Ordinary Unhappiness

Nov 16 2024 85 ep. 56 mins 450
Ordinary Unhappiness Podcast artwork

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now, featuring Abby Kluchin & Patrick Blanchfield

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78: Reactionary Fantasies: On “Cancel Culture” and Moral Panic feat. Adrian Daub

Nov 16 2024 93 mins  
Abby and Patrick welcome academic, writer, and In Bed With the Right podcast co-host Adrian Daub to discuss his new book, The Cancel Culture Panic: How An American Obsession Went Global. Daub’s book is an exploration of the discourse over “cancel culture” that sets the concept in both historical and global context. In what ways is talk of “cancel culture” merely a return

UNLOCKED: 49: Wild Analysis: Civil War

Nov 09 2024 114 mins  
We're off this weekend, but here's a thematically appropriate episode from earlier this year. Come find us on Patreon for our recent political coverage, The Standard Edition series, and more Wild Analysis. We'll be back next Saturday.---While Abby’s voice is still gone, Dan and Patrick take in a film on opening day and subject it to some wild analysis. The movie is Civil War (202

77: Gerontophallocracy 2024: Post-Election Processing Teaser

Nov 06 2024 9 mins  
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan sit down for an immediate post-election processing session. They talk about time, change, what is or isn't "surprising," the difficulty of maintaining perspective, and how a psychoanalytic perspective can help us navigate moments

76: Gerontophallocracy 2024: Floating Signifiers Teaser

Nov 02 2024 9 mins  
It’s the last installment of Gerontophallocracy 2024 before the election. Abby, Patrick, and Dan process the vibes both in The Discourse and here in Pennsylvania (chaotic and bad); reflect on Harris on Call Her Daddy versus Trump on Rogan; talk about forced choices, votes, and fantasies of voting; discuss complicity and lesser-of-two evilism from the depressive position; and more

75: Psychosocial Realism feat. Daniel Lavery

Oct 26 2024 77 mins  
Abby and Patrick welcome writer Daniel Lavery to talk about his superb new book Women’s Hotel. Lavery’s novel conjures a now-vanished institution (low cost, long term residential communities for working women) in a since-disappeared landscape (midcentury New York City) and populates it with a cast of memorable characters whose entanglements, solidarities, and mixed fortunes dra

74: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Part II Teaser

Oct 19 2024 4 mins  
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan continue their watch-through of Zizek’s “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema.” They talk Tarkovsky and id-machines, Hitchcock and the impotence of male fantasy, Lynch and nightmares, films as dreams, and Zizek’s signature rhe

73: Romance Was Never Real: From Courtly Love to the Rise of the Fuckboy feat. Sabrina Strings

Oct 12 2024 89 mins  
Abby and Patrick welcome Sabrina Strings, professor and North Hall Chair of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara, to talk about her new book, The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance. The book is both a deep dive into the genealogy of western notions of "romance" - from medieval courtly love to Victorian mother/whore complexes - and a searing critique of contemporary

72: Track Changes feat. Lisa Borst and Mark Krotov of n+1

Oct 05 2024 98 mins  
Abby and Patrick welcome Lisa Borst and Mark Krotov of literary magazine n+1. The magazine is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year and marking this milestone with the publication of The Intellectual Situation: The Best of n+1’s Second Decade. Lisa, Mark, Abby, and Patrick engage in a conversation that ranges from the history of the magazine to the legacy of the Iraq Wa

71: Gerontophallocracy 2024: Proxy Battles Teaser

Oct 03 2024 19 mins  
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan reflect on the debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz. The key theme is proxies – candidates standing in for one another, gestures that say one thing while meaning another, scapegoats, displacements, and more. They unpack how s

70: Wild Analysis: Heathers Teaser

Sep 28 2024 5 mins  
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan discuss the cult classic “Heathers” (Michael Lehmann, 1988). This coming-of-age satire offers them a chance to talk about high school movies as a genre, developmental milestones, and why grown adults are so obsessed with medi