Los Altos Institute Archive

Students are introduced to the idea of a holy empire and given an outline of the course.

This class begins with a short lecture on the Doctor Who's most socialist episode and the sophistication of its anti-capitalist analysis. Discussion is dominated by an informed debate about the anti-Semitism of the show and its relationship to the Callahan government of the late 1970s.

This lecture focuses on Xoanon, the Doctor's adversary in this episode, a computer named after the primary idol of the pre-Christian Goths that appears to suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The class focuses on epistemological themes such as the Kabala-influenced idea of Logopolis, ideas of knowledge as social construction, popular theory discourse before the Sokal Hoax and Shardovan as epistemological hero.

Vengeance on Varos, superficially, is a show about dark visions of reality TV and the functioning of a Big Brother dystopia. But, in a way, these elements are the least interesting. Where the show excels is in explaining Dependency Theory, the Resource Curse and the Banana Republic system.

In this episode, we continue to discuss themes engage in the Mutants around ideas of autocthony and cultural relativism in the 1960s. 

This class focuses on the academic concepts of White Settler States (Anthony Marks), Neo-Europes (J Alfred Crosby) and de-colonization in a ripped-from-the-headlines early 70s Dr. Who apparently inspired by the start of the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia "Bush War" that began in the spring of 1972.

In this lecture, Doctor Who is situated within one of the oldest literary genres in the world and an argument is made that it meets these genre criteria better than those of science fiction.

We discuss two of the best episodes of the 1978 Key to Time season, the Stones of Blood and Douglas Adams' the Pirate Planet. We continue to examine the ways in which Second Wave feminism defines the golden age of the show and also begin engaging with the contribution Adams makes to this period with the consciousness of the extinction event that he brings to his writing. 

As we discuss Genesis of the Daleks, we get closer to the important role of the Hannah Arendt school in creating the Golden Age of Doctor Who. Here, Walter Benjamin is introduced for the first time as we discuss genetics, eugenics, and the Angel of History.

We return to our free course rebroadcasts, beginning with our March/April course, 13 Lectures on Original Doctor Who. The first episode covers the problematic and much-maligned Talons of Weng Chiang .

This is the first part of Los Altos Institute's seven-part podcast documentary, which uses the first British comedy in the written record, the Second Shepherd's Pageant (1420) to examine the rise of the modern world and the profound cultural, political and economic changes the world would undergo. The Pageant is an extraordinarily observant and prescient work, both embodying and remarking on the s...

This is the first part of Los Altos Institute's seven-part podcast documentary, which uses the first British comedy in the written record, the Second Shepherd's Pageant (1420) to examine the rise of the modern world and the profound cultural, political and economic changes the world would undergo. The Pageant is an extraordinarily observant and prescient work, both embodying and remarking on the s...

This is the fifth part of Los Altos Institute's seven-part podcast documentary, which uses the first British comedy in the written record, the Second Shepherd's Pageant (1420) to examine the rise of the modern world and the profound cultural, political and economic changes the world would undergo. The Pageant is an extraordinarily observant and prescient work, both embodying and remarking on the s...

This is the first part of Los Altos Institute's seven-part podcast documentary, which uses the first British comedy in the written record, the Second Shepherd's Pageant (1420) to examine the rise of the modern world and the profound cultural, political and economic changes the world would undergo. The Pageant is an extraordinarily observant and prescient work, both embodying and remarking on the s...

This is the first part of Los Altos Institute's seven-part podcast documentary, which uses the first British comedy in the written record, the Second Shepherd's Pageant (1420) to examine the rise of the modern world and the profound cultural, political and economic changes the world would undergo. The Pageant is an extraordinarily observant and prescient work, both embodying and remarking on the s...

This is the first part of Los Altos Institute's seven-part podcast documentary, which uses the first British comedy in the written record, the Second Shepherd's Pageant (1420) to examine the rise of the modern world and the profound cultural, political and economic changes the world would undergo. The Pageant is an extraordinarily observant and prescient work, both embodying and remarking on the s...

This is the first part of Los Altos Institute's seven-part podcast documentary, which uses the first British comedy in the written record, the Second Shepherd's Pageant (1420) to examine the rise of the modern world and the profound cultural, political and economic changes the world would undergo. The Pageant is an extraordinarily observant and prescient work, both embodying and remarking on the s...

Focusing on the Christmas special, the final episode thinks about how to situate the whole series as a Christian text. 

In this analysis of the election episode, Jim Lahey is a Drunk Bastard, we look at how populist campaigns are different from progressive campaigns and examine different kinds of populism, democratic versus authoritarian, left versus right, by seeing how all this shakes down in Sunnyvale's only known election.

In Where the Fuck is Randy's Barbecue, Ricky is presented as a role model for a junior achievers' group. Again leaning on examples from and similarities to Black America, the lecture discusses the paradox of the role model figure in a community of oppressed people. 

This is a longer class and more heavily edited than usual because it includes a pre-class discussion that the instructor entered the middle of at the start of the hour that had to be relocated and shorn of its most controversial/offensive material. Similarly, more material is redacted than usual as it includes biographical information about course participants and in personal anecdotes by particip...

This course examines ideas of space, place and neighbourliness in Trailer Park Boys, including an abbreviated explanation of the rise of the concept of the neighbour in early modernity and an exploration of how the nature of trailer park space circumscribes the lives of its residents.

This episode features some background information on theories of addiction, as well as some great anecdotes. The main body of the episode is a look at the ambivalence and complexity with which addiction and substance use are handled in the show.

Like other classes, this follows the format of a 30-minute lecture, followed by a somewhat redacted (and consequently disjointed) question and answer session. We revisit Calvinism, via the work of Max Weber, in explaining why models of fated salvation make people work harder than models of earned salvation. We then use Jean Baudrillard's idea of hyperreality to illustrate Ray's epitomization of th...