let's THiNK about it

Feb 21 2025 85 ep. 24 mins 16
let's THiNK about it Podcast artwork

A cultural detective's journey into philosophy, art, sociology, and psychology with Ryder Richards. (Formerly known as "The Will to DIY")

  Society & Culture  Education
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The semantic drift of "good"

Feb 21 2025 8 mins  
How did the word "good" change from a symbol of nobility and strength to a function of utility and compliance? In this episode, Ryder Richards explores the historical and philosophical shifts behind moral language, diving into: 🔹 Friedrich Nietzsche – How "good" originally meant noble and powerful, but was inverted by the weak into meekness and obedience (slave morality). �

Language Failure: How Words Shape Our Reality

Feb 17 2025 23 mins  
🚀 Language is failing us. In this episode, we dive deep into how words shape reality—and what happens when they lose their meaning. 🔍 Topics Covered: ✅ How San Francisco’s Potemkin village mirrors Orwell’s 1984 ✅ The collapse of language and how it leads to the collapse of society ✅ How semantic drift, hyperbole, and inversion make words meaningless ✅ Orwell’

{AI}ice's Odyssey in DALL-E Land

Mar 26 2024 41 mins  
Ryder Richards talks about his exhibition based on Salvador Dali's (1969) illustrations of "Alice in Wonderland." Considering them un-Dali, he asks DALL-E to draw inspiration from John Tenniel, the original illustrator, and re-invent them as a Dali-esque blend. After several "failed" attempts to achieve his goal, Ryder used ChatGPT, NotebookLM, and Claude to rewrite "Alice's Adve

Art and AI

Jan 08 2024 75 mins  
A lecture diving into the promises and perils of AI in art through artist Ryder Richards' recent museum lecture on technology's impact on creativity, humanity, bias, consciousness, and our shared future. Beyond near-term hype, as AI increasingly penetrates cultural realms like art, urgent questions arise around human creativity versus artificial generation. This lecture traverses

Kant and the rise of subjective relativism

Dec 26 2023 26 mins  
Ryder Richards discusses how Kant bypasses the conundrum of fate vs. determinism, vouching for the transcendent realm. Kant introduced a philosophy that actually does have a square grid, with the influential idea of a priori knowledge in one quadrant. This abstract knowledge exists in Kant’s unknowable "noumenal" realm. This marked a departure from Hobbes and Newton, who emphas

Transcendent Escapism

Nov 18 2023 22 mins  
Ryder Richards explores the spectrum between truth and lies, arguing that humanity uses abstraction and catastrophe fantasies to bypass reality and construct dangerous universal rules that validate our desires.

Skipping Reality

Oct 23 2023 17 mins  
In this podcast, Ryder Richards uses the analogy of a ping pong game with reality as the net to examine how truth and superficiality can become untethered abstractions that escape reality. He explores how truth-seeking can turn into rigid ideology and superficiality into manipulative propaganda. Richards suggests reality should act as a filter to catch the excesses of these abstrac

The Parallax View

Sep 17 2023 22 mins  
The Parallax View is an approach by Slavoj Zizek to reconsider Hegelian Dialectics; instead of sublation or overcoming, what if we can adjust perspective and the seeming antagonistic opposition (an insurmountable deadlock) can be seen in as "short-circuiting" - that is, providing an inherent explanation from a new point of view. It is not synthesizing ideas (melding them into One)

Perspective Framing

Jul 30 2023 21 mins  
Ryder Richards discusses different methods of reframing one’s perspective in life, such as psychology, meditation, and religion. First, he discusses the cultural background of deconstructionism and Hegel’s idea of “negation” to frame the moment. He then talks about how methods (such as therapy, Buddhism, or Christianity) can help shift one’s perspective to alleviate anxie

Concrete Universal (trash and art)

Jun 29 2023 16 mins  
In this episode, Ryder Richards explores the concept of concrete universalism and its implications. He discusses the idea of transcending contradictions and how failures can lead to unexpected victories. Richards also examines the notion of the concrete universal through examples such as garbage and Picasso's art, highlighting the tension between specificity and universality. **Hi