Deadbeat Philosophy

There’s a saying in German: everything has an end, except for the sausage, which has two . . . So it is with podcasts as with human beings. Everything has its end. Everything ends, sometime. Even the sausage, which simply ends twice. Deadbeat Philosophy is no sausage (at least not in the traditional sense). Hence, its end is singular. Just like 2025: it only ends once. And its end, like that of 20...

In this first of two “year in review” episodes, Dave shares two of his favorite pieces from the past year–a pair of “philosophical smackdowns” featuring titans from the history of western philosophy. The first pits Plato against Immanuel Kant, the second Aristotle against Friedrich Nietzsche. Who will win out? Whose text should you gift to your mother on mother’s day? Watch to find out! Featuring...

Kristen Jakstis is a researcher at the Institute for Landscape Planning and Ecology at the University of Stuttgart. In this episode, recorded live at the Museum Hegel-Haus, Dave and Kristen explore the power of storytelling as a vehicle for optimism, critique, and experimentation in the midst of the unfolding global environmental crisis. They cover Kristen’s doctoral research in urban ecology, the...

Andrew George is an Australian environmental activist and social organizer. Dave and Andrew chat about Andrew’s life on an uninsurable floodplain, the material weight and faux-permanence of urbanized consumer-capitalist existence, the peril and promise of social media and AI in our age of environmental crisis, Rousseau, Roger Hallam, and the dialectic of revolution and collapse shaping the (in)hum...

Jacob Barto is an expert in German literature and language, currently adjunct assistant professor of German at Bellevue College. In this Halloween-themed conversation, Dave and Jacob claw their way through a splattering of spooky classics from European literary history, encountering as they go child-seducing ghosts, philosophical demon-devil hybrids, and even a few subversively bloodthirsty lesbia...

How can philosophy be defined? Who can philosophize, and what roles do age, language, or geography play in one’s aptitude for philosophizing? When and where in planetary history did philosophy “begin” and will it someday “end”? To what extent should knowledge of past philosophy and philosophers determine how philosophy is done today? In this episode, Dave approaches philosophy “in a broad way” and...

Caleb Ward is postdoc in philosophy at University of Hamburg and leader of the DFG project “Moral Opposition and Political Agency under Oppression.” Author of multiple articles and book chapters, their monograph–on the philosophy of Audre Lorde–will appear in 2026. Caleb’s webpage . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...

Sierra Deutsch is an interdisciplinary political ecologist in the department of geography at the University of Zurich. Dave and Sierra chat about Euro-American academic identity, Sierra’s grueling recent trip to the top of Africa’s highest mountain (where she nearly developed altitude sickness), the global economic-political-environmental polycrisis, the deep tradition of Marxist environmental the...

Rob Mottram is a scholar of modern European literature and culture, and senior lecturer in German studies at Whitman College. Rob and Dave chat about sandwiches, nostalgia, encountering computers as kids in the 1980s and early 1990s, AI (including AI term papers and AI podcasts), the overwhelming power of aesthetic experience, Goethe’s Faust Pt. II, and Rob’s transformative melding into Caspar Dav...

Tatjana Schönwälder-Kuntze is a philosopher based in Munich and the author of, among other books, Freiheit als Norm? Kritische Theoriebildung und der Effekt Kantischer Moralphilosophie, Philosophische Methoden , and Judith Butlers Philosophie des Politischen: Kritische Lektüren . This is the first (but probably not the last?) German-language episode of the podcast. Recorded with a live audience at...

While producing the podcast and creating bizarre philosophy-themed YouTube videos over the past months, Dave has also been working on three books in progress–“Animality and Finitude,” “On the Kanthropocene,” and “A Bipolar Manifesto.” Parts of each book have been released on a rolling basis on the Deadbeat Philosophy homepage (deadbeatphilosophy.substack.com), and episodes 20, 21, and 22 of the po...

While producing the podcast and creating bizarre philosophy-themed YouTube videos over the past months, Dave has also been working on three books in progress–“Animality and Finitude,” “On the Kanthropocene,” and “A Bipolar Manifesto.” Parts of each book have been released on a rolling basis on the Deadbeat Philosophy homepage (deadbeatphilosophy.substack.com), and episodes 20, 21, and 22 of the po...

While producing the podcast and creating bizarre philosophy-themed YouTube videos over the past months, Dave has also been working on three books in progress–“Animality and Finitude,” “On the Kanthropocene,” and “A Bipolar Manifesto.” Parts of each book have been released on a rolling basis on the Deadbeat Philosophy homepage (deadbeatphilosophy.substack.com), and episodes 20, 21, and 22 of the po...

Ivo Martin is a philosopher, educator, and musician based in Stuttgart. Dave and Ivo chat about the relative places of philosophy in the education and social systems of Germany and the USA, the (non?)relationship between studying philosophy and acting ethically, teaching philosophy to young children, the expectation of “neutrality” in the teaching of philosophy and politics, the value of anti-demo...

Brian is a poet and novelist based in Colorado, USA. Dave and Brian chat about writing, relating (or not relating) to previous versions of oneself, mortality, grief, memory, identity, delusion, attachment, parenthood, marriage, divorce, loss, depression, solitude, nerds, my little ponies, and the philosopho-therapeutic value of literature and art. They discuss in some detail early twentieth Japane...

Chris Anderson is a Roman Catholic theologian, high school theology and philosophy teacher, college instructor, and pastoral minister based in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Chris was a student of Dave’s during their overlapping time at Seton Hill University, and in this conversation the two revisit and expand upon themes they had first discussed years prior, including the relationship between phil...

Thibaud Henin is a Canadian political scientist based at Concordia University in Montreal. Dave and Thibaud chat about artificial intelligence from a variety of angles. They focus on algorithms and their interface with patterns of human and non-human behavior, thought, history, life, and physiology. They discuss the concept of AI agency, and of the creation within AI systems of delegated managemen...

Reverend Tasha Brownfield is a Pantheist, Unitarian Universalist chaplain, minister, and educator. Currently, Tasha serves as the outpatient oncology chaplain at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, senior minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Smithton, PA, and a professor of religious studies and philosophy at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA. Tasha and Dave chat about Tasha’s life...

Jim Martin is an American author, composer, musician, editor, photographer, and long-time Genesis fan living (like Dave) in Stuttgart Germany. Jim and Dave chat about ex-pat identity, about Jim’s upbringing at a military school in the US, about the unpredictable multiplicity of the creative process, and about Jim’s musical theatrical directorial debut scheduled for later this year. They cover mort...

Patrick Reinhardt is a book collector, publisher, illustrator, and self-defined “atavistic gentleman scholar.” Patrick and Dave chat about Patrick’s lifelong obsession with books, beginning with childhood readings of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, all the way to his running of an independent classic literature publishing outfit today. They talk about deve...

Justin Hagge is an EMT-Firefighter on Lopez Island–one of the San Juan Islands in Washington State, USA, just below the US border with Canada. Justin was previously director of the Lopez Island Dump, and before that a high school social studies teacher in Denver, Colorado. Justin and Dave chat about what it’s like to live on Lopez Island, which has a permanent population of just over 3000 people....

Lucy Schultz is associate lecturer of philosophy and co-director of the environmental studies minor at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. Lucy is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on, among other topics, environmental philosophy, modern Japanese philosophy, Hegel, aesthetics, phenomenology, climate change, and is the co-editor of the “Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitaro” (2...

Aidan Beatty is a historian at Carnegie Mellon University and the current president of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Aidan is author of the books Masculinity and Power in Irish Nationalism, 1884-1938 (2016), Private Property and the Fear of Social Chaos (2023), and, most recently, The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism (2024). Aidan and Dave...

Dave sits down with Eva Hoffmann for a chat about teaching philosophy at the high school level (something virtually non-existent in the US, but relatively common in Germany), post-academic cross-continental life, and the perils of navigating the death of a furry mammalian family companion. Eva holds a PhD in German Studies and teaches philosophy, among other subjects, at a high school (Gymnasium)...

Can philosophy produce unique insight into art and aesthetic experience? Dave takes up this question, and a number of others, in conversation with Russell Duvernoy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College in London, Ontario. Russell and Dave discuss stuffed childhood companions, the great lakes region, their respective journeys in academic philosophy, prehistoric cave art, t...