Want to Know Podcast

About Want to Know Podcast

Want to Know is an experimental space to develop an epistemology of intimacy. It is a process, a way of knowing by becoming more intimate, and a project of meta philosophical performance art. coriwong.substack.com (https://coriwong.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Dr. Cori Wong

Category

education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

11 Sept 2025

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

42 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Live Weekly Update: “The Erotic as a Meta Methodology”

   I had a lot of energy during this particular live update. All that unexpected talk about bodies and pleasures and fisting (yes, you read that right) brought me back to the good old days of graduate school reading Bodies and Pleasures (https://iupress.org/9780253213259/bodies-and-pleasures/) at Webster’s Cafe in State College, PA, blushing and beaming over Ladelle McWhorter’s descriptions of Foucault’s work and pleasure and dancing like I was suddenly being let in on a radical secret that could initiate me into generations of philosophers/queers/abnormal weirdos who know something about way more enjoyable ways to get free. You’re welcome to join the club if you, too, want to know. Ideally, this passionately raw and appropriately titled download, “The Erotic as a Meta Methodology,” would be a decent place to start. While I didn’t explicitly discuss much about meta methodology after all (though this is, of course, oh so meta of an update), I did end up talking about many concepts that fundamentally shaped my own philosophical process and thinking. For instance, if you watch/listen, you’ll pick up this life-changing, graduate-level pearl of wisdom, which I got directly from the mouth of Del herself, sometime around 2009 when she summarized what you really need to know to live like Foucault: “Normalization: Boo! Discipline: Yay!” Discipline. Practices of self-overcoming. Straying afield of oneself, especially who and how we know ourselves to be in light of the oppressive systems of normalization that shape us. I have come to understand that this is where it all comes together. The erotic and thinking. Wanting and willing. Dancing and actually becoming less racist. And so, so much more. Whether we are striving to get more free or find the place where we finally feel more at home within ourselves and with each other, it all ultimately requires the same thing: We must develop and expand our own capacities that create conditions for overcoming. As this point, it’s been almost a year of me doing these live weekly(-ish) updates on Substack. The goal of Want to Know has been to document my process of developing an epistemology of intimacy. Hopefully, you are wondering, “Is it meta (philosophical performance art)? Or is it real?” (https://coriwong.substack.com/p/live-weekly-update-from-the-erotic) One thing is obvious: It’s getting repetitive. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. During this livestream, someone commented with appreciation for the fidelity of my concepts, terms, and language. They are a poet, and their word choice with ‘fidelity’ made me light up. Because, yeah, actually, I do experience a distinct sense of something (is it pride? satisfaction? reassurance? surely something more philosophically significant…) with how it all keeps pointing back to the same pieces, the same ideas, the same implications. Not just week after week or month after month. We’re talking year after year. For decades now. Let’s get even more meta, shall we? I’ll show you what I mean. (Alright, first, heads up: To get the most meta experience of what happens next, you have to watch/listen to this Live Weekly Update. I don’t make the rules. That’s just how meta methodologies work.) Lately, I’ve been paying more attention to how I have long appreciated when those from whom I learn shed light on their own process. Oftentimes, even more than the theories they produce, which are clearly powerful and important, I connect more intimately with those instances where they reflect on the when’s, how’s, and why’s of their own learning and transformation. These accounts resonate in a different way that feels more (personal? honest? encouraging about real possibilities for meaningful change? probably all of the above…). To prove my affections and flesh out some references I made in this most recent live update, here are a few bits of anecdotal evidence of my own. * Let’s start with this, the first video of my Think for a Change series on inspiring role models. (If you didn’t know, I published my very first YouTube video fifteen years ago (https://youtu.be/0sxbl6AmQVU) as part of the It Gets Better phenomenon with a commitment to make helpful philosophical resources more accessible.) * Up next is a classically meta move of thinking about thinking. In my recent livestream, I misremembered details of this video about freedom to think differently, or at all — I thought I may have been reading from Ladelle McWhorter’s book on Foucault, but I’m actually reading from Foucault’s “History of Sexuality, Vol. II: Uses of Pleasure” (which sounds intriguingly resonant with Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic,” am I right??). [FYI: It was my third video in the Think for a Change series when I read a “bedtime story” from Del’s second book on racism and sexual oppression (https://youtu.be/isazMP3q0JQ).] * And finally, back in 2017, I shared updated thoughts on my own work developing the practice of positive philosophy. Almost ten years ago now, this lecture highlights the power of shifting toward humility and gratitude for what we must learn in order to be who we need. The piece by Amy Edgington that deeply influenced my thinking on this is titled, “Growing Up in Little Rock,” which was on the syllabus for my class on feminist friendship. Yes, you see, this is all getting extremely repetitive. There’s a whole world and billions of people across vast histories that we, individually, will never encounter, and yet there are also those pieces of ourselves and others who have some direct influence on our lives that are near and familiar, to which we can always revisit, return, review, and rethink. I believe wisdom is truth with lineage, and love, which must include the love of wisdom, often manifests through practices of becoming more intimate. So I say to you as much as I say to myself, please, let me tell you, again and again, until you know, until you understand. And please, tell me over and over again, what it is you have to share. I want to know. Through October 2026 (and probably beyond, let’s be real), the theme for Romancing the Revolution is the erotic. Thank you, Audre Lorde, for everything. To join the Sunday calls, register at my shop on buymeacoffee.com (https://buymeacoffee.com/coriwong/extras). Get full access to Want to Know at coriwong.substack.com/subscribe (https://coriwong.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   7 Sept 2026

   Live Weekly Update: Emotionally Secure Enough for a Relationship with Truth (Past, Present, and Future)

   Last week, I was processing time and what possibilities might emerge when we create space to be more honest, to practice telling the truth, even just with ourselves first. Yes, there can be room for more intimacy and connection with self and others. There can be more space for authenticity and freedom in such honest conditions where the truth is illuminated by love. I believe all this is possible and necessary, even and especially in these conditions when the truth is not pretty. While I don’t often speak directly about the daily horrors and atrocities shaping our present and future, not a day goes by when I’m not thinking about them. I’ve always been sensitive to injustice and the systemic violence of our political realities, but things truly shifted for me in 2023 when I started to more clearly recognize the globally interconnected intricacies of genocidal machinery ripping through bodies of Palestinians on social media every single day. Historically, fascism has looked the same for centuries under various state names though it now shows up with even more sophisticated technologies. Of course it’s not just Palestine. Look anywhere these days and it’s everything, everywhere, all at once. There is a constant barrage of terror streaking across our everyday consciousness. Climate collapse driven by billionaires and corporate corruption, the completely avoidable daily struggle of individuals, suffering and violence imposed on entire communities, and a generally cruel ethos of callousness toward all life and the one Earth that sustains it. In a very tangible sense, I recognize how these grave realities deeply shape the order of things. It seems only those whose hearts break in similar ways can hope to find and meet each other with our humanity still intact. This is not about despair and hopelessness under the crushing weight of collective grief and mourning. I keep saying, “truth is a relationship.” In this video, I casually noted that what cannot be comprehended cannot be articulated. I know our attention is so precious and our energy so powerful. I believe a committed awareness of and attunement to what is worst in our world, in our history, and among what is yet to come is a definitive aspect of liberation work. That is precisely why we must never look away. However, to even make it possible for us to witness violence and comprehend suffering at this scale requires a massive amount of work and support. Our ability to respond well to our current realities requires that we first develop our capacity to be in an honest relationship with the harshest, most brutal truths about the world and how we are living in it. And yet, capacity is still not enough. Then we have to practice. Sitting in honest relationship with ourselves is often quite difficult for most people. Harder still with others. How can we practice being in honest relationship with the world when we it feels so hard to experience emotional security and physical safety at even the most interior, internal, interpersonal, and local levels? This is where I’m supposed to offer something encouraging, insightful, and reassuring. I could, for I have not lost hope in all of us. I never will. But I think it’s also important to resist rushing away from what feels hard and uncomfortable. Rather than offering a soothing balm or spiritual salve, remember what Mariame Kaba (https://mariamekaba.com/) said: “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.” Collectively, we already have enough wisdom and power to do things differently in radically transformative ways. May we access and embody that wisdom and power every single day. We are exploring themes of truth and being honest for the whole month in Romancing the Revolution. Learn more and register at my page on Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/coriwong/extras). Get full access to Want to Know at coriwong.substack.com/subscribe (https://coriwong.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   2 Sept 2026

   Live Weekly Update: Processing Time. It’s All Relational💡

   Some of my favorite updates are the ones where I just let it rip. Like this. I know going in I have a lot to share, so I name it, give myself permission to flow through the numerous connections that swirl around, and trust the thread that ties it all together will be and become more apparent. Because it’s always present. There’s probably something important and philosophically significant about the nature of truth embedded even in that last sentiment. Perhaps something to the tune of, “What you mean to share will be clear enough in whatever you manage to say if you just stay honest along the way.” And honestly, wow. Talk about inviting a sense of relief. Have you ever let yourself relax into that, into honesty? There are certainly many situations and circumstances where being honest may fill us with fear, insecurity, anxiety. That, I suppose, is largely linked to anticipations around how others might react when we share what needs to be shared. But I’m realizing there is something else to explore here. Something about how we experience our own capacity to tell the truth. Something perhaps about the space we make that affords us the opportunity, with or even within ourselves, to be honest. And let me be perfectly candid: I’m doing this exploration right now, in real time as I write. These aren’t thoughts I’ve ever even had before. They are just now bubbling up. (Oh goodness, it’s meta again already…) It’s late on Tuesday night, already past 11:00pm. All day long, I’ve been meaning to write something about this particular update and publish it. My deadline has been “before tomorrow” so I can avoid lapping myself when I sit down to share again in just over twelve hours to record another Wednesday live. Way before I can publish, though, I usually have to watch the recording and refresh my memory about what I shared in the first place. Tonight, I jotted down sparse notes: “tensions. always present. - Processing TIME - Be honest. tell the truth.” That’s a pretty poor summary alright. Obviously, for over an hour, I said a lot more than that. (If you’re curious, there was lots of warm and fuzzy stuff about “For the Love of Strangers,” as well as nods toward building business through branding and marketing, and how I’m making sense of my own internal resistance to that.) My skimpy notes are so sparse not because I didn’t want to write, but because I started kind of enjoying listening to what I said. Not in a self-obsessed kind of way, but more with a bit of fascination while watching me say it precisely because it was so much, and it was so fluid, and the way it all came out seemed so damn easy. Because I was being honest. Naturally. So now I’m sitting here noticing how I have created these various spaces for me to share what I want, how and when I want, and that actually encourage me to be more honest. Yes, it’s true that a large theme in this update is how I feel like I’m holding back and not being as honest as I would like, but this was an easy hour and eighteen minutes of straight talking. And the pages in my latest notebook, which I started mere days ago, as so full because I’m leaning into the telling even more of the truth about my thoughts and feelings. And so now, with this post, I guess it’s just more of the same. Moreover, this is what I want to do. I wonder how different things might feel if we just practiced being more honest with ourselves, even before we extend ourselves to being honest with others. There’s an intrapersonal degree of trust, comfort, and intimacy we actually can practice and develop, if we just try. Maybe we must. Sincere question: How often are you honest with yourself? Second question: How easy have you made that feel? So this is where the meta levels break down since, yes, I’m sharing these words and this recording to the vastness of an internet full of people across varying distances of anonymity and relationship. But I’m still sitting with this surprising, mini-meta-observation of myself that makes me think, “Maybe it would be much easier to be more honest if I just fully let myself lean into the spaces I create for myself to do exactly that. And maybe it would be far less scary than some part of me has been led to believe. In fact, most likely, I would really enjoy it.” Why did the truth become so hard to tell? Why does it feel difficult, at times, to be honest? I know we can do better. And we can start by being better able to recognize and share the truth of our own experiences by being more honest with ourselves. Then, and perhaps only then, can we hold that space with each other where telling the truth is a given. It’s what brings us closer and bonds us more securely; it’s what animates the most loving potential in our relationships; it’s what makes us healthier, stronger, and better together. I’m seeing this more clearly now. What it feels like to be honest need not be overwhelmed by fear and withholding. It doesn’t even have to be a space into which we must push, brace, or use force. To get free, we can change our relationship to truth and what it means to be honest so that it’s with the truth where we find the most joyful connection, creativity, pleasure, power, fun, and abundant ease. The start of September marks a new monthly container of Romancing the Revolution. Visit the shop on my buymeacoffee page to register (https://buymeacoffee.com/coriwong/extras) and get the link to join on Zoom every Sunday through the end of the month. Get full access to Want to Know at coriwong.substack.com/subscribe (https://coriwong.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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