The Observing I

Lev Shestov and the Violence of Reason

You think you're free. You might be wrong.

Feb 3 • David Johnson

1

56:22

January 2026

The Berdyaev Problem: What If You're Afraid of Freedom?

On persons becoming things, and why creating is the only resistance left.

Jan 27 • David Johnson

3

1

53:32

Dostoevsky: Patient Zero of the Nervous Breakdown

The Crystal Palace and the Spiteful Soul

Jan 20 • David Johnson

1

36:51

Kafka and the Machinery of Modern Dread

Existential crises delivered ad-free.

Jan 13 • David Johnson

3

42:00

Welcome to 2026

And what we have in store for the podcast

Jan 6 • David Johnson

3:02

December 2025

The Vanishing of Vernon Pale

On the ethics of obligation, and what it costs to become no one.

Dec 16, 2025 • David Johnson

46:39

The Secret Lives of Objects

Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology

Dec 9, 2025 • David Johnson

42:52

Chronophobia: Why Modern Life Makes Us Afraid of Time Itself

A journey into the shame, regret, and panic that hides beneath the surface of our relationship with time.

Dec 2, 2025 • David Johnson

1

43:46

November 2025

Ethics for the End of Everything

Why meaninglessness and suffering are not the same thing

Nov 25, 2025 • David Johnson

1

52:19

How Imagination Becomes Reality: Grant Morrison and the Tulpa Effect

On hypersigils, thought forms, and how you might be a character you forgot you were performing

Nov 16, 2025 • David Johnson

1

41:53

Hyperobjects and Other Nightmares: Timothy Morton and the Ecology of Collapse

On being entangled with your own destruction

Nov 2, 2025 • David Johnson

2

42:08

October 2025

The Cartography of Pain: Paul Auster's City of Glass and the Architecture of Identity

Your identity is scaffolding. It's collapsing.

Oct 26, 2025 • David Johnson

49:42