The history of Stoicism is long and complicated, and we didn't want to end with AI alpha male YouTube channels, so here is a rundown focused on Greek Stoicism, some comparisons to Buddhism, and whether or not this philosophy could help in 2026. 

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From Zero to hero: Samantha Fulnecky has been honoured by the Oklahoma government and named "an American hero" for her paper submission to her Psych course in which she claimed it is demonic to believe in more than one gender. Still, the Pill Pod heats up over whether she deserved the grade she received…

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Read Samantha's essay and the instructors' comments here:
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/education/2025/11/25/ou-oklahoma-samantha-fulnecky-read-essay-gender-bible/87463858007/

It's the bi-yearly event in the ongoing race war between analytic and continental philosophy. Philosophers of all stripes invited themselves to partake in the latest and stupidest skirmish, and so we have undertaken a reading of the match that lit the powder keg: How Continental Philosophers "Argue": On the Unseriousness of the Discipline (https://benthams.substack.com/p/how-continental-philosophers-argue)

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A Signifying Chain (or symbolic chain, or signifying web) is a structuralist concept developed by Jacques Lacan and others ("The Agency of the Letter"; https://amzn.to/4p6wx6l).

Signifying chains structure discourses and we believe, explain the growing rift in conservative politics.

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The Pill Pod reads Daniel Kolitz' anthropology of the gooners in Harper's Magazine https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-porn-masturbation-loneliness/ and we find it's all connected man

Other sources cited included Lacan Seminar X, Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Baudrillard Transparency of Evil

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We conclude our Lacan series with what Fink says is the desired end of Lacanian psychoanalysis. And, the ends of psychoanalysis coincide with some valuable insights for Lacan's theorizing beyond psychoanalysis. 
Works cited are Fink's Lacanian Subject (ch. 5; https://amzn.to/4qz1Fgx) and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (ch. 10; https://amzn.to/4hAIKh5).

Richard Ledes, director of the films Adieu Lacan and V13, explains his process, namely, adapting French plays about psychoanalysis into English-language films. He connects the seduction of nascent fascism in 1913 Vienna to the present moment a century later.


Find V13 on AppleTV, Prime Video

Find Ledes' catalogue at https://www.richardledes.com/

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The Pill Pod looks at the structure of the perverts in Episode 5 of our series on Lacan. Find the other episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar X, "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious", Ecrits
Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis

The Pill Pod looks at the chatbot psychosis phenomenon and compares it to Lacan's clinical structure of psychosis.


This is Episode 4 of our series on Lacan. Find the other episodes Ad-Free at
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Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar III

Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis

"People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies" Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

"They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent them Spiraling" New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html

1Dime joins Erik and Victor to discuss Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. We cover the popularity of the book, the term, and then wonder whether left-populist electoral campaigns perform the same cathartic function as anti-capitalist TV shows.

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