalds at home? What is capitalism’s magic trick, and where are the dead birds? Up next we’ve got an episode dedicated solely to Todd’s book staging a seri...
Feb 16, 2025•1 hr 20 min
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, we’re back for 2025 with a new PATREON episode and while Tim's drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere we’re talking Binocular rivalry, the authorlessness of AI, the Dead Internet Theory, Mr Beast…and what happens when a Rabbi, Businessman, and a poor ordinary Jew talk to God. This is PART TWO in our series on Mladen Dola’rs Rumors through Zizek's recent comments on psychoanalysis, and the strange logic of knowledge in the age of information overload. C...
Jan 13, 2025•10 min
Alright...as you know Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar are the founding members of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis with Alenka Zupančič as part of their Troika, and this week we have our first episode of a new series we're doing on Mladen Dolar's upcoming book Rumors as part of the Theory Redux editions with Polity Press. A little birdie told me that Tim is busy moving house and we're talking the general rumorization of society from Socrates to Trump, Franz Kafka's the Trial, Lacan's etholog...
Dec 09, 2024•45 min
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, this is a PATREON PREVIEW and we're back with the wonderful PETER ROLLIN S talking Donald Trump's Sharpie & the rise of Obscene Masters, Paul Tillich, Simone Weil, Badiou and fidelity to an Event, Religion as a truth procedure, Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, and of course...Seamus gambling with God. LISTEN TO THE FIRST PART OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH PETER HERE! Big thanks to Peter and all of you over the years who have asked us to have a chat with ...
Nov 25, 2024•12 min
Alright, we’ve got some Good News…God is Dead! But does he know he’s dead? This week is PART ONE with the wonderful PETER ROLLINS and we’re talking Death of God theology; belief, knowledge, and Faith. We get into Christian Atheism, Peter’s Church of the Contradiction, and why Nothing Lives, Nothing Binds, & Nothing Saves. What does Bigfoot have to do with ontological incompleteness & Slavoj Žižek’s work on Quantum Physics? Why is Atheism not Atheist enough? Big thanks to all of you over ...
Nov 18, 2024•57 min
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, we're on our season break & here is the fourth episode of our new PATREON series SHORT SESSIONS and we’re talking Donald Trump, Freud's Totem & Taboo, and Todd McGowan's End of Dissatisfaction. This week it's cannibalism, the Unabomber, societies of prohibition, societies of enjoyment, and of course...the horror of incest. Spooky stuff to think about after Halloween. Who ate the last cannibal? Big thanks to our Patreon @moonraker1 for the episode...
Nov 04, 2024•12 min
Alright, we’re Living in the End Times and this is the FOURTH and FINAL episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. So far in our series we’ve taken a look at the economy focussing on intellectual property, the biogenetic revolution, nature and the ideology of ecology, and today we’ll look at the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the one Žižek locates in the space of the global commons of humanity, what he des...
Oct 28, 2024•1 hr
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, we’re Living in the End Times, and this is the fourth and final episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. So far in our series we’ve taken a look at the economy focussing on intellectual property, the biogenetic revolution, nature and the ideology of ecology, and today we’ll look at the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the one Žižek locates in the space of the glob...
Oct 21, 2024•12 min
Alright, we’re Living in the End Times! The commons of our culture has been captured and this is the third episode in a series we’re doing on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. This week we’re talking Nature & Ecology. Does Nature exist? Can you eat plastic ice cream? Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal...
Oct 13, 2024•58 min
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE! Alright, here's another PATREON EPISODE PREVIEW This week we’re talking Spies for the People, Whistleblowers, Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and the Logic of the Bomb. Slavoj Žižek asks, "Did WikiLeaks open our eyes to the illusion of freedom?" Was the only surprising thing about the WikiLeaks revelations that they contain no surprises? Or did we learn exactly what we expected to learn? The real disturbance was at the level of appearances: we can no longer pretend we...
Oct 07, 2024•11 min
Bring Me My Philips Mental Jacket! Alright, we’re Living in the End Times , the commons of our nature has been captured and this is the second episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. This week we’re talking biogenetics! Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not? SUPPORT US O...
Sep 30, 2024•59 min
LISTEN HERE! Alright, this is the third episode of our new Patreon series SHORT SESSIONS and we’re taking a look at one of Slavoj Žižek’s most recent Substacks “The Uses & Misuses of Neurotheology”. We’re talking Out-of-Body experiences, LSD & dolphins, non-consensual encounters with dimethyltryptamine crocodiles, and climate controlled neurological dystopias. Big thanks to our Patreon @cassandrandranoid for the episode request! UP NEXT IS THE SECOND EPISODE IN OUR FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE A...
Sep 22, 2024•11 min
Alright, we’re Living in the End Times , the commons of our culture has been captured and this is the first episode in a series we’re doing on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. This week we’re talking intellectual property and the economy. Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not? SUPPORT US ON P...
Sep 15, 2024•47 min
Alright, we’re back again with ADRIAN JOHNSTON to discuss more of his book INFINITE GREED: THE INHUMAN SELFISHNESS OF CAPITAL. FULL EPISODE ON OUR PATREON HERE! Adrian takes us through some of the shifts in Freud’s positions on Marxism and this insistence on negativity as history’s “real motor”. Are we worth our weight in gold? What is the link between infinite greed and philanthropy? How do we account for the shift in leftist concerns along identitarian lines with the seemingly repressed except...
Sep 08, 2024•11 min
