Ryan and Todd pay tribute to the recently deceased theorist Fredric Jameson. They note his deep and wide-ranging contributions to a variety of fields and his unique ability to find something valuable in the object of his critique.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd explore the classical horror film in terms of the antagonism between life and the beyond, inclusive of death. They focus on the films The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Frankenstein, Invisible Man, Godzilla, and Psycho.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd develop their theory of the heist film as a genre, which they see as structured through the opposition between desire and its object. They examine closely Rififi, The Killing, Heat, Ocean's 11, and Inside Man, as well as touching on many other key films of the genre.Hugh Manon's film noir podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0aQXewY…

Ryan and Todd explore the genre of the sports film, focusing on important entries in the genre such as Chariots of Fire, Rocky, and Heaven Can Wait, among others. They define this genre through the category of the impossible and discuss the relationship between possibility and impossibility as it plays out in the sports film.…

Ryan and Todd discuss what they see as the important moments from Freud's New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis--both its highlights and its lowlights. They explore the role that Freud's 1920 discovery of the death drive plays--or doesn't play--in this work.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd outline the arguments of Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and highlight the key ideas that appear in this work. They also discuss what Freud mentions here that he doesn't address elsewhere.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd delve into the concept of suture, as first developed by Jacques-Alain Miller. They trace the deformation that it underwent through the history of film studies and examine a few films where we can see the different understandings of suture at work.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd discuss the Jacques Lacan's neologism "extimacy," which first occurs in Seminar VII and then disappears. But they theorize that this concept offers an excellent starting point for grasping Lacan's entire project, despite his own sparse use of it.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd explore the prequel as a narrative form. They consider its radical potential and how it might function ideologically. They discuss prequels such as Fire Walk With Me and Better Call Saul.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd theorize the modernist novel as a specific literary form, defined not by its time period but by its structural exigencies. They relate this form to the importance of the ending that function as a cut in the narrative movement rather than as a summation of all that has happened, which contrasts it with previous iterations of the novel.…

Ryan and Todd explore the problem of the ending, focusing on when and why the ending becomes important in film and television. They discuss the relationship between the ending of life and the ending of a work of art, especially in terms of psychoanalytic thinking.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd analyze Slavoj Zizek's contribution in what may be his magnum opus--The Parallax View. They discuss how he builds on the concept of parallax as originally articulated by Kojin Karatani and its implication for Zizek's understanding of politics.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd unpack Jacques Lacan's most well-known seminar--Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. In doing so, they focus on Lacan's own exclusion as a starting point and then delve into two concepts that Lacan does not list among the fundamental ones--subjectivity and the objet a.…

Ryan and Todd analyze the complexity of Jacques Lacan's Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. They discuss the various notions that appear there--from das Ding to sublimation to death drive to the ethics of desire.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd continue their exploration of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason with the Introduction. They discuss the importance of his critique of dogmatic metaphysics and the incredible discovery of the synthetic a priori judgment.Ryan's sports article: https://link.springer.com/journal/41282/online-first…

Ryan and Todd interpret David Lynch's Blue Velvet by paying special attention to the Kantian dimension of the film. They consider the film in terms of the thing-in-itself and the sublime.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd begin their analysis of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by working through the prefaces to the first and second edition of the work. They focus on the radicality of Kant's breakthrough and the role that the limit plays in his philosophy.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd consider the concept of symbolic castration as it develops in psychoanalysis and as it bears on both politics and culture. They relate symbolic castration to some of the key concepts in psychoanalytic theory, including fetishistic disavowal and the phallus.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd explore the working of the dialectical reversal, how weaknesses can turn into strengths, how successes can turn into failures. They look at this through a variety of everyday examples and a few choice filmic ones.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd think through Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, focusing especially on the parallels with psychoanalysis and the work's political significance. They also address the ramifications of the private language argument that Wittgenstein formulates.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd discuss Ludwig Wittgenstein's project in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. They begin by looking at this project on its own terms and taking stock of its grand ambitions. Then they examine its intersection with the concerns of psychoanalysis and dialectics.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

In their annual Christmas episode, Ryan and Todd look at the 1980s Christmas film, focusing on Christmas Story, Trading Places, Scrooged, Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone. They discuss the nostalgia that predominates this period of Christmas films and how this limits the political reach of these works.…

Ryan and Todd examine perhaps the founding text of modern Western philosophy--Rene Descartes' Discourse on the Method. They consider how Descartes articulates an egalitarian philosophy through his conception of radical doubt and examine the influence of this text of subsequent thinkers and on theory today.…

Ryan and Todd discuss the structure of envy, its relationship to jealousy, and its political implications. They make reference to Othello and Seven as landmark explorations of envy, while also noting its relationship with the other deadly sins.Av Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley

Ryan and Todd discuss the generic development of science fiction cinema while also addressing its philosophical implications. They include a deeper analysis of Metropolis, The Thing From Another World, Forbidden Planet, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.See:Voyage to the Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLVChRVfZ74Metropolis: https://www.youtube.com/w…