Recommended watch - https://youtu.be/K1kxCBvExsU?si=nQbYKDq1n0X_-mDf Todd McGowan returns to the podcast for a conversation about Lacan, language, desire, culture, AI, and the mental health crisis. We talk about the master signifier, the sinthome, why subjectivity emerges where language fails, why people desire things that do not make them happy, and why social media seems engineered to intensify anxiety, guilt, and psychic fragmentation. We also get into race, culture, identity, purity politics, trans subjectivity, domestication, and whether large language models could ever truly desire anything or become subjects in the psychoanalytic sense. Somewhere in there, we also discuss Hegel, Star Wars, Michael Phelps, and more. 00:00 – Intro / Todd McGowan returns 00:52 – What is the sinthome? (Lacan + Joyce) 04:50 – What is the master signifier? 07:01 – Cultural appropriation and instability of culture 09:19 – Why culture isn’t “owned” (and why it’s always oppressive) 12:27 – Is all culture oppressive? 13:40 – Race, pride, and why race doesn’t “exist” biologically 16:58 – Should you be proud of intelligence? 17:39 – Language, abstraction, and why clarity can confuse 19:20 – Israel, Zionism, and what people actually mean 22:06 – Why race is a product of racism 23:00 – Signifier vs signified vs referent 27:15 – Naming, identity, and why your name isn’t “you” 30:34 – Subjectivity = where language fails 32:27 – What is the subject? (Kant, Hegel, Freud) 35:05 – How desire forms (and why it resists authority) 37:35 – Why you can’t know your own unconscious 38:45 – LLMs, language, and meaning 40:22 – Can AI be a subject? 43:40 – Does AI have desire? 46:39 – Can anything exist without desire? (animals vs humans) 48:54 – Domestication and “neuroticizing” pets 49:02 – Trans identity, biology, and desire 52:17 – Desire as collision between body and language 55:21 – Why desire ≠ what you want 57:24 – Michael Phelps, success, and emptiness 58:23 – The mental health crisis (social media + superego) 1:00:00 – Attention spans and students post-social media 1:02:21 – Purity culture, canceling, and moral signaling 1:03:08 – Hegel’s “beautiful soul” 1:04:27 – Is politics replacing religion? 1:04:58 – Loss of public space / third spaces 1:06:24 – When should you push back vs ignore people? 1:07:33 – Life advice: thinking dialectically
