This week we have a conversation we recorded over the summer with Jon’s old friend, John Brittingham of Greenville College. Before we dig into John’s work in phenomenology of religion and decolonial philosophy, we explore the deeper mysteries of children’s television programming. Why do the male characters in Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood refuse to wear pants? Does that squirrel in SpongeBob SquarePants need that bubble helmet or is it just an affectation? Is Paw Patrol an instrument of the patriarchy? Then we turn to John’s work on Incarnate Experience, dwelling at some length on the methodological questions raised by the “Theological Turn” in French phenomenology. John then walks us through his account of what he calls "incarnate experience," using categories from Levinas and Merleau-Ponty, among others. In the back stretch, we pivot to discussing John’s more recent research in decolonial thought and the line of questions about race, nationality, identity, family, and his students that brought him there.

(Our apologies for the uneven volume. We did our best to even it out, but there remain some audio issues with this episode.)

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Our theme music is “14 Ghosts II” by Nine Inch Nails, available at archive.org/details/nineinchnails_ghosts_I_IV

“14 Ghosts II” is used under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. We would like to thank Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails for the use of this track.

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