Trash Talks
Two friends read theory, crack jokes, and analyze what they find in the trash can of ideology. Get bonuses & companion content at https://www.patreon.com/trashtalksacademy
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Ecrits: Lacan's Dialectic of Desire
05/14/2021
Ecrits: Lacan's Dialectic of Desire
Woody and Lana try to make sense of "The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious" (a famously hard reading) from Lacan's Ecrits (a famously hard book). Freud, Hegel, Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Psychoanalysis, Structural Linguistics, Structuralism, Russian Formalism, metaphor, metonymy, The Interpretation of Dreams Get extra episodes on Patreon: Facebook group: Trash Talks Academy Email: [email protected] Theme song by Sun Kin
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Trump and Dump
03/20/2021
Trump and Dump
In a special bonus episode Woody sits down with a friend who didn’t want to use his real name because of his “job” or something (coward). This is a deep dive into President Deals himself, Donald J Trump. How’d he get in, what does he mean for America, and where are we going from here? You should probably play Green Day’s Time of Your Life while you listen to this one for the vibes - I wanted to put it in but I didn’t want to pay licensing fees.
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Not An Adam Curtis Interview
03/11/2021
Not An Adam Curtis Interview
Woody and Lana chat about the new doc, individualism vs. collectivism, and why even Adam Curtis has bad China takes. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Lacan, China Get extra episodes on Patreon: Facebook group: Trash Talks Academy Email: [email protected] Theme song by Sun Kin
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[1] Propaganda *TEASER*
03/02/2021
[1] Propaganda *TEASER*
In this first episode of her new investigative series “Balkanizing China,” Lana explores how propaganda works in a liberal democracy. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Patreon: Eddie Bernays, Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, the Gulf War, Uyghur genocide, communism, democracy, liberalism, United Fruit, CIA, foreign intervention, coup, Guatemala, Iran, public relations, New York Times, TikTok, CSIS, Adrien Zenz, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, mass media, public interest, expert testimony, victim testimony, atrocity propaganda, “believe science,” NED, front groups, geopolitics Send us an email: [email protected]
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Baudrillard vs. Biden's Reality Czar
02/12/2021
Baudrillard vs. Biden's Reality Czar
A close reading of the NYT article "How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis," which can be read here: Patreon: Facebook group: Trash Talks Academy Email: Theme song by Sun Kin
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The Politics of Logging Off
01/26/2021
The Politics of Logging Off
We read Jodi Dean's "Communicative Capitalism" and discuss the politics of logging off. (Zizek, psychoanalysis, technofetishism, interpassivity, depoliticization) Facebook group: Trash Talks Academy Patreon: Email: [email protected] Theme song by Sun Kin
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COUP LET THE DOGS OUT
12/15/2020
COUP LET THE DOGS OUT
Woody and Lana talk psychoanalysis and fantasies of coup and civil war surrounding the election. Lacan, jouissance, fantasy structure, election, Trump, liberalism Facebook group: Trash Talks Academy Patreon: Twitter: Email: [email protected] Theme song by Sun Kin
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SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (they rule)
11/23/2020
SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (they rule)
Sovereign citizens (an oxymoron), the only cool libertarians (another oxymoron). We discuss libertarianism, anarchism, sovereign citizens (freemen), tax protesters, the redemption movement, identity, paper terrorism, financial schemes, legal grifting, QAnon, the FBI, CPS, and so on. Facebook group: Trash Talks Academy Patreon: Twitter: Email: [email protected] Theme song by Sun Kin
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The Work of Art in the Age of Lil Miquela
11/02/2020
The Work of Art in the Age of Lil Miquela
This week we talk theory and virtual influencers. Who is Lil Miquela? What's her relation to capital? Why are tech bros obsessed with authenticity? How can performance studies and Teri Silvio's animation theory help us unpack the simulation? And what would Walter Benjamin have to say about all this? Theme song by Sun Kin Email us: [email protected]
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PILLED TO THE GILLS
10/15/2020
PILLED TO THE GILLS
We're back, and we're pilled!
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EXPLAIN DELEUZE TO ME: Faciality
07/12/2020
EXPLAIN DELEUZE TO ME: Faciality
Friend of the show Dr. Elizabeth Vasileva is back to talk through plateau lucky number 7, 'Year Zero: Faciality.' What is Deleuze and Guatarri's concept of the face and how can it help us understand racism? We also get into some good stuff identity and the Body without Organs. Lots of laughs, lots of info, tons of fun for the whole family! Ok, maybe not the whole family, but the part of the family that wants to learn theory is gonna love it. Read Dr. Vasileva’s work on Deleuze and Anarchism here: Get more content on Patreon: Watch the livestream: Trash Talks on Youtube Tweet at us: Email us: Theme song by Sun Kin
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AN EXPERT EXPLAINS DELEUZE TO US
06/25/2020
AN EXPERT EXPLAINS DELEUZE TO US
Finally! Dr. Elizabeth Vasileva, who wrote her dissertation on Deleuze and Anarchist Ethics, explains some basic concepts to us. We talk Difference and Repetition, metaphysics, machines, becoming, and more. Read Dr. Vasileva’s work on Deleuze and Anarchism here: Watch the livestream: Trash Talks on Youtube Get more content on Patreon: Tweet at us: Email us: [email protected] Theme song by Sun Kin
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COINTELPRO & SOCIETIES OF CONTROL w/Aminah
06/12/2020
COINTELPRO & SOCIETIES OF CONTROL w/Aminah
This week Black educator, artist, and revolutionary Aminah joins Woody & Lana to talk COINTELPRO and Gilles Deleuze’s famous essay Postscript on the Societies of Control. We get into COINTELPRO’s history, mission, and tactics. We talk specifically about how the FBI took down the Black Panthers from the inside out and how the noble party, which started the Free Breakfast for Children Program (just one of 60 important social programs they championed) is still suffering the effects of the covert FBI takedown. Then we read through Deleuze’s short essay on Societies of Control, providing commentary on the essay’s increasing relevance and its applicability to the FBI’s covert intelligence operations. Fluent French speaker Aminah elucidates portions of the essay which are lost in the English translation. Correction to Lana’s comment on the origin of policing in the United States: policing in the South started during the antebellum period in the form of slave patrols, whose job was to catch runaway slaves and discipline defiant slaves. ————— Link to film “The FBI’s War on Black America”: Link to “Postscript on the Societies of Control” by Gilles Deleuze: ————— Watch the livestream: Trash Talks on Youtube Get more content on Patreon: Tweet at us: Email us: [email protected] ————— Listen to Aminah’s music on Soundcloud: Follow Aminah on IG: ————— Theme song by Sun Kin
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EXPLAIN DELEUZE TO ME: On Several Regimes of Signs
05/28/2020
EXPLAIN DELEUZE TO ME: On Several Regimes of Signs
This week, Lana & Woody discuss “587 BC- AD 70: On Several Regimes of Signs” from A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari. Topics: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Guattari erasure, semiotics, Saussure, CS Peirce, Anti-Oedipus, signifier, signified, signifying regime, post-signifying regime, faciality, assemblage, line of flight Additional content: Watch the livestream: Tweet @ us: Join our Facebook Group: Trash Talks Academy Follow us on IG: Theme song by Sun Kin
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REOPEN AMERICA !
05/20/2020
REOPEN AMERICA !
What are these wacky lockdown protests all about? Why do people love Trump and hate masks? What IS the price of freedom? We do a deep dive into the discourse and talk castration, jouissance, ideology, astroturfing, faciality, and the figure of the debtor-addict. Lacan, Deleuze & Guattari, Baudrillard Theme song by Sun Kin
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EXPLAIN DELEUZE TO ME: Rhizome
05/06/2020
EXPLAIN DELEUZE TO ME: Rhizome
“The two of us recorded this podcast together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. There is no ideal speaker-listener, only us, your multiplicitous podcast hosts, and you, the actual listener—we form an assemblage, we are machines, plugged into machines, machines are plugged into us. Am I getting it right? Of course there is no “I”, but then again we are not trying to reach the point where we no longer say I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether we say I. The point? Oh yes, the point is we are reading Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Welcome to the introduction: Rhizome. Read along with us: We will be reading this book like a Rhizome (NOT linearly). Up next: Chapter 5: On Several Regimes of Signs. And yes, we namedrop a lot of old (mostly French) guys in the episode. We refuse to apologize for this, and if you do not like it, we encourage you to plug the following coordinates into the Google machine: Saussure, Lacan, Baudrillard, Habermas, Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, Michel Foucault, Derrida, Marshall McLuhan, Badiou, Bataille Theme song by Sun Kin
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The Culture Industry
05/01/2020
The Culture Industry
Adorno and who-heimer? The Frankfurt what-now? Your favorite podcasters (Lana & Woody) are back to discuss the Culture Industry chapter of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. What is the entertainment industry? Whose interests are being served? What is mass culture? I don’t know, maybe you listen and find out; I’m not going to tell you everything—I’m just the episode description. Sound-mixing by Olaf Woldan Theme song by Sun Kin
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QUARANTINED w/Katy in Bali
03/15/2020
QUARANTINED w/Katy in Bali
New Trash Talks series QUARANTINED wherein Lana speaks to friends around the world about their experiences with COVID-19 / Coronavirus / SARS 2.0 and quarantine. In this episode, Lana chats with Shanghai-based American Katy about the origins, spread, and threat of the virus; shut-in / livestream culture; China’s wild response on social media; civil unrest; and what happens when America’s soft power congeals into hardened sewage. KATY @killerweixin based in China Mainland for 10+ years ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿ 💨 originally cofounding DIY space @basement.6 collective 🤮 pretendering in social pwactice uwu and freelancing. Later a recipient of Swatch Art Peace Hotel Residency 💩 for unofficial research in digital anthropology & depressing art bullshit while meeting Lana in her wechat meme group ! ✨ WHATWAS2016✨ Now livestream / community engineering for SHANGHAI COMMUNITY RADIO @shcr_radio since 2017. LIVELINK:SHCRAD.IO An audio/visual netradio for Shanghai nightlife scene, SHCR recently launched an emergency 🚨 home stream series 《不要出门》[Dont Go Out] for the community in quarantine. With over 100 DJ streams, some mixes managed to be archived to https://soundcloud.com/shcr_radio Find the mentioned interview with 2 friends ❤️ quarantined for 20+ days in their Wuhan home ➕⛽️ on SHCR’s YouTube channel Sound-mixing by Olaf Woldan Theme song by Sun Kin
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Love in the Time of Coronavirus
03/05/2020
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
In the wake of Super Lame Tuesday and the looming pandemic, Lana calls up Woody for some friendly and uplifting theory talk. The two discuss the symptoms and spread of the Coronavirus, what love means in times like this, why neoliberalism is the real killer, and most importantly, how to keep hope in the face of a much more insidious disease: centrism. Get tickets to Woody’s show: Sound-mixing by Olaf Woldan Theme song by Sun Kin **Update since recording the episode: CDC has started reporting numbers again! And Warren dropped out. Hallelujah. And it appears that Pepe is making a return…
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Clown 101 with Dean Evans
10/31/2019
Clown 101 with Dean Evans
This week Lana and Woodrow sit down with the world renowned clown, mime, and generally cool guy Dean Evans for our first ever interview! Clowns; you mean them guys with the crazy hair and the big shoes? No (you fool, you oaf) we mean a different, much cooler thing. Something that’s both a style of performance and an archetype that exists in almost every world culture. What do you talk about with a clown? Here’s a search engine tailored list of what we did: Where did clowns come from? What is the history of clowning? What is the clown’s relationship to language? Why do clowns exist? What is the function of the clown? Ancient Chinese clowns (Lana said that one clown’s name wrong so you’ll just have to google it) Paradox of the clown Principles of clowning Masks and concealing identity Radical honesty Presence Bouffon Native American clowns, clown society Jester Status, hierarchy And of course Jacques Lecoq If you want more of Dean, check out his immersive clown group Slow Dance in LA or check out the Bouffon troop he directs: Mil Grus. Theme song by Sun Kin https://spoti.fi/33m0C83 Sound mixing by Olaf Woldan More content at
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WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY: The Joker vs. Erving Goffman
10/09/2019
WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY: The Joker vs. Erving Goffman
Did I ever tell you how I got these scars? Oh, that’s a different movie? Ok yea we knew that. Using the power of anthropology, psychoanalysis, Erving Goffman’s social theory, and their big ol’ brains, Lana and Woody figure out what this movie “The Joker” is really about. Spoiler alert: it’s not about incels. Theme song by Sun Kin https://spoti.fi/33m0C83 Sound mixing by Olaf Woldan More content at
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Hijacked by Hegel
10/04/2019
Hijacked by Hegel
An episode without a theme? How delightfully droll! How will our heroes fill an hour when they have nothing prepared but their own genius minds? Would you believe it’s mostly by talking about some dead white guy? Because yea this episode accidentally got hijacked by-- What is the spirit of history? Why are we only free inside the constraint of law? Tune in to hear these extremely complicated concepts explained by two people who have read exactly one chapter of Hegel. Theme song by Sun Kin: https://t.co/gldIbCMD8V More content at patreon.com/TrashTalksAcademy
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Sucking on the Teet of Capital
09/27/2019
Sucking on the Teet of Capital
Imagine a world where everything your body needs is pumped into your mouth paste form by some sort of Amazon drone. Wow! You could really get a lot of work done with all your extra time. In a follow up to “An Amazing Opportunity!: MLMs, Capitalism, & Religion”—we use the anthropology of food and psychoanalysis to discover what’s REALLY in those Herbalife shakes.
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An Amazing Opportunity!: MLMs, Capitalism, & Religion
09/19/2019
An Amazing Opportunity!: MLMs, Capitalism, & Religion
It’s me: someone you went to high school with whose life has taken some TURNS and I want to help you be your own boss! Let me just say right off the. At that this is NOT a scam, once you get 4 to 5 people working under you you will be making real MONEY. Just kidding, it’s us. In this ep we look at Multi-Level Marketing schemes through the lens of Durkheim’s “Elementary Forms of Religious Life” and discover that capitalism has all the hallmarks of a religion. It’s good stuff, folks. More content at patreon.com/TrashTalksAcademy
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Mediation & Dating *UNLOCKED*
09/13/2019
Mediation & Dating *UNLOCKED*
A continuation on our Online Dating episode. Get more content at Patreon.com/TrashTalksAcademy
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Illuminati Secrets Revealed
08/24/2019
Illuminati Secrets Revealed
Is it the globalists? The New World Order? Bilderberg Group? CIA? FBI? No! It’s us, Woody and Lana, your beloved Trash Talks hosts, and this week were talking conspiracy theories. Why do we love them and what are they doing to our minds? Bust out your big wall of pictures and get ready to start connecting them with strings because we’re gonna bust this whole thing WIDE open. Visit us at patreon.com/trashtalksacademy for additional content
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The Swiping Subject: Online Dating & The Self
08/13/2019
The Swiping Subject: Online Dating & The Self
This week we crack open some white claws and discuss the following: What kind of self does the dating app assume and construct? What genre is the dating profile? What are the semiotics of your tinder photos? Why do we even use dating apps in the first place? Dating talk starts about 30 minutes in, folks!
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#selfcare
08/08/2019
#selfcare
Self care: is it good or bad? Would you be surprised to find out the answer is BOTH? Is that not a satisfying answer? Well just listen, we promise we really tease it apart good in this one. Also reality isn’t black and white; it’s social actually (that’s in the episode too). Pour a glass of water, turn off Netflix and treat yourself to some gotdang discourse, you turkey! You’ll be glad you did. Articles:
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Think and Grow Rich, Bitch
07/31/2019
Think and Grow Rich, Bitch
What would Lacan say about anime profile pictures? Why do we engage in self-help? Is self-help a neoliberal grift? What are the connections between religion, philosophy, and politics? What is progress fetishism?
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More Signs and Stuff
07/24/2019
More Signs and Stuff
Your last two brain cells discussing Lacan (Part 2 of Semiotics)
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