What The Theory

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."   G.K. Chesterton   Today's episode is the first of many chats with Reverend Captain Gideon Mwesh, and we talk about what it means to have faith today.

The famous words of anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon can seem silky or reactionary at first glance, but in today's episode we examine his argument that asks us if it is really moral for individuals to take from the commons and deprive others of access to the means of existence It's a challenge to examine our ways of dealing with each other in the face of property rights that pit the individual aga...

Today's show is about Fashion ...which George Simmrl said shows our ". . tendency toward social equalization balanced against the desire for individual differentiation and change."Yvonne from Chic Moments talks about why clothes are anything but a frivolous thing

In this first episode of the year, Joel talks about the importance of the body and explores Nietzche's argument that the mind-body dualism is an illusion- you are your body. Which might be a little distressing for our guy Joel given that he got older on Monday.

Only Gods and beasts can live outside community, to paraphrase Aristotle. In this last episode of the exploration of Being and Nothingness, we dissect the importance of others in forming our identity and why recognition is crucial for us to feel adequate. Many thanks to the people that allow for me to get looked at by all of you barred subjects out there. Here's hoping the New Year brings with it...

Part 2 of Nothing at the Center is a discussion of Bad faith according to Sartre, which is when we deny either our transcendence or our facticity. In this episode we breakdown facticity, trancendence and the subtle difference between anguish and anxiety Fun times

"Carol is one of the few people in my life that I thought found both the humor and horror of life worth meditating over and not just glossing over "   This chat covers identity, isolation and intimacy.

"Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm." Evocative but what did Sarte mean by this and the rest of " Being and Nothingness"? In this short series, we'll try to unpack why the concept of "Nothingness" is central to what it means to be human...and also the paradox of trying to complete what we all agree I'd forever a work in progress.

Josey wears many hats - She's in PR and Marketing, owns her own agency, round a sickle cell warriors foundation, and somehow finds the time to help me run this podcast!! In the chat we explore what Public Relations means to her, the conflict between bring a " good friend and person" and being a good business leader, how she manages and navigates these worlds as a person with a chronic illness and...

The spectacle is the next stage of mediation of relations between people. Already commodities mediate our relationships(we are identified by what we consume and what we do to earn the ultimate commodity, money) - but now images become the new basis of relating with products and each other. Recommendations - Century of the self on Youtube; Society of the spectacle by Guy Debord Quote _Just as early...

Commodity fetishism - The commodity appears to be at first sight to be a trivial thing, but observed again contains both material and immaterial force   On one hand it's use value and the other its exchange value, the first being the need or desire it directly meets, the second the signal, the identity marker that reveals something about u   Quote - "A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, si...

Adam Smith spoke of the market operating as an invisible hand that guides the actions of producers and consumers to find each other and a reliable allocation of resources happening with each actor pursuing their ends   In this episode, we examine if that hand is benevolent or an iron hand that both gives and takes away and ultimately what logic that does it serve in the world. As we all know, like...

In the first on a series of Marxist critiques of modern life, I thought I'd start with something I am a part of.. the Middle class. And in particular, this is an examination of what exactly the middle class is and how Marxist theory sees it as an illusionary category, a managerial elite without awareness of their working-class status.

The management of time is the mark of modernity. And when we say Time is money, we mean that time is valuable when used for productivity. But as Switchfoot say " Time was never money" and our clocks do not tell us THE time, they give us a version of time. In today's episode we discuss the way our perception of time as a commodity reduces us to being productive and efficient only...Free time being...

This is an introduction to Lacan's idea of the difference between Desire and the object cause of desire. Human beings are desiring beings and we desire things outside of ourselves, which means we long for something outside of us to make us whole. We are...incomplete subjects. Or at least that's how we feel Where does this desire come from and how do we see its effects on our psyche...Check out the...

This is a follow-up on the episode on Polyamory in which I respond to anonymous questions that came in on the topic. The biggest takeaway for me from this is even if you don't understand a lifestyle, it's important to speak to people that do, suspend judgment and later make up your mind. More than anything, what I've learnt from engaging with the literature and people living this way is that we st...

Polyamory began to capture popular discourse in the 90s, seemingly as an echo of the free love movements of the 1960's, another time when cultural norms were being questioned. Today, polyamory seems to be taking up attention as marriage and monogamy are increasingly being found to not satisfy. Some say we are naturally poly- looking to enjoy sexual relations with as many partners as possible, othe...

Today's Sunday Chat is with Nelson Muhire, team lead for @The Collective UG , a movement that seeks to give young people a way to use their creativity, skills and energy to edify people and spread the love of God. Nelson and I, were part of a band , HOP , which eventually led to the creation of C19 Studios, @CtrlAD and now the collective. The discussion focuses on how Nelson chose to follow his pa...

Your grades from the school machine, determine what job you get in the corporation, your actions are interpreted in performance reviews which determine your access to credit or social admittance. In these societies of control,you are granted freedom to act, but your actions are surveilled and you are granted or denied access basing on if you act " right " To quote Deleuze "Enclosures are molds, di...

This is a high-level summary of Michel Foucault's work " Discipline and punish". In it, I look at how power has been organized in societies which had sovereign rulers, vs those with more dispersed institutional centres of power. How do Kings get their subjects to do things vs say Parliaments? How are schools, prisons and factories all avenues for how power is exercised? Foucault's ideas have us qu...

We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. Christopher Lasch. The Culture of Narcissism: This book is an examination of the way culture, empowered by technologies, is making us more narcissistic, looking to the world to fit our own self-narrative rather than the other way around. While I don't agree wholesale, I think this is a great book to use to reflect upon the changes in how we view...

The Title Says it all.

Raymond is a journalist, writer, thinker, saxophonist and most importantly, a husband and a father We discuss how he came to his current position in life, his favourite philosophy and whether or not democracy actually works

If seeking pleasure is unsatisfactory, and the ethical life is simply tradition, well what are we to do? There is a third way...the leap of faith. In this episode, we discuss Kiekagaard's religious solution, what it means to be a knight of faith as opposed to a mere sheep of the flock of the church, something he found to be a true loss of oneself, a mockery of the radical call to be a Christian.

" The most common form of despair is not being who you are." Kiekagaard How do we become our selves? Well it appears there are 3 modes of existence that as use to reconcile our potential with our necessity: The Aesthetic, Ethical and Religious modes of life are the responses Kierkegaard uses to frame how we respond to the responsibility of living. Today we explore the aesthetic ( a life filled wit...