29. The Master (w/ Dan Harris)

The cows are joined this week by Dan Harris (Philosophy, Hunter College) on their journey through past lives to uncover and exorcise a few trillion-year-old traumas. We consider how Paul Thomas Anderson depicts a divided soul across three individuals struggling to find order and humanity in a chaotic, animalistic, world, and explore how trauma and masculinity intertwine to forge vulnerabilities, and even love, between two men whose life trajectories seem pointed in opposite directions. We can't pick just one favorite line, but we do note an homage to Nacho Libre and Anderson's debts to Kubrick and Huston. 

[02:55] Dan's Introduction to the Master
[09:59] Trauma and war
[22:39] Freddie, Lancaster, and masculinity
[33:26] Divided souls in Freud and Plato
[1:02:32] Cults and demagogues
[1:14:34] The significance of the ending
[1:28:24] Favorite lines
[1:41:08] Outro
[1:43:25] Bass traps are not garbage!