Philosophy at the edge of culture.
Parallax treats ideas as living problems rather than topics to summarize. Its conversations move through Habermas, Europe, tarot, America, value, the sacred, and Camille Paglia with a restless interest in what modern life has lost.
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Parallax is a long-form show for listeners who like philosophy when it is still warm from the argument. It is not a lecture series in a clean academic lane. Conversations unfold as a shared inquiry, with speakers circling an idea, interrupting it, correcting it, and returning to it from a stranger angle. Recent episodes move from America as mythology to Europe as crisis, from Habermas and the Frankfurt School to speech codes, from tarot and benevolence to value, love, science, and the sacred. The show is comfortable with large abstractions. It is also anchored in cultural unease. Trust, modernity, bureaucracy, spiritual inheritance, fertility, political form, gender, art, and cultural exhaustion all appear as connected symptoms rather than isolated debates. A conversation about Max, Owen, and the meaning of America becomes a contrast between America, Europe, Britain, revolution, and religious tradition. An episode on Habermas frames social science after World War II as a design project and follows that thought into contemporary politics. A tarot course with Marianne becomes a meditation on fear, benevolence, aging, and love. A discussion with Iain, Marc, and Zak turns value into an urgent question of survival and transmission. Even an episode sparked by Camille Paglia's Sexual Persona becomes a way of talking about feminism, French theory, bureaucracy, ecstasy, and regulated life. Parallax is warm, earnest, and sometimes dryly funny. It can be severe about the present. It does not offer easy consolation. Its distinctive pleasure is watching serious people think aloud while the argument keeps widening: philosophy into religion, religion into politics, politics into art, and art back into the problem of how to live.
Made for: For listeners drawn to long, exploratory conversations about philosophy, spirituality, politics, psychology, art, and cultural crisis. Best for those who enjoy thought developing in real time rather than tightly packaged commentary.
What sets it apart: Parallax stands apart by letting abstraction, cultural critique, and spiritual language occupy the same room. Its conversations are less about winning a point than following an idea until its political, religious, and psychological stakes become visible.
https://www.parallax-media.eu/Heterodox magazine for philosophy, spirituality and psychology
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Parallax reads movies through aesthetics, psychology and cultural philosophy, making screen choices part of a much larger argument about modern life.
Parallax follows ideas wherever they lead, with movies serving as one route into questions about culture, psychology and meaning. A conversation about Fight Club moves through its lighting, music and performances before considering corporate pressure and social unease.
This is where your movie night acquires a meaning crisis and refuses to stay recreational.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A patient Parallax conversation follows Eros into a demanding reflection on value, love, and purpose.
Parallax opens its conversation on value and the sacred with a small act of chance: a morning reading from Dr. Ian McGilchrist's second volume of Matter with Things lands first on the sacred, then on Eros. From there, Dr. Mark Gaffney, Dr. Ian McGilchrist, and Dr.
A searching conversation on Europe's exhaustion, the West's meaning crisis, and renewal through shared purpose.
Parallax frames Europe's possible death and rebirth as a wide, uneasy problem, moving from Spengler on civilizational exhaustion and imperial politics to the Buddha's awakening as a spoiled child.
Camille Paglia's provocations open into a lively argument about rules, judgment, joy, and cultural life.
The episode begins with Camille Paglia's "Sexual Persona" as both provocation and point of entry: into American culture, gender relations, history, feminism, and the French thinkers she takes apart.
A searching account of how tragedy can reveal wonder without explaining suffering away.
Mark rejects two comforting answers to tragedy: divine rescue and the idea that correct thinking will put everything right. With Andrew, he moves through three modes: the pre-tragic hunt for guarantees, the shock of being radically wounded, and a post-tragic return to wonder…
A symposium pitch opens into a thoughtful conversation about ritual, social change, and liberalism after the Enlightenment.
Parallax frames its conversation with Raven Connolly and Max Borders around London's September Between Two Worlds Symposium, a deliberately ambitious effort to place politics, spirituality, and art in the same room.
A roaming film review that reads Fight Club's dark spaces as symptoms of social pressure.
Movies become a way to read the culture around them in this wide-ranging single-episode review, moving from Fight Club's dark visual world to the social pressures it brings to the surface.
Peter Boghossian applies street epistemology to guests debating free speech, immigration, and belief.
Big questions, patiently tested.
Andrew Sweeney reveals his chaotic creative mind and how it clashes with his philosopher friends.
Marianne Costa discusses the relationship between major and minor arcana in tarot, using a musical analogy and explaining the historical significance of the Rider-Waite deck.
Marc Gafni discusses his new course 'Unique Self 2.0' exploring identity, intimacy, and evolutionary love.
Max Borders introduces a course on confronting existential realities like change, evil, and death to build resilience during uncertain times.
Raven Connolly and Max Borders discuss their risky London symposium amid Britain's illiberal turn and immigration tensions.
Andrew and Tom each give a roughly 10-minute review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey before debating it, and they openly discuss spoilers.
Max Borders, Owen Cox, and Andrew Sweeny discuss the Epstein scandal, elite corruption, and the appeal of neo-traditionalist ideas as a reaction to modernity's loss of trust.
Parallax's episode on Jürgen Habermas argues that post-World War II social science shifted from seeking universal truth toward designing society, creating a tension between what is and what ought to be.
Max Borders discusses the myth and meaning of America with Owen Cox and Andrew Sweeny, contrasting American and British/European mythologies.
Marianne Costa discusses the concept of benevolence in tarot and introduces her new course, Integral Tarot.
A discussion on the concept of Europe's death and rebirth, exploring political, demographic, and historical dimensions with a European and British perspective.
Marc Gafni opens by defining the sacred as "the intimate" and breaks it into sacred place, sacred time, and sacred person.
Parallax #169 opens with a planned Parallax and Dark Renaissance Productions event in Paris for fall 2026, then uses Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West to frame the “death of Europe” question.
The speakers revisit Camille Paglia's "Sexual Persona," calling it an "awesome book" that links American culture, gender relations, and "alternative history" to Egypt, Freud, and Jung.
Leonard Cohen is framed as post-tragic because he can say "the holy or the broken hallelujah."
Dr.
David introduces Dr.