This is the first episode of the second season of our podcast series, "The Podcast for Social Research." We recorded this episode on Friday, October 23 with an eye towards relevance to the upcoming election, and also to return to film criticism to inaugurate our second season, much as we began our first.  As such, this was recorded long before any of us realized that by this weekend, with a mere 4 days till the election, most of our city's attention would be focused on displaced people, power outages, destroyed infrastructure, climate change, and the politics of crisis response. However, there is still an election on Tuesday, and there is still a place for discussion even in a crisis. So whether you are stuck at home because of the subways or heading out to Far Rockaway, Staten Island, Red Hook, or any of the other neighborhoods still in critical need, or anywhere else in the world, we hope you enjoy our discussion of political movements and elections and our friendly critique of Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master." As always, please see our Notations section after the jump for some references, asides, and more. Although we have a bibliography in our customary style, our own time constraints to post this before the election will keep this episode's Notations largely without time stamps. We promise to return to our full, thorough style of Notations for next episode. Until then, share, enjoy, stay safe, and warm.

This is a supplemental episode of our podcast series as well as the final episode of our "first season"! In this episode - actually recorded several months ago - Michael and I (Ajay) engage in a somewhat freewheeling discussion of several issues raised in our previous podcast, particularly questions raised by philosophical naturalism and "scientism." Along the way, we discuss a wide variety of issues and figures in philosophy (some of whom are listed in our abbreviated Notations section below) and find that we agree on a surprisingly large number of issues. As Michael mentions at the end of the podcast, he will be not be in our regular, rotating podcast roster this coming year, but will instead be recording an "On the Road" podcast series interviewing philosophers and others around the country. In addition to Michael's supplemental series, we will return soon with new regular podcasts and more supplemental episodes, as well as new formats, and new people. We really hope you enjoy this episode and have enjoyed the "first season" of the Podcast for Social Research. We'll be back very soon! As with the last episode, there will be a brief Notations section after the jump. Please make use of it to fill in many of our gaps, and please pardon the raucous music that begins playing next door towards the end of this episode. Ahh, New York.

(You can download here by right-clicking and “save as” or look us up on iTunes)

Notations:

This is a supplemental episode of our podcast series. In this very different episode of the Podcast for Social Research, Michael, Christine, and I (Ajay) sit down with Professor David Albert to discuss quantum physics, the history of 20th and 21st century physics, the philosophy of science and a host of related issues, including his recent – and sometimes heated – exchange with Lawrence Kraus on Kraus’s recent book. As this episode is so different from our others – and led primarily through Albert’s discussion of quantum physics – the Notations section will be a brief bibliography without time-stamps. We hope you enjoy!*

*- Michael and I will be recording a follow-up discussion of this discussion soon! So look forward to that as well.

This is a supplemental episode of our podcast series, “The Podcast for Social Research.” While preparing for our previous podcast, I (Ajay) came across a piece that Gideon Lewis-Kraus had written critiquing an article by Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi which, in turn, was a critique of Azar Nafisi's bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran. I was quite taken aback by Gideon's piece both because (full-disclosure) Dabashi is my adviser but, perhaps far more importantly, I agreed so vehemently with Dabashi's original critique. Being the kind of institution we are, where we want to promote transparency and open, critical dialogue, we thought the best thing to do was to record a separate, brief podcast where Gideon and I got to revisit this episode, some six years later. What ensues is, we hope, an interesting discussion about politics, aesthetics, war, imperialism, writing-as-art, writing-as-industry, and a host of other issues. We have an appropriately brief Notations section

This is the fifth episode of our podcast series, "The Podcast for Social Research." We change up formats a bit this time around and begin with Abby interviewing Gideon Lewis-Krauss, author of the forthcoming book, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful. About a month later, Christine, Michael, Abby and me (Ajay) got together to pick up this topic of "pilgrimage" and discuss without recourse to either neccesarily crafting a definition or turning the question purely into a different question of "what is religion?" We hope you enjoy the conversation that ensues! For more information on the episode please see our show notes.

This is the fourth episode of our podcast series, “The Podcast for Social Research.” In this episode I (Ajay) fail to get the show edited and annotated in a timely fashion, we fail to come to an agreement on how to proceed in philosophical discourse, and we cannot even come to the terms to begin a conversation about Downton Abbey. We never claimed it wasn’t an experiment. For more information please see our notes. 

This is a supplemental episode of our podcast series, “The Podcast for Social Research.” In this episode, we have an informal conversation between one of our fellows, Soraya Batmanghelichi and myself (Ajay) about the situation within Iran after the controversial 2009 re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In this conversation, we discuss the current political situation in Iran, a bit of history, the status of the “Green Movement” and the women’s movement in Iran today, and the role of new (and old) technologies in all of these. There’s even a bit about the strange, contemporary, and co-producing transmission and feedback of discontent between the Green Movement, the Arab Spring, and even Occupy Wall Street. Occasionally, you’ll hear us talk strangely around, under, and sometimes completely edited out concerning certain subjects that were deemed potentially too sensitive. We hope you understand. For more info please see our website. 

This is the third episode of our podcast series, “The Podcast for Social Research.” This week we talk a bit about our first class, a bit more about Kamilia Shamsie's essay "The Storytellers of Empire", and quite a lot about Evgeny Morozov's essay, "The Death of the Cyberflaneur", Walter Benjamin, the Internet, subjectivity and a heck of a lot in between.  For more information on the this episode please see our Introduction and Notations on our wesbite. 

This is the second episode of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research's podcast series, "The Podcast for Social Research." This week we talk about the video game Shadow of the Colossus, Plato's beef with poetry in The Republic, and quite a bit in between. For more information please see the Notations for episode 2. As with last time, please see our Notations section after the jump for some references, time stamps and topics. You can download us directly here or subscribe on iTunes. Enjoy!