Best 35 Critical Theory Podcasts in the US

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory more

Thanks for listening! Please review us on your favorite podcast app so that the haters don't win. Become a member of Theory Underground here: https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe Tier 1 and higher get access to the courses and seminars going monthly throughout 2026: Intro to Theory, The Philosophy of Stewardship, and The Philosophy of Religion with David McKerracher. Tier 2 and higher get access to a monthly writers or speaking workshop. Tier 3 includes the book or thesis writer's cohort. All members get access to the monthly Post Duopoly (de)Radicalization Starter Pack reading group, which is a collaboration between TU and 1Dime. https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe David McKerracher is an organizer, theorist, husband and father (not in that order), and the founder of Theory Underground. McKerracher is the author of Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy (Foreword by Slavoj Žižek), as well as the chief editor of Underground Theory (Volumes one and two are available now, with volume three in the works). Office hours: The first Monday of every month at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, or if you wait around after lectures/seminars. Theory Underground (TU) is dedicated to making challenging philosophical and theoretical work accessible for a non-college audience. TU emphasizes audio-based learning for real-world application of big ideas, operating both online and through an international tour that has hosted events in over 20 U.S. cities, 9 countries throughout Europe, as well as cities in Canada and Mexico. Mission: To provide accessible, rigorous, and wide-ranging educational material for three types of people: - dropout workers with earbuds getting into big ideas during daily routines - burnt-out postgrads seeking to supplement their journey - parents who take a deliberate role in their children's education through keeping alive their sense of wonder. Vision: A world that is timenergy-rich, meaning that parents and teachers have large, energy-infused, and reliably repeatable blocks of time throughout their day, week, and month. Such a world would construct and cultivate a culture of active leisure for the sake of discovering and stewarding one's own talent and the talents of future generations. Lectures: Ongoing and archived sessions on key thinkers and topics, including: 📚Intro courses: Intro to Theory (monthly throughout 2026), Intro to Marx, Intro to Heidegger, Political Theory, Intro to The Idea of the University, Intro to Žižek, Intro to Lacan, Intro to Land, Intro to Illich, The Philosophy of Nature, Intro to the PMC, Intro to Critical Social Theory, and The Philosophy of Religion (2026). 📚Advanced courses: Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, Emmanuel Levinas' Totality and Infinity, and Slavoj Žižek's For They Know Not What They Do, The Autistic Subject and the Clinical Structures of Psychoanalysis. 📚Seminars: Critical Media Theory (2 years), Critical Doxology & Timenergy (1 year), The Philosophy of Stewardship and Home Economics (monthly throughout 2026). Publishing: Underground Theory Volumes 1 and 2, Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy, as well as serial releases of chapters, original thoughts, and upcoming books. Community: Conferences, retreats, and international tour. TU's hybrid and experimental grassroots (self-funded) tour events have occurred in prestigious private universities as well as people's garages and backyards, on campus quads or downtown in busy urban areas, as well as deep in the wilderness. TU is virtually everywhere and always on tour, but physically it is based on a small regenerative farm in North Idaho. Renowned professors at Theory Underground have included Slavoj Žižek, Benjamin Studebaker, Nina Power, John D. Caputo, Peter Rollins, Chris Cutrone, Iain Thomson, Alenka Zupančič, Leon Brenner; Todd McGowan, as well as lesser-known but nonetheless amazing lecturers such as Tony Chamas, Bryan Weeks, Michael Downs, and Elton L.K. of the Working Class Intelligentsia and the Democratic Socialists of America education podcast called CLASS. Music Logo Sequence Music is always either by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode or 'What's Left' Adam Leher. Thanks! If you are an artist who has something that might be good for TU's unique vibe, you can always send it to us a ****@gmail.com more

The Diet Soap podcast began in 2009 in response to the economic crisis of 2008. Since then it has gone through many transformations, including becoming the podcast for a critical theory imprint out of the UK. Today the Diet Soap podcast is running under its original name for Sublation Media. Sublation Media includes a book publishing effort for critical theory and left politics, a magazine that covers current events and theoretical issues, youtube videos on theory and politics, and finally the Diet Soap podcast. The podcast is where we continue to interrogate the left and each other while having a good time. more

Critique of the Podcast Form is a bi-weekly podcast by the Critical Theory Working Group about Critical Theory, socialism, philosophy, Marxism, social theory, and everything in between. New episodes featuring the rotating cast of hosts and guests are posted every other Thursday. Visit https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/ for writing and updates. more

The Pill Pod is hosted by a group of PhDs offering their irreverent (and unsolicited) takes on critical theory, philosophy, culture, and politics. more

Two Desiring Machines

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.  more

Class is in session. Interdependent Study is about the learning and unlearning work for social justice and collective liberation. Interdependent Study is hosted by Damien Franze, an angry Black man from Baltimore who wears his heart on his sleeve, and Aaron Hood, an angry white man from Florida who is always thinking. We're two friends who work in education and share a commitment to social justice. We believe that we are always learning; always arriving. People constantly learn and unlearn by reflecting on their experiences. Interdependent Study is designed to be a community for this work. more

Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is produced and hosted by Sasha Lilley. more

We created this podcast in recognition that there are a number of podcasts for the American 'left,' but many of them focus heavily on the organizing of social democrats, progressives, and liberal democrats. Aside from that, on the left we are always fighting a war of ideas and if we do not continue to build platforms to share those ideas and the stories of their implementation from a leftist perspective, they will continue to be ignored, misrepresented, and dismissed by the capitalist media and as a result by the general public. Our goal is to provide a platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world. Our goal is to center organizers who represent and work with marginalized communities building survival programs, defense programs, political education, and counterpower. We also plan to bring in perspectives on and from the global south to highlight anti-capitalist struggles outside the imperial core. We view solidarity with decolonization, indigenous, anti-imperialist, environmentalist, socialist, and anarchist movements across the world as necessary steps toward meaningful liberation for all people. Too often within the imperial core we focus on our own struggles without taking the time to understand those fighting for freedom from beneath the empire's thumb. It is important to highlight these struggles, learn what we can from them, offer solidarity, and support with action when we can. It is not enough to Fight For $15 an hour and Single-Payer within the core, while the US actively fights against the self-determination of the people of the global economically and militarily. We recognize that except for the extremely wealthy and privileged, our fates and struggles are intrinsically connected. We hope that our podcast becomes a meaningful platform for organizers and activists fighting for social change to connect their local movements to broader movements centered around the fight to end imperialism, capitalism, racism, discrimination based on gender identity or sexuality, sexism, and ableism. If you like our work please support us at www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism more

Emerging from affinities with post-structuralism, abolitionism, biopolitics, communism, critical metaphysics, critical mysticism, and ontological anarchy, Acid Horizon is a philosophy and theory podcast committed to thought in motion and political struggle. While these are our grounding currents, each episode opens out onto a wider constellation: ethics, politics, phenomenology, decolonial thought, queer theory, post-psychoanalysis, disability/crip theory, anarchism, Marxism, feminism, and analyses of the emergence of the new right. Comprised of a decentralized collective of friends and comrades, Acid Horizon cultivates a terrain of militant inquiry. From readings that span 20th-century French communism to new perspectives on German idealism, the collective has also undertaken forays into aesthetic experimentation, philosophical heresy, and the history of revolt. We seek the concepts and intensities that gesture toward new forms of life. Acid Horizon pushes theory beyond the academy through live engagements, collaborative reading groups, and collective interventions. more

In What's Left of Philosophy Gil Morejón (@gdmorejon), Lillian Cicerchia (@lilcicerch), Owen Glyn-Williams (@oglynwil), and William Paris (@williammparis) discuss philosophy's radical histories and contemporary political theory. Philosophy isn't dead, but what's left? Support us at patreon.com/leftofphilosophy more

Professor of Politics, University of Buckingham. This podcast focuses on nationalism, ethnicity and religion, and their interaction with immigration and population change. Also issues of academic freedom and left-modernism. more

Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

Discussing political philosophy, current events, activism, and the inevitable historical downfall of capitalism from a revolutionary leftist perspective. more

Emancipations explores the intersection of Marxism, politics and philosophy. Hosted by Daniel Tutt. Join our study groups and support us at https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations more

Red Menace is a podcast that explains and analyzes revolutionary theory and then applies its lessons to our contemporary conditions. Hosted by Alyson Escalante and Breht O'Shea. more

A podcast on the deep history of class struggle, paleo-parapolitics, and the demonology of capital. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. more

A podcast and YouTube channel attempting to make philosophy, critical theory, art, and technology a little easier to understand.Find new podcasts here along with our full-length YouTube videos in podcast form. more

utopian leftist comedy podcast

Welcome! My name's David Guignion and I distill complicated philosophical and theoretical ideas for wide audiences. While ideas are important to help us understand the world, it is even more important to put ideas into action. Some of this channel's key theoretical and pragmatic influences include, but are not limited to, Marxism, Decolonialization, Feminism, Gender and Queer theory, and Critical Race Theory. This channel's content is recorded on the in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, the traditional territory of the Kanien'kehà:ka, comprised of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theoryandphilosophy Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIq2xNjGAof0cCUaKbco6HQ more

A podcast devoted to the foundational ideas that inspire thought and action.

High Theory is a produced and edited by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu, two tired academics trying to save critique from itself, along with two amazing collaborators, Júlia Irion Martins and Nathan Kim. In this podcast, we get high on the substance of theory, and we try to explain difficult ideas from the academy with irreverence. You can learn more about us on our website, or find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. more

Post-peasant commies Dan and Jack read over bits of theory each week in an effort to understand the worldwide state of socialism.Email: ****@gmail.com more

Conversations with some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today.

exploring the simulated enigma brendenslabyrinth.substack.com

White privilege is defined as an unearned advantage based on race which can be observed both systemically and individually. This is the American heritage that must change. A change is on the horizon with the current pandemic and racial injustice. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/racism-white-privilege-in-america--4473713/support . more

Since 1968, the quarterly journal Telos has served as the definitive international forum for discussions of political, social, and cultural change. Readers from around the globe turn to Telos to engage with the sharpest minds in politics, philosophy, and critical theory, and to discover emerging theoretical analyses of the pivotal issues of the day. Don't miss a single issue—subscribe to Telos today at the Telos Press website, www.telospress.com. more

Nothing Never Happens is a journey into cutting-edge pedagogical theory and praxis, where co-hosts Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether connect with leading voices in radical teaching and learning. We engage a range of approaches — including but not limited to democratic, feminist, queer, decolonial, and abolitionist models. more

Outsider analysis of art, critical theory, culture, philosophy, politics, pop.

From Bernard E. Harcourt at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, Critical Theory: The Podcast explores the front lines of critical thought. more

Let us introduce you to some of the fascinating people we work with to help you make sense of the world's most complex challenges. In this podcast we share our research, explore alternatives to the status quo and give a platform to scholars and activists who are at the forefront of the fight against the current neoliberal order. We believe there are alternatives to this world and hope you do too. more

Socialist news and analysis from the front lines of struggle. Project of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. more

Columbia Race Talks: Critical Race Theory (CRT2) is a project of the Studio for Law and Culture at Columbia Law School. Produced by students in the Critical Race Theory Seminar Workshop, CRT2 uses critical race theory as a lens to look at charged issues, contested histories and contemporary debates about law, culture and the politics of race. See more information at https://crt2.podcasts.library.columbia.edu more

Money Can't Buy You Cla$$ is an ongoing conversation & reading group situated at the intersection of critical theory & reality television, hosted by Gemma Godfrey & Phoebe Kaufman. more