The Saturated State

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

We are governed not by force alone, but by saturation—of noise, of image, of pace. This episode explores how distraction, emotional overload, and political fatigue are not accidents of the moment but tools of governance. It asks what happens when democracy becomes aesthetic, memory becomes unstable, and speech becomes calibration rather than expression.

Power today no longer declares. It performs. Following thinkers like Byung-Chul Han, who examines the psychic toll of hyper-visibility, and Lauren Berlant, who identifies the slow erosion of public optimism, we explore how governance now operates atmospherically—through mood, through rhythm, and through exhaustion.

Drawing on Mark Fisher’s critique of capitalist realism and Simone Weil’s concept of attention as resistance, we ask what it means to hold shape when institutions collapse inward. What forms of refusal are still possible in an environment saturated not by fear, but by feeling?

Why Listen?

Listen On:

Bibliography