Explore every episode of the podcast Boreas Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dostoevsky Part 2: Resurrection from the Underground | 01 Jan 2025 | 01:38:10 | |
We start where we left off in Part 1: Dostoevsky the romantic wakes up and realizes he lives in the underground, filled with resentment, frustrated ambition, and tormenting idols. The underground man struggles to break free in the character of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment and the teacher in The Gambler. | |||
| Dostoevsky Part 1: From Romanticism to the Underground | 29 Dec 2024 | 01:14:08 | |
A review of the life and works of the great Fyodor Dostoevsky following René Girard's book Dostoevsky: Resurrection from the Underground. A masterpiece of literary criticism in its own right, this book brings edifying and brilliant insights into Dostoevsky's own masterpieces, but only by connecting them to the novelist's lesser works and personal life. | |||
| Math and Masochism | 14 Dec 2024 | 00:57:47 | |
René Girard's mysterious quote on masochist reasoning being a model of scientific induction. Connecting masochistic conclusions about the nature of the universe to that of the scientist. What logical genius may have in common with masochism – the idiot-savant stereotype. Why modern materialistic and atheistic ideologies tend to turn sadomasochistic. | |||
| The Mimetic Status of the Devil | 08 Dec 2024 | 01:21:44 | |
The Devil is trending. Talk of demons can be heard from Tucker Carlson, theorists on UFOs and AI, right-wing podcasters interviewing exorcists, and the Psychedelic Renaissance aficionados. So I go over what I recently wrote about the devil on my blog: Girard's anthropological interpretation of the Devil as the force behind seduction, conflict, and accusation; the victimary mechanism as the Satanic mechanism, depicted in the story of the Gerasene Demoniac and the parable of Satan casting out Satan; the devil in schizophrenia and in psychedelic experiences. | |||
| The Double Bind and Schizophrenia | 04 Nov 2024 | 01:31:01 | |
| |||
| Shakespeare Part 2 | 11 Jul 2024 | 01:27:15 | |
Last episode for the summer. Shakespeare snobbery. Two audiences of Shakespeare: the mob and the initiates. Two layers in Othello and Hamlet: romanticism and mimesis. Othello: thirst for the exotic and the death wish. Hamlet: disillusionment with the violent sacred. Shakespeare the man: relationship trauma and dramatic genius. | |||
| Shakespeare Part 1 | 09 Jul 2024 | 01:30:00 | |
René Girard wrote a book of literary criticism of Shakespeare titled "Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare." The book makes centuries of Shakespeare critics look like fools while confirming the bard himself as a monumental literary figure. This podcast summarises some of the big points of Girard's analysis of Shakespeare. | |||
| Turn the Other Cheek | 01 Jul 2024 | 01:23:58 | |
Christ's admonitions to turn the other cheek, love thy enemy, etc., from the Sermon on the Mount unsettle many brave Christians. We interpret these admonitions conclusively with the help of René Girard's mimetic exegesis. Take courage soldier! – Jesus does not advocate cowardice or resignation. We also reference C.S. Lewis, and discuss how "love thy enemy" links to Sun Tzu's precepts in The Art of War. | |||
| Apocalypto Movie Analysis | 25 Jun 2024 | 01:08:34 | |
| |||
| The Call of the Political Void | 13 Jun 2024 | 00:48:37 | |
| |||
| Imitation and Innovation | 27 May 2024 | 01:28:04 | |
| |||
| I Like Modernity | 20 May 2024 | 00:54:00 | |
Modernity is the precious product of Western Christian Tradition. It is good. You can't and you don't want to go back to some fanciful "trad" era. The aim should be to learn how to navigate the novel challenges of our exciting though perilous times, not give up on them. | |||
| Guest Testimony: Modern Malaise | 14 May 2024 | 01:15:01 | |
An early reader of The Modern Malaise tunes into Boreas Podcast to talk about his personal journey through the shadowy valleys of male coming-of-age, one that included many – or rather all – of the challenges covered in the book: an obsession with Nietzsche, a body-building buddy group, online dating, and money Twitter. His impressions and advice on making it through. | |||
| Racism | 22 Apr 2024 | 01:08:06 | |
| |||
| The Infernal Pendulum | 16 Apr 2024 | 01:15:50 | |
| |||
| The Economics Mythology | 09 Apr 2024 | 01:13:51 | |
Keynes as prophet of mature capitalism, against its rival religion of communism. The arcane language of economics sages. Mythologies that economics/capitalism supplanted (and that's a good thing). Nature of mythologies old and new: how they make you feel good early on, and what happens when they run their course. | |||
| Homo Desiderans | 02 Apr 2024 | 01:08:08 | |
| |||
| The Art of War | 26 Mar 2024 | 01:17:12 | |
What is the one single basic principle of all war strategy? Also, there is a discussion of military history and how war changed through to modern times. Were Sun Tzu and Machiavelli cynics? Were European aristocrats who shot each other in pistol duels idiots? How did Napoleon influence modern warfare? Listen to find out. | |||
| Behavioral Finance | 15 Mar 2024 | 00:58:00 | |
A Girardian angle on the stock market. Yes, the market is irrational, and no, it's not because we have "herd instincts" and other traces of evolutionary survival instincts, but because we are mimetic. Investing is like romance. Girard's mimetic theory does not in any way, shape, or form support any Marxist or neo-Marxist attacks on the Western civilisation. | |||
| Conspiracy Theories | 08 Mar 2024 | 01:08:31 | |
| |||
| Addiction | 01 Mar 2024 | 00:57:42 | |
| |||
| Black Pill and Scientism | 23 Feb 2024 | 01:08:45 | |
Exploring the connection between the black pill (resigned mindset) and embracing or rejecting "the flesh." Why scientism is an embracing of the flesh. Why the black pill is a demonic lie that should be rejected and protected against. | |||
| My Grand Inquisition | 16 Feb 2024 | 00:50:20 | |
Some personal background on how I ended up writing and talking so much about Christianity. Reading some of Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" and discussing the big question of individual freedom versus belonging. | |||
| Jews and Antisemitism | 09 Feb 2024 | 01:41:00 | |
Exploring Jews in the role of Girard's archaic scapegoats: magical outsiders who blend in and either bless the community with white magic or curse it with black magic, and how Jews react and act in this role. | |||
| The Katechon | 02 Feb 2024 | 01:07:29 | |
George is back with Virgil for Season 3 of the enchanting, enlightening Boreas Podcast! | |||
| Low Self-Esteem | 29 Jun 2023 | 01:03:03 | |
George closes out the season with a meditation on low self-esteem. How can this increasingly common affliction be explained by a failure in the relationship with our mimetic models? And especially the most decisive mimetic models of our lives – our parents ? How is low self-esteem connected to things like homosexuality, transgenderism, transhumanism, and in general a desire to transcend and transgress everything? How is it related to "scientism" and even science itself? Tune in to find out. | |||
| Sexual and Gender Fluidity | 20 Jun 2023 | 00:59:01 | |
George rushes were respectable scholars fear to tread: the mimetic-theory hypothesis on homosexuality. The idea is that homosexuality arises when the sexual attention and appetite shift from the instinctual object of desire – i.e. a person of the opposite sex – onto the rival. George elaborates on the theory and applies it to the next-level sexual nonconformity we're seeing today: gender fluidity, multiplying types of sexuality, gender transitioning, etc. The phenomenon is explained as resulting from hyper-sexualised culture, but also from individuals trying to differentiate through authentic desire. | |||
| Choosing Models | 12 Jun 2023 | 01:03:00 | |
Virgil is back to talk to George about living the good life. We've done a lot of critique on the frogs and the snowflakes. Now it's time to discuss how to tell the right path and pick role models that will lead us to a good place. It helps to learn what "deviated transcendence" means, as well as the difference between internal and external mediation. Virgil and Charlie touch on some famous names as examples of true heroic exceptions. | |||
| Pickup Artists (PUA) | 06 Jun 2023 | 00:57:35 | |
Charlie is out for this one and George has a head on reckoning with the whole culture of pickup artistry. How PUA doctrine stacks up against the mimetic understanding of desire, why PUA doesn't work, and why you should stay away from it. | |||
| Control Your Desires | 29 May 2023 | 01:00:00 | |
Having laid out all that's wrong with the modern malaise, a debilitating mental illness suffered by both the new right and the new left, George and Virgil set out to discuss what is to be done about it. | |||
| The Biblical Subversion | 22 May 2023 | 00:56:50 | |
George and Virgil are back on their project of subverting the twin neo-paganism of the new right and the postmodern left. These two take a lot of pride in themselves subverting "traditional morals." For the new right, it's Nietzschean revaluation of all values and ceasing to feel sorry for the "refuse" of humanity. For the postmodern left, it's subverting traditional power structures, all of which are oppressive. | |||
| Wokism | 15 May 2023 | 01:05:39 | |
George and Virgil have their take on a topic on which everyone has a take: WOKE CULTURE, or WOKISM. | |||
| Wagners Everywhere | 08 May 2023 | 01:02:13 | |
George and Virgil talk about the parallels between our 21-century times and Nietzsche's 19th century. Things have gotten worse: as society became more and more equal, we got more and more rivalry and competition. Youth of today are confronted by their own Wagners at every step. We then swerve into talking about the anthropology of mimetic crises and how the Bible irreversibly opened our eyes to how they work. | |||
| Nineteenth-Century Malaise: Nietzsche | 28 Apr 2023 | 01:09:00 | |
We explore the patron saint of Modern Malaise Martyrs: Friedrich Nietzsche. The famous 19th-century philosopher was an incel before there were incels, alt-right before there was alt-right, a sperger before there were spergers, a racist before ... never mind... ; the original ubermensch railing against the worms and slaves of this world (almost everyone other than himself)... We look for the motivations for Nietzsche's philosophy in the cultural background of Europe of his day and in his personal history, and especially his relationship with the composer Richard Wagner. Tracing René Girard's footsteps, we explain how Nietzsche's unhealthy views contributed to his ultimate madness. | |||
| The Modern Malaise | 26 Apr 2023 | 01:13:42 | |
George's old friend Virgil joins the studio for the start of another season of George Boreas Podcast. This season is a project of about seven episodes that will be turned into a book. The goal is to study an increasingly influential internet subculture that goes by many different names (trad? vitalists? frogs? alt-right? etc.), but that involves the rejection of modern western "degeneracy" and a creation of its own vision based on a philosophy emphasising virility and mental and physical fitness. It proposes a 21st century version of Nietzsche's "revaluation of all values." | |||
| 16 - IQ & Kitties | 18 Apr 2023 | 01:13:06 | |
How one goes from trying to conquer the universe with artificial intelligence to being fascinated with cute cats. Electronic omertà. Eight billion flawless AI robots. Being on spectrum as a free pass for being a prick. The perpetual orgasm of knowing the mathematical mysteries of the universe. Etc. | |||
| 15 - The Motor of Progress | 11 Apr 2023 | 01:05:09 | |
Is historical progress guaranteed? Is history moving definitively in one direction, or is there a chance that our civilisation might collapse and we go back to ground zero? If progress is definitive, what drives it? What is the motor and guarantor of that movement in one direction, rather than in a circle? George goes over the common philosophical perspectives and gets to the Girard's perspective: historical progress is real, and its motor from the beginning was and still is the gradual uncovering of the victimary mechanism, which amounts to the recession of the sacred. Tune in to hear where that came from and how it works. | |||
| 14 - Poverty Is Sadomasochism | 03 Apr 2023 | 00:47:30 | |
"In reaction to the continuous humiliation that is poverty, the underprivileged enter a life of self-destructive sadomasochism, which according to René Girard is the final state of all frustrated desires." | |||
| 13 - Seasteading & Libertarianism | 28 Mar 2023 | 00:50:19 | |
Seasteads: self-governing communities floating upon the ocean. Utopian communities free from oppressive government, or super-villain lairs plotting their own takeover of the world? Charlie and George discuss this and other visions of libertarian dreams. | |||
| 12 - Sadomasochism | 24 Mar 2023 | 00:55:02 | |
According to René Girard, sadomasochists have an obsessive yet accurate understanding that all desire feeds on obstacles placed between it and its goal. The obstacle, and the pain it creates, convince desire that transcendence is within reach. For sadomasochists, this pain is the sacrament through which they partake of that evasive transcendental being that is the goal of all desire. | |||
| 11 - Immigration | 14 Mar 2023 | 01:01:46 | |
Charlie and George tackle the controversies of immigration politics. The historical motives behind immigration and against it in the USA and elsewhere. Immigrants as assets in the progressive-conservative conflict of Western democracies. Discussion of the libertarian view of immigration. & more. | |||
| 10 - All Men Are Created Equal | 06 Mar 2023 | 00:49:21 | |
Total social equality is neither possible nor desirable. I explain why this is true with arguments from mimetic theory: desire is imitated, and so it always and everywhere creates celebrities and outcasts. On the other hand, I think it's true that "all men are created equal," as the Declaration of Independence proclaims. I explain how the sense of violent sacred allowed societies throughout history to hold to the idea of essential human equality while being highly stratified and practicing all forms of oppression. Finally, I discuss how the recession of violent sacred means that we no longer know how to establish peaceful differences. | |||
| 09 - Low Testosterone | 28 Feb 2023 | 01:10:41 | |
Charlie and George get into the rampant and much talked about phenomenon of declining testosterone levels in males. They discuss their personal experiences with health and fitness. Charlie shares from the extensive research and writing he's done on the topic. There's less direct reference to mimetic theory than usual, but we certainly explore the whys and wherefores. | |||
| 08 - Self-Help & Success | 21 Feb 2023 | 00:50:17 | |
We finally have a guest! George talks with Charlie Deist on the topics of self-help books and "success culture." The two friends share personal experiences. They discuss the historical and social causes that gave rise to the self-improvement mindset, and they refer to René Girard's theory to critique it. They talk about how obsession with success can damage an individual, and how one could avoid such damage. | |||
| 07 - The Last Word of Violence | 15 Feb 2023 | 00:40:32 | |
Adversaries locked in violent conflict exchange acts of aggression. With each act, they attempt to end the fight, to have the "last word of violence." Yet, the exchanges only produce symmetry: as they go blow-for-blow, rather than establishing difference, they become more and more alike. This dynamic applies to all pursuits of desire, which are always pursuits of some transcendental difference, but it becomes the most manifest when a pursuit flares up into open conflict, or war. However, the pursuit never ends in transcendence, or "libidinal impregnability." It produces death as it chugs along, and it ends in sacrifice. | |||
| 06 - Narcissists Are Failed Seducers | 06 Feb 2023 | 00:50:00 | |
Narcissism is an ever-popular topic. There's a lot of speculation and fascination around it. In this episode, I attempt a mimetic theory breakdown of the phenomenon that simplifies it a great deal. The episode details the various aspects of narcissism and goes over its historical background. It then presents the Girardian idea of narcissism as a failed seduction strategy. | |||
| 05 - Transcendence Deviated | 30 Jan 2023 | 00:42:16 | |
Humans are animals that desire. Unlike animal instinct, which is fixed on predetermined objects and cannot change, desire is always a desire for a higher being - for transcendence - and is determined for us by our models, or mediators, or idols, whom we believe to possess that higher, transcendental being. However, the truth is that no human being possesses transcendence. Our erroneous belief in its earthly existence causes all kinds of trouble by making us miserable, envious, greedy, etc. | |||
| 04 - Chimps Hunting & Hominization | 24 Jan 2023 | 00:47:41 | |
The victimary mechanism is foundational to human culture, but it already started with animals. For example, chimpanzees seem to hunt to create in-group cohesion. René Girard argued that the victimary mechanism was the motor of hominization, the process that produced humans from animals. By channeling violence outside the group, the mechanism created safe space inside the group where nurturing, cooperation, and intelligence could flourish. The intelligence in turn enhanced the ability to keep the inside and the outside separate and distinct. The positive feedback loop quickly generated a vast gulf between the new hyper-intelligent species and all other animal forms. | |||
| 03 - Authority Is Sacrifice | 17 Jan 2023 | 01:23:31 | |
This longer-than-usual episode first goes over the origins of authority. It challenges conventional Marxist, Darwinian, and Hobbesian theories and their derivatives. It presents René Girard's theory of authority evolving out of the archaic role of the human sacrificial victim. Finally, it applies this insight to the modern era and explores its modern implications. | |||
| 02 - Your Ambition Is Turning You into a Loser | 03 Jan 2023 | 00:29:23 | |