The guest this week is C Derick Varn. He is a blogger, a Facebook/social media leader, a poet, a university lecturer, and an American expatriate in South Korea. Our conversation lasted for over an hour and a half and touched on many subjects, and this is part one. This week we'll discuss ontology and epistemology and Zizek. The title of the episode is "How Not Is Can't Be." Just to clarify at the outset: Ontology, according to Wikipedia is: "the philosophical study of the nature of being,existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences." While Wikipedia says Epistemology is: "The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.[1][2] It addresses the questions: ▪ What is knowledge? ▪ How is knowledge acquired? ▪ To what extent is it possible for a given subject or entity to be known? ▪ How do we know what we know?" Things are so confused in this Late Capitalist moment that I feel it's necessary to hash out these basic categories again, and again. And, apparently, I'm not alone. Be sure to listen for a clip of Louis CK explaining philosophy to his young daughter, and check out Varn's writings on his new blog Symptomatic Redness and his Facebook Group, which I like to call Marxoid Wank.