Thales’ Well

On the Truth of Snuff with Mark McKenna

A podcast with my colleague Dr Mark McKenna who is an Associate Professor at Staffordshire University. We talked about horror films. Specifically, we talked about the the snuff movie as a form of horror. We also talked about the cultural mythologies that have grown up around the concept of snuff, how this mythology transformed in the technological age as well issues pertaining to distribution, marketing and desensitization. Please note we discuss extreme violence and sexual violence in this podcast.

You can find out more about Mark via his personal website and his university webpage. Dr Mark McKenna is an Associate Professor in the Film and Media Industries and Director of the Centre for Research in the Digital Entertainment and Media Industries at Staffordshire University. Mark’s research is largely centered on cult and horror cinema, he is the author of Nasty Business: The Marketing and Distribution of the Video Nasties  (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) and Snuff (Liverpool University Press, 2023), and is co-editor of the Routledge collection Horror Franchise Cinema (2021), and author of the report Silicon Stoke 2023: Developing Film, TV and Other Content Production in North Staffordshire and is he is currently working on his third monograph, a study of the John Milius surf film Big Wednesday (1978) for the Routledge series Cinema and Youth Cultures.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

 

On the Embrace of Capital with Don Milligan

Don Milligan is back to discuss his new book The Embrace of Capital  (Zero Books: 2022). In this , Don recounts and analyses his history of social and political activism interrogating the reasons he thinks working people have a love-hate relationship with capitalism but ultimately embrace it. But equally, Don tells us how working people hate insecurity, inequality, greed and love civic and political freedom. In our discussion, we chatted about royal weddings, royal funerals, rule of law, egalitarianism, the diversity of working class experience, exploitation, fairness, gentrification, technology and lots more!

You can buy a copy of the book here and here. Dr Don Milligan taught a course on the theory and practice of anti-capitalism at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research examines how commercial society gives rise to political movements. He campaigned for the gay liberation movement for many years. Don writes regular columns for his website “Off the Cuff”. You can find a collection of his writings here. You can also listen to Don’s cultural history of gay rights in Britain on Thales Well here. He tweets at: @Don Milligan2020

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Architecture with Graham Harman

On this episode Professor Graham Harman returns to talk about architecture and philosophy. We had a fascinating conversation discussing architecture in relation to the history of philosophy. Graham has tackled just this topic in new book Architecture and Objects  (2022), which has recently come out with University of Minnesota Press. We discuss a whole host of topics including the role of the ‘big three’ philosophers – Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze –how their thought informs architecture, and the ways Graham draws on, develops, and applies his own distinctive object-oriented-ontology (Triple O) position to architecture. Graham also talked about teaching architecture as a philosopher, materialism, the dangers of ‘literalism,’ ecology, the ideological dimension of architecture, and of course we spoke about buildings such as Imperial War Museum North, Sydney Opera House, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Newgrange,  and the Tate Gallery London.

Graham Harman is a world-leading philosopher. He works at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles. He has authored several books, articles and journals and you can find more information about him on his institutional webpage. In the discussion Graham mentioned these books specifically Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (2016, Polity), Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (2018, Pelican) and Speculative Realism: An Introduction (2018, Polity).

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and PodBean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

 

On Nietzsche’s Socialism with Robert Miner

Friedrich Nietzsche is usually considered a staunch critic of socialism. My guest on this episode thinks this picture is a lot more complicated than we suspect. Professor Robert Miner suggests Nietzsche offers a very complex picture of what socialism entails, and we should consider Nietzsche as a critic and proponent of socialism. Robert Miner is a Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. You can find a link to his university website here. Robert’s article, which we based this discussion on, is called ‘‘ Nietzsche as Critic and Proponent of Socialism: A Reappraisal Based on Human, All Too Human’’ and you can find it here. Robert has published a number of books on Nietzsche and other philosopher. You can buy his book on Nietzsche’s The Gay Science here, and his book on Nietzsche and Montaigne here.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On Simone Weil with Tiff Thomas

This episode I am talking to Dr Tiff Thomas. We discuss the philosophy, ideas and politics of activist, mystic, worker and educator Simone Weil. 

Tiff is a lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University and specializes in Spinoza. He is also interested in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Simone Weil. You can find out more about Tiff here. Tiff is a co-leader of the AHRC Funded UK Simone Weil Research Network which you can follow on Twitter here. You can also find links to his writings on Simone Weil and Spinoza at the bottom of these show notes.

If you would like to study with with me you can find more information about our online education courses MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here.  September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T.

Dr Tiff Thomas' Public Articles:

The Philosophical Salon: ‘Silence is Violence’: Simone Weil on the Impossible Demands of Justice

Latest Publications:

Thomas, C (2022) ‘Simone Weil’s Venice Saved: Pity, Beauty, Friendship’ in Bloomsbury Library for 20th-Century French Thought

Thomas, C (2021) ‘Spinoza on Melancholy and Cheerfulness’ in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review

Thomas, C (2020) ‘On Religious and Cultural Objects: Articulate and Inarticulate Bodies in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Nature’ in European Journal of Philosophy

Thomas, C (2020) ‘Simone Weil: The Ethics of Affliction and the Aesthetics of Attention’, in International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Thomas, C (2020) ‘Brancusi’s Golden Bird and Loy’s “Brancusi’s Golden Bird”: A Spinozist Encounter’ in Philosophy and Literature

On Michel Serres with David Webb

On this podcast I am talking to my colleague Prof. David Webb a philosopher at Staffordshire University. David is the author of Heidegger, Ethics and the Practice of Ontology (Continuum: 2011) and Foucault's Archaeology: Science and Transformation (Edinburgh U.P. 2013). He has published several articles on Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, modern French philosophy. He is especially interested in epistemology and philosophy of science. We talked specifically about French Philosopher Michel Serres. David helped me understand Serres’ influences from Leibniz, Bachelard and ancient atomism, and we talked about what Serres has to say about science, art, poetry and the nature of contingency.

If you would like to find out more about David here is a link to his university web page. If you would like to study with David (and me!) you can find more information about our distance education courses here. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. January and September intakes available either F/T or P/T.

On the Formation of the Modern Self with Felix O’Murchadha

On this episode of Thales’ Well I talk to Prof. Felix O’Murchadha who returns to talk about his new book The Formation of The Modern Self (Bloomsbury, 2022). Felix’s book provides a genealogy of the emergence of the self in the early modern period. We had a very wide-ranging discussion moving from ancient accounts of the self to contemporary versions. We discussed Montaigne, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume and Kant.

Felix is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Galway. You can find more about Felix here. And  here is a link to his University website. You can also find a sample of his writings here. Here is a link to the book at Bloomsbury, and it is also available in all the usual places.

Come study with me on Staffordshire University’s distance learning MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our distance learning MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. January and September intakes available either F/T or P/T.

On Propaganda with Colin Alexander

This episode I had a fantastic discussion with Dr Colin Alexander about propaganda. We discussed the nature of propaganda, how to identify it, its ubiquity, as well as things we might do to mitigate the effect of propaganda on ourselves and society. More specifically, we focussed on a particular case study, with Colin explaining how propaganda is deployed by charitable organisations, companies and governments. In addition, we spoke about representations of charity in culture with reference to Charles Dickens, Andrew Carnegie and Bob Geldof and Live Aid. The blog piece on Andrew Carnegie which formed the basis of our conversation can be found here.

Colin Alexander is Senior Lecturer in Political Communications at Nottingham Trent University, UK. His expertise surrounds propaganda studies, with a particular interest in communications ethics, imperialism and north-south issues. He is also interested in moral philosophy and debates surrounding the role of charity and altruism within society. He is the author of two monograph books: 'China and Taiwan in Central America' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and 'Administering Colonialism and War’ (Oxford University Press, 2019), and he recently published his first edited volume 'The Frontiers of Public Diplomacy: Hegemony, Morality and Power in the International Sphere' (Routledge, 2021).  

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On David Lewis and Possible Worlds with Ben Curtis

On this episode, I discuss analytic philosopher David Lewis' concept of possible worlds with Dr Benjamin Curtis. Ben is  colleague at Nottingham Trent University. We talked about possible worlds, actual worlds, probability, causation and time.

Ben Curtis lectures in Philosophy at Nottingham Trent University. He has published on a wide-variety of themes including epistemology, bioethics, time as well as the philosophical status of antiques. You can find out more about Ben on his university webpage here. Ben has also contributed a number of pieces to The Conversation which you can find here.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

 

 

 

 

On Camus and 'The Plague' with Robert Zaretsky

I had an amazing conversation with Robert Zaretsky who is a Professor of Humanities at the Honors College, University of Houston. We spoke about French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus and his great pandemic novel The Plague. The Plague is currently receiving renewed critical attention due to the Covid-19 pandemic and is set to be re-issued by Penguin. Thus, I thought it would be a good time to discuss the novel. We touched on the background to Camus' novel, the influence of Thucydides on Camus,  silence, ethics, judgement, the distinction between moraliser and moralist, the strange parallels between Camus and George Orwell as well as Camus' perennial relevance.

Rob is a historian of France and literary biographer. Amongst others, he has published two biographies of Albert Camus entitled A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning with Harvard U.P. and Albert Camus: Elements of a Life with Cornell U.P. You can read his recent essay on Camus' The Plague here, and an essay he wrote on online pedagogy for Times Higher Education here. Elsewhere Rob is a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books where you can read his essay on Camus and Simone Weil here, as well as an essay on Franz Kafka here. He has also contributed to New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs and Chronicle of Higher Education. Here is an essay from Foreign Affairs where Rob writes about the importance of books in pandemics.  You can find out more about Rob on his university website here.

You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.