There’s a saying in German: everything has an end, except for the sausage, which has two . . . So it is with podcasts as with human beings. Everything has its end. Everything ends, sometime. Even the sausage, which simply ends twice. Deadbeat Philosophy is no sausage (at least not in the traditional sense). Hence, its end is singular. Just like 2025: it only ends once. And its end, like that of 2025, is now.

In this final episode of the Deadbeat Philosophy Podcast, Dave signs off, and leaves you with a curated sequence of short works released over the past year on the Deadbeat Philosophy YouTube channel, but not yet released as part of the podcast (or via the Hegel-Haus YouTube channel). These segments were released between April and September, and, taken together, feature treatments of 17 and 3/4 (to be exact) essential works of philosophy and literature, ancient and modern.

A huge thanks to each of the fantastic guests who contributed their voices and perspectives to this project over the past year: Thibaud Henin, Lauren Eichler, Ross Heintzkill, Dan Thomas, Andrew George, Miranda Siegel, Rob Mottram, Russell Duvernoy, Eva Hoffmann, Aidan Beatty, Lucy Schultz, Justin Hagge, Patrick Reinhardt, Jim Martin, Tasha Brownfield, Chris Anderson, Brian, Ivo Martin, Tatjana Schönwälder-Kuntze, Sierra Deutsch, Caleb Ward, Jacob Barto, and Kristen Jakstis.

Many thanks to all those who subscribed to Deadbeat Philosophy on Substack, including the handful of paid subscribers (see, you actually did help me feed my children!).

Finally, a very special thanks to my skilled and generous counterpart at the Museum Hegel-Haus, Marie-Sophie Hoenle (without whom Deadbeat Philosophy would never have gotten off the ground) and to their excellent team at the Stuttgart StadtPalais. I look forward to our collaborations ahead.

It has been a true joy developing and sharing Deadbeat Philosophy with you during 2025. While this particular project has reached its end, I might someday turn to other experiments in audio-video/new media philosophy, assuming the emerging cohort of AI-generated influencer-philosophers don’t use up all the good ideas first.

So, perhaps see you again someday in digital-virtual space. In real life, for a while at least, you’ll find me down by the pond. Look around: I’ll be the guy napping under a tree with a piece of straw between his lips, a dusty paperback in his outstretched hand. No smartphone in sight.

Thanks for watching, listening, and reading. Keep up the good ol’ fashioned deadbeat work. Adios and auf Wiedersehen . . .

Segments and historical texts featured in the episode:

I. “Ancient & Modern Political Philosophy Classics Everyone Should Read”

* Plato, Republic

* Aristotle, Politics

* Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

* Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality

* Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

II. “A Philosopher Says: Don’t Tell Me to ‘Be Natural’!”

III. “Ancient & Modern Literary Classics for Everyone”

* Homer, Odyssey

* Sophocles, Antigone

* Beowulf

* Dante, Inferno

* Shakespeare, Richard II

IV. “Do Birds Have Language? The Philosophy of Birdsong”

V. “Five Essential Works of Modern Philosophy”

* Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

* Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

* Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

* Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

* Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

VI. “A Prehistoric Feminist Psychoanalysis”

* Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

* Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deadbeatphilosophy.substack.com