We talk about Ada Palmer's "Too Like the Lightning", how it portrays the enlightenment, gender, politics, all the goodness.

It's a challenging read, but it delivers on its promises

Themes discussed:

- How the social contract makes a new person

- What was the Enlightenment?

- Confusing gender roles

- Fabricating consent

- Ideology

We talk about the pen and paper role playing game Shadowrun, focusing on the themes it allows its players and storytellers to explore. Shadowrun is a troperific mix of sci-fi and fantasy that takes everything that's wrong about the world and blows it up at the same time.

Subjects discussed:

- Accelerationism and the Frankfurt school's influence on it

- Reclaiming Cybernetics

- Meaning in postmodern works

- Mosaicism

- Exceptionalism

- Radical infrastructure space

We talk about Jack Womack's "Random acts of senseless violence" - a "minute into the future" dystopia told from the perspective of a 12 year old girl. It's gritty and depressing, just our speed.

Topics include:

- How this is a horror story for the Bourgeois

- The atomization of daily life

- Hobbesian themes

- Derrida and the duality between center and periphery

- The merits of a political book with no obvious villain

- The violence/mundanity barrier

We talk about a Sci-fi album by the band Clipping - Splendor and Misery. The album is a prime example of Afro-Futurism, dealing with such topics as time, space, bodies, space travel, slavery, and much more that we couldn't cover.

The discussed album:

https://clppng.bandcamp.com/album/splendor-misery

Topics discussed:

- Queer time and its relevance to race theory

- Space, resistance and the body

- Belonging

- Alternate futures in space

- Anger as a political emotion

- Anarchy and violence

We discuss one of science fiction's titans: Ursula K. Le Guin, in one of her slightly less read books: The Telling, offering a radical perspective on religion, colonialism and reason. Some themes:

- Center-based vs. non-center-based epistemology

- Decolonialism

- Non-ideal anthropology

- Multiple views on religion

- Ways of life as resistance

Audio on my (Yanai's) side is a bit rough due to a recording issue, sorry about that!

For more information on Decolonialism I would, from my limited experience, recommend Serene Khader's "Decolonizing Universalism" and Vrinda Dalmiya's "Caring to Know" (tangentially related)

Listen people, we're mad about capitalism. We discuss the game Frostpunk and the movie Snow Piercer, two critiques of capitalism in frozen worlds.

Themes discussed:

- Hobbes' Leviathan

- Mark Fisher's "Abandon hope, summer is coming"

http://k-punk.org/abandon-hope-summer-is-coming/

- The revolt of nature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic_of_Enlightenment

- Inherent conflict

- Religion and society

- What do we work for?

We discuss Philip K. Dick's "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said". 

Some themes discussed:

- Kant's metaphysics in Philip K. Dick's writing

-  Power's will to knowledge

- Radical embodiment

- The danger and potential of drugs

- The transparency of police

- Self identity as a source of stability

We discuss 1988 Anime masterpiece "Akira"

Some themes discussed:

- Deleuze and Foucault's ideas of societies of discipline and societies of control

- Hannah Arendt's approach to violence, and violence in leftist ideology

- The rise and fall of capitalist Japan

- Science as Pandora's box

- Radical friendship

Catherine M. Valente's Radiance:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N03G440/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Hannah Arendt Reflections on Violence:

http://www2.kobe-u.ac.jp/~alexroni/IPD%202019%20readings/IPD1%202019%20No.8/A%20Special%20Supplement_%20Reflections%20on%20Violence%20by%20Hannah%20Arendt%20_%20The%20New%20Yor.pdf

We Discuss Monica Byrne's "The Girl in The Road"

Themes Discussed:

- Franz Fanon's phenomenology and race theory

- The Infrastructure Space

- Standpoint theory

- Byrne's unusual approach to writing an audience-insert character

- Embodied writing

Links:

Fanon's "Black Skins, White Masks":

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003OYIKUG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Extrastatecraft (on infrastructure space):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K9MK1R6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Stanford Encyclopedia entry for standpoint theory (as well as other feminist epistemology theories):

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-social-epistemology/

For our podcast premiere we discussed the ZA/UM movement's game: Disco Elysium.

Themes discussed:

- Mourning and Walter Benjamin's angel of history

- Radical friendship

- The Cartesian experiment and the cop within your head

- An anarchist love letter to communism

- Hauntology

Links:

Derrida's "Specters of Marx": https://books.google.com/books/about/Specters_of_Marx.html?id=sEENbAP5FZsC

Dark Crystal: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6905542/

Relevant essay by Mark Fisher: https://frieze.com/article/mark-fisher-and-work-mourning-visual-essay-tony-cokes

Walter Benjamin's Concept of History: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm