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Ordinary Unhappiness

Ordinary Unhappiness

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

© 2026 Ordinary Unhappiness
Philosophy Political Science Politics & Government Social Sciences
Episodes
  • 160: Very Special Boys feat. Adrian Daub
    Sep 26 2026

    Abby and Patrick welcome back returning guest Adrian Daub. The occasion is Adrian’s latest book, What Tech Calls Governing. A follow-up to his 2020 book What Tech Calls Thinking, an intellectual history of Silicon Valley and critique of tech culture, What Tech Calls Governing unpacks subsequent developments and continuities that go deeper than pundits’ loose talk of a “vibe shift.” Indeed, as Adrian explains, recent years have seen Big Tech abandon the rhetoric of not being “evil” and promises of progressive uplift in favor of a rhetoric of inevitability, brazen collaboration with right-wing actors, and vague appeals to half-baked “longterm” utilitarianism. Adrian, Abby, and Patrick reflect on the distinctively gendered aspects of these developments, from the public antics of high-profile tech titans like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to deeper logics of contempt for vulnerability and the celebration of dominance. Along the way, they explore questions of exhaustion, embarrassment, male homosociality, creepiness, narcissism, the indignities of middle age, generational anxieties, and more.

    References include:

    Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Governing

    Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking

    Pre-order Adrian’s forthcoming book, Project 1933: Fascism Then and Now

    Adrian’s podcast, In Bed With The Right

    Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

    Novalis, The Novices of Sais

    Albert Burneko, “I Don’t Think David Brooks Is Okay, You Guys”

    Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley

    Kate Manne, "A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants"


    Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847

    A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:

    http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com
    X: @UnhappinessPod
    Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
    Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

    Theme song:
    Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
    https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
    Provided by Fruits Music

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 52 mins
  • 159: Karen Horney: Narcissism, Part 7 Teaser
    Sep 19 2026

    Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

    The Ordinary Unhappiness journey through the landscape of modern narcissism continues – and arrives in the United States! In this episode, Abby, Patrick, and Dan turn to the work of Karen Horney, a figure who has variously been called a Neo-Freudian, a forerunner of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, a key player in a psychoanalytic “Cultural Turn,” and one of the first prominent psychoanalytic feminists. But as Abby, Patrick, and Dan explore, such labels fall short of capturing the power of Horney’s insights and the lucidity of her prose. Rejecting Freud’s misogyny and his biological account of drives, Horney developed a psychoanalytic approach that was thoroughly cultural and that emphasized notions of selfhood and identity. For Horney, “neurosis” (IE, non-psychotic mental illness and problems in living) reflected the ways in which an individual’s strategies for emotional survival, first developed during their childhood in response to distress in the family environment, could crystalize into maladaptive patterns for relating to both the self and to others. Horney thus saw “narcissism” as useful only insofar as the term pinpointed “self-inflation” as a defensive strategy that, as Abby, Patrick, and Dan explain, comes at a painful and alienating price.

    Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847

    A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:

    http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com
    X: @UnhappinessPod
    Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
    Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

    Theme song:
    Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
    https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
    Provided by Fruits Music

    Show More Show Less
    8 mins
  • 158: On the Impossibility of Being a Real Man feat. Robin Dembroff
    Sep 12 2026

    What does it mean to talk about “patriarchy” in the present? What are the origins of the term, its uses, and its limits? How has it impacted popular discourse, and why does it seem to have gone out of fashion in the academy? And in what ways might the term – and the concept – still hold untapped power? To tackle all these questions and more, Abby and Patrick welcome philosopher Robin Dembroff, author of the brilliant new book, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes our Reality. Weaving together intellectual history and social commentary, Robin clarifies the origins of patriarchy as a keystone concept in twentieth century feminism, and traces its trajectories, for better and for worse, across the academy and beyond. Offering a new model for thinking about patriarchy in dynamic and structural terms, Robin suggests that we can think of patriarchy as a kind of grammar, a system for ordering social life, for processing individual experiences, and for reproducing logics of exploitation, dominance, and lack. The conversation that ensues not only subverts tired debates (about the crisis of masculinity, male loneliness, and the like) but clarifies their stakes, and suggests new ways of thinking about institutions, solidarity, and struggles going forward.

    Robin Dembroff, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes our Reality
    More about Robin here: https://robindembroff.com/
    A recent piece by Robin: "The 'Real Man' Trap"

    Selected texts cited:
    Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for a Feminist Revolution
    David Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity
    JL Austin, How to Do Things with Words
    Hanna Rosin, The End of Men
    Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

    Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847

    A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:

    http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com
    X: @UnhappinessPod
    Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
    Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

    Theme song:
    Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
    https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
    Provided by Fruits Music

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 29 mins
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