Alright, welcome back to Žižek and So On this time we’re talking again with old mate Todd McGowan. This was recorded on Valentines Day 2025 and Tim was busy shopping for eggs.

We’re diving into Todd’s new book Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity to talk inutility and the promise of pure excess in the commodity form. Why can’t we have McDonalds at home? What is capitalism’s magic trick, and where are the dead birds? 

Up next we’ve got an episode dedicated solely to Todd’s book staging a series of examples to explore the theoretical underpinnings of the book. 

SUPPORT THE PODCAST HERE to access our Discord, more interviews, more episodes and our SHORT SESSIONS!

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we’re back for 2025 with a new PATREON episode and while Tim's drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere we’re talking Binocular rivalry, the authorlessness of AI, the Dead Internet Theory, Mr Beast…and what happens when a Rabbi, Businessman, and a poor ordinary Jew talk to God.

This is PART TWO in our series on Mladen Dola’rs Rumors through Zizek's recent comments on psychoanalysis, and the strange logic of knowledge in the age of information overload.

Can we know too much? Is the production of knowledge necessarily good? What’s the difference between rumour and conspiracy? Is it a conspiracy or platform capitalism functioning smoothly?

Thanks to our PATREONS for another year of the show! 

⁠Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month!⁠

See you in Paris,

Ž&…

Alright...as you know Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar are the founding members of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis with Alenka Zupančič as part of their Troika, and this week we have our first episode of a new series we're doing on Mladen Dolar's upcoming book Rumors as part of the Theory Redux editions with Polity Press.

A little birdie told me that Tim is busy moving house and we're talking the general rumorization of society from Socrates to Trump, Franz Kafka's the Trial, Lacan's ethology, JD Vance and his couch, Castaways, and Cindy Crawford.

A lot of people are talking about it!

Thanks to everyone for all of the support and apologies for the episode delay...rumors abound!

SUPPORT THE PODCAST HERE - for more episodes, interviews, SHORT SESSIONS and our Discord!

See You in Paris!

Ž&...

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, this is a PATREON PREVIEW and we're back with the wonderful PETER ROLLINS talking Donald Trump's Sharpie & the rise of Obscene Masters, Paul Tillich, Simone Weil, Badiou and fidelity to an Event, Religion as a truth procedure, Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, and of course...Seamus gambling with God.

LISTEN TO THE FIRST PART OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH PETER HERE!

Big thanks to Peter and all of you over the years who have asked us to have a chat with him and we look forward to doing it again!

Stay tuned because we have a few very exciting guests before the end of the year...

Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month and our new SHORT SESSIONS series for $5 a month!

See you in Paris!

Ž&...

Alright, we’ve got some Good News…God is Dead!

But does he know he’s dead?

This week is PART ONE with the wonderful PETER ROLLINS and we’re talking Death of God theology; belief, knowledge, and Faith. We get into Christian Atheism, Peter’s Church of the Contradiction, and why Nothing Lives, Nothing Binds, & Nothing Saves.

What does Bigfoot have to do with ontological incompleteness & Slavoj Žižek’s work on Quantum Physics? Why is Atheism not Atheist enough?

Big thanks to all of you over the years who have asked us to have a chat with Peter…

To hear more with Peter head over to our PATREON for PART TWO next week and access to our discord, all our other patreon episodes, interviews and SHORT SESSIONS!

See you in Paris!

Ž&...

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we're on our season break & here is the fourth episode of our new PATREON series SHORT SESSIONS and we’re talking Donald Trump, Freud's Totem & Taboo, and Todd McGowan's End of Dissatisfaction. This week it's cannibalism, the Unabomber, societies of prohibition, societies of enjoyment, and of course...the horror of incest. 

Spooky stuff to think about after Halloween.

Who ate the last cannibal?

Big thanks to our Patreon @moonraker1 for the episode request, and if any of you out there have an idea for an episode email us at [email protected] 

…Short sessions, variable length sessions, however you wanna put it, in these episodes we’ll wrap them up because of something that is said, rather than the tyranny of the clock…

SUPPORT US ON PATREON!

See you in Paris,

Enjoy!

Alright, we’re ⁠Living in the End Times⁠ and this is the FOURTH and FINAL episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse.

So far in our series we’ve taken a look at the economy focussing on intellectual property, the biogenetic revolution, nature and the ideology of ecology, and today we’ll look at the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the one Žižek locates in the space of the global commons of humanity,  what he describes as the explosive growth of social division or new forms of apartheid, new walls and slums...

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

A special thank you to everyone who has been reaching out to us about this new series, it's been much appreciated!

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, we’re ⁠Living in the End Times⁠, and this is the fourth and final episode in our series on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse.

So far in our series we’ve taken a look at the economy focussing on intellectual property, the biogenetic revolution, nature and the ideology of ecology, and today we’ll look at the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the one Žižek locates in the space of the global commons of humanity,  what he describes as the explosive growth of social division or new forms of apartheid, new walls and slums...

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

A special thank you to everyone who has been reaching out to us about this new series, it's been much appreciated!

After this we're taking a season break for two weeks but there'll still be some PATREON episodes! 

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

Alright, we’re ⁠Living in the End Times⁠!

The commons of our culture has been captured and this is the third episode in a series we’re doing on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or as Žižek sometimes puts it, the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. 

This week we’re talking Nature & Ecology. Does Nature exist? Can you eat plastic ice cream? 

Žižek says we are approaching a whole series of critical points, and the question is: can the global liberal democratic system – the capitalist system – deal with them or not?

See you in Paris!

Ž&…

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

Alright, here's another PATREON EPISODE PREVIEW

This week we’re talking Spies for the People, Whistleblowers, Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and the Logic of the Bomb.

Slavoj Žižek asks, "Did WikiLeaks open our eyes to the illusion of freedom?"

Was the only surprising thing about the WikiLeaks revelations that they contain no surprises? Or did we learn exactly what we expected to learn?

The real disturbance was at the level of appearances: we can no longer pretend we don’t know what everyone knows we know…

Alenka Zupančič says that “Knowledge thus adopts a new and different role: it is no longer simply something to be disavowed but - paradoxically - something that can help us disavow (the real of this same knowledge).“

So what happens when someone yells THEATRE in a crowded fire? Why doesn’t revelation necessarily liberate? Is Julian Assange an Antingone figure? 

What does Norm Mcdonald have to tell us about the register of truth in the public domain?

Thanks to our Patreon @tarryingwiththenegative for this weeks episode idea!

See you in Paris!

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