Diet Soap - a podcast

Ben Burgis is a philosophy professor, a logic nerd, a columnist for Jacobin, and the author of Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left. This conversation on the podcast came out of a twitter battle Burgis and I engaged in on the topic of the State Capitalist theory and the question of whether the Soviet Union was State Capitalist. This is the second half of a two-part conversation.

This week’s podcast is available for everyone. Our patrons get access to two podcasts every week: Symptomatic Redness and Zero Squared, but if you’re listening on our free feed you’ll always be able to access one or the other podcasts each week. Patrons also receive access to our new video series called The History of Communism and get access to the Capital Reading group. Book Club members receive electronic copies of new Zero Book titles every month and are invited to an online discussion group.

In this, the first part of a three part discussion on fascism, Derick and Matthias Wasser discuss the recent history of the American right, whether the alt-right are relevant anymore, racialism, the definition of fascism, and much more besides.

Ben Burgis is a philosophy professor, a logic nerd, a columnist for Jacobin, and the author of Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left. This conversation on the podcast came out of a twitter battle Burgis and I engaged in on the topic of the State Capitalist theory and the question of whether the Soviet Union was State Capitalist.

This week’s podcast is available for our Patrons, part two will be available for everyone next week. Our patrons get access to two podcasts every week: Symptomatic Redness and Zero Squared, but if you’re listening on our free feed you’ll always be able to access one or the other podcasts each week. Patrons also receive access to our new video series called The History of Communism and get access to the Capital Reading group. Book Club members receive electronic copies of new Zero Book titles every month and are invited to an online discussion group.

In the second part of their discussion, the third in Symptomatic Redness’s series of episodes on Gene Wolfe, Derick and Mason Kerr discuss salvation, race, and the philosophy of time in Gene Wolfe’s fiction, with some forays into questions of virtue, ideological litmus tests about who you should read, and Canadian politics and culture.

Charlie Demers, is a Canadian writer, comedian and political activist. He is the voice of Walter from the 2016 Netflix original series Beat Bugs. and the voice of Night Light in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic season seven episode "Once Upon a Zeppelin". His comedy album Fatherland was nominated for a Juno Awards in 2018, and he is the author of the novels The Prescription Errors and Property Values.

This week’s podcast is available in full while next week’s podcast will be available for our Patreon supporters. Our patrons get access to two podcasts every week: Symptomatic Redness and Zero Squared, but if you’re listening on our free feed you’ll always be able to access one or the other podcasts each week. Patrons also receive access to our new video series called The History of Communism every month and get access to the Capital Reading group. Book Club members receive electronic copies of a new Zero Book titles every month and are invited to an online discussion group.

In this first part of a two part episode, Derick is joined by Mason Kerr to discuss the political implications of the fiction of Gene Wolfe, who passed away earlier this year, as part of a series of episodes honoring Wolfe's life and work. They discuss The Fifth Head of Cerberus, The Book of the New Sun, and Wolfe's treatment of women and gender politics, along with some diversions into Marxist aesthetics and issues in the current American left milieu."

Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Ashley Frawley join me in this second episode in what promises to be a new series of podcasts. Nikos is a committed Randian while Ashley Frawley and I are both Marxists and we debate how to define and understand capitalism with Nikos in this episode.

This week’s podcast is available for our patrons. Our Patreon supporters get access to two podcasts every week: Symptomatic Redness and Zero Squared, but if you’re listening on our free feed you’ll always be able to access one or the other podcasts each week. At the moment we have 632 patrons. When we reach 1000 patrons we’ll begin production of a documentary on Western Marxism and Post-Marxism.

Glenn McDorman is a sixth-year PhD student specializing in the social, cultural, and institutional history of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Brandon Budda is a writer with a degree in Philosophy and English from Temple University. Together they are the host of The Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast and in this episode of Symptomatic Redness they discuss Gene Wolfe with Deric Varn.

Spencer Leonard is a lecturer in history at the University of Tennessee, a founding member of the Platypus Affiliated Society, and the author of the book “A Fit of Absence of Mind? Illiberal Imperialism and the Founding of British India.” He is also the guest this week on the Zero Books podcast.

This week’s podcast is available in full for everyone. Our Patreon supporters get access to two podcasts every week: Symptomatic Redness and Zero Squared, but if you’re listening on our free feed you’ll always be able to access one or the other podcasts each week. Patrons also receive access to our new video series called The History of Communism every month.

Victoria Brooks is a writer and researcher in the area of law and sexual ethics. She teaches Criminal Law, Criminology and the law, Philosophy of Law and Law of the Environment at the University of Westminster. She is intent on systematically 'fucking' the law, otherwise known as persistently and unflinchingly questioning regimes of sexual ethics and her book Fucking Law is out now from Zero Books.

This week’s podcast is available in full for Patreon supporters. Our Patreon supporters get access to two podcasts every week: Symptomatic Redness and Zero Squared, but if you’re listening on our free feed you’ll always be able to access one or the other podcasts each week. Patrons also receive access to our new video series called The History of Communism every month.