What The Theory

This episode takes a look at the concept of technology as the foundation fo civilization as presented by Marc Andreeesen's Techno optimist manifesto and how it follows in a long line of accelerationist philosophy by the likes od Nick Land. Is technology an inevitable irresistible force or is it that the people building our tools want us to think of it that way?

1st Episode of the New Year and we check in with two therapists for life - Nietzche and Dostoyevsky to help us answer the question - should we strive to be good or to be Great?

As we close the year, Pumla, Primah, and Joel take some time to answer some big questions, ruminate on adult friendships, and only take about 20 tangents instead of the usual 30.  Thank you to everyone who subscribed and followed along.

Content is king and we are its subjects. When did everything from movies to blogs to pranks all become known by this one word? We take a look at what a young Bill Gates saw coming all the way in 1996, and how we all got turned into content creators .

In today's episode, we delve into the mind-bending world of Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian Philosopher known for his take on Lacanian psychoanalysis and a knack for making the mundane and seemingly trivial utterly fascinating. This time, we're tackling his book "The sublime object of Ideology" and exploring how it manifests itself in the most unlikely of places: your favourite sugary beverage, Coca-C...

Today's episode from the banks of the River Nile is about ideology as it appears in the unconscious, in how we commodity and value things, and in our religious beliefs. This serves as a preamble to a deep dive into Slavoj Zizek's "The Sublime object of Ideology" 

Nike says " Just do it" but most of our problems in our life stem from either thinking without action or acting without thinking. In this episode, we examine the latter issue, why are we encouraged to just take action instead of taking the time to actually examine what must be done The framework examined for thinking deeply is Blooms Taxonomy for the creation of Knowledge.

Startups have been all the rage in business and technology. Meant to disrupt the market, change lives, and of course make truckloads of cash for the founders.   They've also been disruptive of labor laws, and seen their fair share of fraudsters and hot-air merchants who talk the talk and nothing more. In today's episode, we ask the question - what's the reality behind the start-up phenomenon and i...

The unexamined life is not worth living said Socrates. But he died about 400 years before Jesus and never had to balance career, love, finances and an East African forehead In this PPJ reunion, Pumla, Primah and Joel examine whether they're actually living life well. 

In memory of the best of us

If ideology is what gives meaning to the chaos of our lives, then propaganda is how meaning is communicated and maintained in mass society. It has a negative connotation but in today's episode, I argue that it's not that simple.

Man is uncanny, part of the animal kingdom, yet not fully animal,; part of a culture, yet still carries animal instincts. To be free, both sides have to be recognized, man is an animal in search of a master for his desires.    In this episode, we explore why habits are crucial for us humans, why necessity is the highest form of freedom, and why we are oddly never happier than when we do things unc...

No concept in psychoanalysis is more misunderstood, and none darker than the death drive. Why do we do things that go against our pleasure and repeat our traumas? Why is the repetition of both pleasure and pain at the core of the uncanny being we call human?  In this episode, I trace the beginnings of Freud's idea of the death drive vs pleasure principle, why he thought the sex drive to be master...

The seven deadly sins are thought of by Christians as choosing the flesh and desire over God, by moralists as "good advice but not sin" and well, what do I think? It's complicated. This episode is a glance at how we can use the 7 deadly sins to learn about ourselves and the desires created in us living in the modern world Look out for the next episode focused on Lust

The last part of our conversation has range; From why dating intellectuals can be tiresome ( I don't want to debate in the bedroom ) to what is so difficult about loving us as well as what to do when you want people to leave your house so you can sleep !! 

Back by popular demand,Pumla and Primah met up once more to talk about our love and attachment styles, our traumas and everything in between.  I love these people and for me, they are part of what makes me who I am. Friendship like Aristotle said, is the same soul living in different bodies. Enjoy 

"The more you consume the less you live," Guy Deboard on how our media-dominant modern life has us engaging with abstractions of what real people and relationships are. This episode touches on working-class images, images of time and history, and religion.

When Lacan says that "love is giving what you don't have to someone who doesn't want it," he is pointing to the paradoxical nature of love: that is that we are all fundamentally incomplete or lacking in some way, and we seek to fill this lack through our relationships with others. And the first relationship where this happens is in the family. Daddy issues and mommy issues are universally acknowle...

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles," with this Guy Debord begins his description of how with modern technology and media, we have created a virtuso world of images that dominate our view of reality  This is a highlight from every chapter of this classic text through the eyes of a timid observer

The obsession with masculinity is always a sign of impotence, a defensive reaction against the threat of castration. Symbolically of course. It is in this insecurity that we can find new strength, new ways of being that won't destroy us while claiming to liberate us 

"The biggest takeaway from Easter, from the crucifixion of the Political radical figure of Jesus, is that what looked like a failure was a successful upending of the hierarchical order- It went from us trusting God, to God trusting us by making the world more egalitarian. As a bearded man once said...Philosophers have interpreted the world, the point is to change it. "

The People that make me series will involve discussions with some of the people that make my life worth living and will explore our similarities and differences. Today's episode features Pumla and Primah, the best parts of what we call PPJ - Pumla, Primah and Joel, people who couldn't be more different and yet like different notes, make for a beautiful harmony That sentimental line would make P&P...

Christian atheism asks - What dies at the cross? Not a messenger, not an offspring but God himself. It is the radical reading of Faith in which God entrust's his spirit to the community of believers through his death. God is dead, and we are his spirit resurrected when we act as God in the world.  This is the first video explainer on the topic - We shall explore it further as an epistemology, why...