Waking Life is one of those movies that penetrates the deepest layers of your mind and stays there. The complex plot and themes often feel overwhelming, but satisfyingly so. Not to mention, the visceral and mesmerising animation leaves barely any room for distraction. It's a film to be watched on the big screen, and not just once.

In today's episode, we discuss Linklater's experimental masterpiece, rotoscoping and all. Visual appeal aside, it is also fairly dense in its ideas (as mentioned previously), so it does call for close attention, and we've tried our best to cover everything we found most interesting!

The film touches on existentialism, politics, dreams, death, metaphysics and the nature of reality, to name a few.

We hope you watch the film before listening to the conversation, and also that you reach out with any thoughts you might have! It's a work that's well-worth detailed revisitation.

Mentioned in the episode:

Michio Kaku - Why Physics Ends the Free Will Debate 

Strauss-Howe Generational Theory 

William Strauss and Neil Howe - The Fourth Turning 

Stanford University (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute) - Can the sleeping brain create unique people that the waking brain has never seen before?  

If you could drink an elixir that extended your life by another week, would you do it? What if it extended your life by a month, or a year? Ten years? A hundred?

In an article titled "Life is Good", John Martin Fischer explores the idea of immortality, and how an immortal life could retain meaning.

All of us pursue so-called "projects" in our lives - activities that make our time on this planet worth it. Activities that are best described as our raisons d'être. However, would life still be meaningful if all we ever did was the little things? If all we ever did was eat, sleep, maybe read, or listened to music? Kissed our parents on the forehead and told them we loved them? What then?

Is existential boredom curable? Is persistence in life the cure?

This was an interesting read, to say the least. It isn't often we come across arguments for immortality, and although this article didn't have us entirely convinced, it made us consider possibilities we hadn't even thought of previously.

Let us know what you think! How would you feel about living forever?

Mentioned in the episode: 

Life is good - John Martin Fischer 

In our previous episode, we began our discussion on Lars Svendsen's 'Moods and the Meaning of Philosophy', where we spoke about the role of moods in behaviour, and how that has an influence on the practice of philosophy.

Today, we take that conversation forward, but focus more specifically on the meaning of philosophy and why the both of us find the subject interesting.

Certainly, philosophy can be boring, but this was a much-needed, reflexive talk about why that is the case, and what the potential antidotes to boredom could be.

In our previous episode, we discussed historical views on death, the meaning of human existence, and death as a form of estrangement. Today, we pick up where we left off and analyse the grief and mourning that follows death. Fuchs also surprised us with some insightful sections on immortality and posthumanism that we had an absolute blast discussing. Don't miss this one!

Considering the length and density of the discussion, the episode has been divided into sections according to the structure of the essay itself, the  timestamps to which are below:

Part 1: 1:10

Part 2: 39:05

Part 3: 61:10

We hope you enjoy this one; it was a satisfyingly tough nut to crack.

"The only hopeful counterpart to death is love as the principle of human sympathy and as the social principle of socialism".

Send us a message if you would like to read the essay yourself (we highly recommend you do)!

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"Capitalism and class society lead to inequality, instrumentalist thinking, unhappiness and loneliness. Capitalism makes people unhappy, and in some ways drives them mad. Violence in the form of crime, including murder is unavoidable within capitalism".

We have, so far, been dealing with relatively abstract and idealist philosophical ideas, on their own. For our next pair of episodes, however, we will be looking at material realities and how (possibly absurd) concepts like death fit into a capitalist framework, using Christian Fuchs' Death and Love: The Metaphysics of Communication. With excerpts from thinkers like Thomas Nagel, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Karl Marx, this chapter (part of a larger book titled "Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory") raises (uncomfortable) questions about the nature of human relationships and the role of socialism in combating the phenomenon of death.

Considering the length and density of the discussion, the episode has been divided into sections according to the structure of the essay itself, the timestamps to which are below:

Part 1: 7:10

Part 2: 17:40

Part 3: 57:10

We hope you enjoy this one; it was a satisfyingly tough nut to crack.

"The only hopeful counterpart to death is love as the principle of human sympathy and as the social principle of socialism".

Send us a message if you would like to read the essay yourself (we highly recommend you do)!

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Email - [email protected]

Would the existence of God, or a superior being, change our moral systems? Is a moral system with God just as effective as a Godless moral system? We continue our discussion with these interesting questions and go where the rest of this fascinating paper takes us.

Join us in our final episode on The Moral Philosopher and The Moral Life

Mentioned in the episode:

The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

Is there an objective morality? If there is, how do we find it? If there isn't, how do we prevent infinite moral regress?

Such questions have plagued philosophers for centuries, yet remain unanswered. However, every so often, there comes a theory that seems to go farther in the path of progress than anything before it, paving the way for new discussions and a renewed faith in moral philosophy.

19th-century philosopher-psychologist William James treatise on ethics, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, is exactly that. James explores the possibility of a perfectly ethical world, and how sentient beings with vastly different desires would go about realising such a world.

In this episode, we talk of similar themes using James's paper as a focal point and think specifically of how one might use psychology, metaphysics, and casuistry to solve some of life's most ambiguous problems.

Mentioned in the episode:

The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

Today, in our concluding episode on Yi Yi, we discuss what makes this masterpiece so loveable. We revisit our favourite characters, dialogues, and scenes and break them down to understand why they meant so much to us. Additionally, we explore the possibility of a Yi Yi-esque film set in India and how such a calming, authentic display of life would manifest itself here.

We enjoyed watching and discussing this movie thoroughly and we hope that our discussion encourages you to watch it too. Believe us, you won't regret it.

Mentioned in the episode:

Yi Yi

Ocean Waves