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Overthink — Education
Overthink

The best of all possible podcasts, Leibniz would say. Putting big ideas in dialogue with the everyday, Overthink offers accessible and fresh takes on philosophy from enthusiastic experts. Hosted by professors Ellie Anderson (Pomona College) and David M. Peña-Guzmán (San Francisco State University).

Copyright: © 2023 Overthink

Latest Episodes:

Intuition Feb 25, 2025

Our intuitions are never wrong… right? In episode 124 of Overthink, Ellie and David wonder what intuition actually is. Is it a gut feeling, a rational insight, or just a generalization from past experience? They talk about the role intuition has played in early modern philosophy (in the works of Descartes, Hume, and Mill), in phenomenology (in the philosophies of Husserl and Nishida), and in the philosophy of science (in the writings of Bachelard). They also call into question the use of intuitions in contemporary analytic philosophy while also highlighting analytic critiques of the use of intuition in philosophical discourse. So, the question is: Can we trust our intuitions or not? Are they reliable sources of knowledge, or do they just reveal our implicit biases and cultural stereotypes? Plus, in the bonus, they dive into the limits of intuition. They take a look at John Stuart Mill’s rebellion against intuition, the ableism involved in many analytic intuitions, and Foucault’s concept of historical epistemes.

Works Discussed:

Maria Rosa Antognazza and Marco Segala, “Intuition in the history of philosophy (what’s in it for philosophers today?)”
Gaston Bachelard, Rational Materialism
Gaston Bachelard, The Philosophy of No
Gaston Bachelard, The Rationalist Compromise
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
Moti Mizrahi, “Your Appeals to Intuition Have No Power Here!”
Nishida Kitaro, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness

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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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Breakups Feb 11, 2025

It’s not you, it’s me… In episode 123 of Overthink, Ellie and David get into the highs and lows of breakups. What, if anything, is valuable about breakups? Does society’s emphasis on monogamy affect how we conceptualize the end of relationships? And what do you do if your ex still has your Netflix password? Your hosts discuss everything from breakups in the age of social media and chemical solutions to heartache to what the laws against domestic abuse and stalking can tell us about how society views breakups. Plus, in the bonus, they take a look at Kierkegaard’s love life and discuss whether it’s ever truly possible to breakup with someone for purely altruistic reasons.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:

Brian D Earp et. al, “If I Could Just Stop Loving You: Anti-Love Biotechnology and the Ethics of a Chemical Breakup”

Kelli María Korducki, Hard To Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up

Pilar Lopez-Cantero, “The Break-Up Check: Exploring Romantic Love through Relationship Terminations”

Ovid, Remedia Amoris

Deborah Tuerkheimer, “Breakups”

Jennifer Wilson, “The New Business of Breakups”

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Writing Jan 28, 2025

You might want to jot down some notes on this one! In episode 122, Ellie and David explore where writing began, the value of writing, and our reasons for writing. Is the widespread use of generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, a threat to creative and academic writing? How did writing originate in cuneiform, and how does Derrida's deconstruction of logocentrism encourage us to reconsider the privileging of speech over writing? Listen to it all write here, write now! Plus, in the bonus, they get into some of our most pernicious myths and misconceptions about writing. They talk about the tortured writer trope, the solitary nature of writing, and the connection of writing to class.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed:
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context”
Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences
Joan Didion, “Why I write”
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy
George Orwell, “Why I write”
Plato, The Phaedrus
Alva Noë, The Entanglement, How Art and Philosophy Make Us Who We Are
Peter Salmon, An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida
Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing

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Dark Moods with Mariana Alessandri Jan 14, 2025

In a world that has developed a collective fear of the dark, how can we navigate the not-so-positive feelings that we experience? In episode 121 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with philosopher Mariana Alessandri about her book, Dark Moods. They talk about how the obsession with light fuels toxic positivity, the ways shame amplifies dark moods, and the harmful effects of associating light with good and darkness with bad. Why does society disregard negative emotions? Does the medical field pathologize grief for good reason? And should we strive to make people feel better when they’re experiencing a dark mood? Plus, in the Patreon bonus, they consider the difficulties of experiencing emotions that lie in a gray area, different types of anger, and whether we need to move away from metaphors of light and darkness entirely.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
Mariana Alessandri, Night Vision, Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Plato, The Republic
Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life

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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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Disagreement Dec 31, 2024

From the holiday dinner table to the Twitter fandom wars, disagreements are inescapable. In episode 120 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk through different types of disagreement (e.g. disagreements online vs philosophical disagreements) and consider why we have such a tough time dealing with those who don’t see things as we do. Is the format of social media platforms to blame for the bad faith disagreements that occur on them? What role do confidence and conviction play in disagreement? Can we have a world without disagreement, or is disagreement an inevitable feature of our social lives? And how can we navigate the “shitstorm” when others refuse to agree with us? Prepare to turn on disagreement mode as you listen to two doctors of disagreement reason their way through it all. Plus, in the bonus, they discuss ways of overcoming disagreement, the failure of our education system, and the importance of community in online disagreement.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
Byung-Chul Han, In the Swarm
Catherine Elgin, “Persistent Disagreement”
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
Kathleen Kennedy, “When Disagreement Gets Ugly, Perceptions of Bias and the Escalation of Conflict”
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation
Brian Ribeiro, “Philosophy and Disagreement”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

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Driving Dec 17, 2024

Have you ever wanted to go on a road trip with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan? After listening to this episode, you certainly won’t! In episode 119 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about the experience of driving and the moral and social dilemmas involved with it. How does driving alter our relationship with time and space? What is the “long distance truck driver problem”, and what does it have to do with animal consciousness? And how should we respond to the rise in self-driving cars? Buckle in and get ready for this ride into the philosophy of driving. Plus, in the bonus they dive deeper into the ethics of self-driving cars, exploring the repercussions hacking could have on self-driving cars. What moral philosophy should be programmed into the self-driving vehicles of the future? And who gets to decide?
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
David Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of The Mind
Kenneth Jackson, The Crabgrass Frontier
Stamatis Karnouskos, “Self-Driving Car Acceptance and the Rule of Ethics”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Catherine Millot, Life with Lacan
Lynne Pearce, Drivetime
William Ratoff, “Self-driving Cars and the Right to Drive”
Mark Rowlands, Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice
Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology
Jamieson Webster, “Riding in Cars with Jacques Lacan”
Andreas Wolkenstein, “What has the Trolley Dilemma ever done for us (and what will it do in the future)? On some recent debates about the ethics of self- driving cars”

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Comfort Dec 03, 2024

Get comfy as you listen to this episode! In episode 118 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss all things comfortable…and uncomfortable. They talk through the conflation of comfort and luxury, modern architecture’s prioritization of comfort, and whether our need for comfort is the reason for our burning planet. With everything from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to “the comfort-industrial complex,” this episode will have you questioning what it takes for us to lead a full and happy life. Plus, in the bonus they get into the meaning of the phrase ‘too close for comfort’, alcohol as a destructive form of comfort, and the importance of attachment theory.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
Daniel Barber, “After Comfort”
J L Bottorff et al., “The phenomenology of comfort”
Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
Ryan Heavy Head, “Blackfoot Influence on Abraham Maslow, Presented by Narcisse Kainai and Ryan Heavy Head at the University of Montana”
Lynnette Leeseberg Stamler and Ann Malinowski, “Comfort: exploration of the concept in nursing.”
A. H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation
Teju Ravilochan, “The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy”.
Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres trilogy
Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

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Black Consciousness with Lewis Gordon Nov 19, 2024

Do you need black skin to be Black? How might concepts such as white privilege be limiting our understanding of how racism works? In Episode 117 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with philosopher Lewis Gordon about his book, Fear of Black Consciousness. They talk through the history of anti-Black racism, the existential concept of bad faith, why Rachel Dolezal might have Black consciousness, and Frantz Fanon’s experience of being called a racial slur by a white child on a train. From the American Blues to the Caribbean movement of Negritude, this episode is full of insight into Black liberation and White centeredness. In the bonus, Ellie and David go into greater detail about how Black liberation is connected to love.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed:
Steve Bantu Biko, I Write What I Like
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Edouard Glissant, Introduction à une Poétique du Divers
Jane Anna Gordon, “Legitimacy from Modernity’s Underside: Potentiated Double Consciousness”
Lewis Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack racism
Lewis Gordon, Fear of Black Consciousness
Rebecca Tuvel, “In Defense of Transracialism”

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Extinction Nov 05, 2024

Dinosaurs, mammoths, ibexes, frogs: a great deal of animals have gone the way of the dodo. Are we next? And would the world be better off without us? In Episode 116 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about extinction, from Christian eschatology, to the perils of Anthropocene, to cutting-edge de-extinction technology. They turn to animal ethics and scientific dilemmas in search of the ethical approaches that might equip us to think about the extinction of animals, and perhaps even our own. Plus, in the bonus, they talk love, cyborgs, tech bros, and the ethics of the future.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Thom Van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Todd May, Should We Go Extinct?
Jacob Sherkow and Henry Greely, “What if Extinction is not Forever?”
Émile Torres, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation
Children of Men (2006) dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Episode 46. Anti-Natalism

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Hope Oct 22, 2024

It’s the one you’ve been hoping for. In episode 115 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the meaning of hope, from casual travel plans, to electoral optimism, to theological liberation. They discuss how hope motivates action, and how its rosy tint might be paralyzing. They explore Kant’s ambitions for perpetual peace, and discuss the Marxian imperative to transform the world. They ask, is it rational to hope? How does hoping relate to desire and expectation? And should we hope for what seems realistic, or reach for impossible utopias? Plus, in the bonus, they discuss chivalry, the future, agency, tenure, burritos, and capitalist realism.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Augustine, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love
Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope
Joseph J. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Religion Within The Limits of Reason Alone, Perpetual Peace
Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
John Lysaker, Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness: Essays in Finitude
Adrienne Martin, How We Hope: A Moral Psychology
Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
Anthony Steinbock, Moral Emotions: Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart
Baruch Spinoza, Short Treatise
Katja Vogt, “Imagining Good Future States: Hope and Truth in Plato’s Philebus”

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Friendship Oct 08, 2024

Even with endless social scripts around romance, we hardly know what it means to be a good friend. In episode 114 of Overthink, Ellie and David reflect on the highs and lows of friendship, from their own bond to Montaigne’s intimate connection to Étienne de La Boétie. From Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics to today’s loneliness epidemic, they question what friends do, how they hold each other accountable, and the deep ways in which our vices and virtues are shaped by our friends. Plus, in the bonus, they talk Ralph Waldo Emerson, intimacy, dyadic relationships, high school friends, and… pluralectics?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
Francis Bacon, “Of Friendship”
Lydia Denworth, Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond
Elijah Milgram, “Aristotle on Making Other Selves”
Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship”
Lawrence Thomas, “The Character of Friendship”

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Awkwardness with Alexandra Plakias Sep 24, 2024

Clogged toilets, odious jokes, difficult condolences… awkward moments are everywhere you look. In episode 113 of Overthink, Ellie and David invite philosopher Alexandra Plakias to talk through her research on awkwardness. They discuss everything from hasty clean-ups to snap decisions, from oversharing online to uncomfortable silences, as they explore the ways that awkwardness is bound up with power, morality, and the core scripts of our social expectations. Where does cringe end and awkwardness begin? Are we living through especially awkward times? Who gets to decide what is awkward? And, what if awkward people… don’t exist at all? Plus, in the bonus, they discuss The Office, weddings, weird eye contact, and more.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness
Adam Kotsko, Awkwardness
Alexandra Plakias, Awkwardness: A Theory & “Awkward? We’d Better Own it”
Thomas J. Spiegel, “Cringe”
YouGov poll, "Awkwardness"

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Hyperreality Sep 10, 2024

Why is there a Parthenon… in Nashville? Jean Baudrillard might have the answer. In Episode 112 of Overthink, Ellie and David pick apart hyperreality: the provocative suggestion that our reality today is so inundated by signs that the gap between reality and simulation has all but broken down. Your hosts talk through the history and experience of hyperreality, from its presence in Superman and Bridgerton to its uncanny role in legitimizing presidential power. And they wonder: does the idea of hyperreality motivate political action, or does it slide into complacent provincialism?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Jean Baudrillard, America
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Don DeLillo, White Noise
Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
Sadie Plant, The Most Radical Gesture
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

An American Family (1973)
Superman (1978)
Love Island (2023)
Bridgerton (2005)

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Envy Aug 27, 2024

Why are you so obsessed with me!? In episode 111 of Overthink, Ellie and David untangle envy, jealousy, and admiration, in everything from Sigmund Freud to Regina George. They think through the role of envy in social media and status regulation alongside Sara Protasi's The Philosophy of Envy, and investigate the philosophical lineage of this maligned emotion. Does the barrage of others’ achievements on social media lead to ill-will or competitive self-improvement? Why do we seek to deny our own envies? And how might Freud's questionable theory of 'penis envy' betray the politics of how we assign and deflect desire?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Aristotle, Rhetoric
Basil of Caesarea, On Envy
Christine de Pizan, City of Ladies
Justin D'arms, Envy in the Philosophical Tradition
Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One
Plato, Philebus
Plutarch, Moralia, “Of Envy and Hatred”
Sara Protasi, The Philosophy of Envy
Max Scheler, Ressentiment
Genesis 4, Exodus 20

Snow White (1937)
Mean Girls (2004)

Overthink epiosdes
60. Influencers
82. Regret
98. Reputation

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Intensity Aug 13, 2024

What do skydiving, guitar-playing teenagers, and deep-seated psychic states have in common? They're all intense! In episode 110 of Overthink, Ellie and David untangle the role of intensity in shaping our aspirations, cultural tropes, and political goals. They trace the concept’s history from its tricky roots in Aristotle's theory of change, passing through medieval science and princely romanticism, to the thrills of skydiving and breathwork today. They turn to Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze’s accounts of consciousness and emotion to explore how intensity looks beyond the scientistic impulse to categorize and quantify, and question if intensity is of any help in addressing capitalist acceleration today.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Aristotle, Categories
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Gustav Theodor Fechner, Elements of Psychophysics
Tristan Garcia, The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession
Mary Beth Mader, “Whence Intensity? Deleuze and the Revival of a Concept”
Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative
Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams, “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics”
The Bachelorette
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Mentioned Overthink episodes
61 - Self Knowledge
32 - Paradox
107 - Organisms

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Predictive Brain with Andy Clark Jul 30, 2024

Phantom phone buzzes? Painless mosquito bites? Toy masks flipped inside-out? It might be your brain bringing order to its complex world. In episode 109 of Overthink, Ellie and David interview cognitive philosopher Andy Clark, whose cutting edge work on perception builds off theories of computation to offer an intriguing new model of mind and experience. He explains why the predictive processing model promises a healthier relation to neurodiversity, and they all explore its real-world applications across placebos, road safety, chronic pain, anxiety, and even the accidental success of ‘positive thinking.’ Plus, in the bonus, Ellie and David discuss depression, plasticity, qualia, zombies, and what phenomenologists can bring to the cognitive table.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed:
Thomas Bayes, An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances
Anjali Bhat, et al., "Immunoceptive inference: why are psychiatric disorders and immune responses intertwined?"
Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
Sarah Garfinkel, et al., "Knowing your own heart: distinguishing interoceptive accuracy from interoceptive awareness"
Hermann von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
Alva Nöe, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness
Anil Seth, Being You
This Might Hurt (2019)

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Success Jul 16, 2024

Cooked, slayed, delivered, ate. In episode 108 of Overthink, Ellie and David break down what it means to succeed, and why this sneaky word pervades our society today - in everything from the ambitions of classic American stage figures, to the refined effortlessness in Zhuangzi’s tales, to the corporate world of buzzwords. Your hosts discuss party planning, tenure tracks, inspirational quotes, haters, why science seems so successful, and the pitfalls of thinking we’ve got it all figured out. Plus, in the Patreon bonus, they reflect on the interpersonal tensions of sharing successes, and making the best of our mishaps.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
William Desmond, “Philosophy and Failure”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, What is Success?
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, Matter and Method
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Tim Wu, “In Praise of Mediocrity”
Zhuangzi, “The Secret of Caring for Life”

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Organisms Jul 02, 2024

In episode 107 of Overthink, David and Ellie take up a philosophical perspective on biology’s squirmiest concept: the organism. From Kant’s distinction between organisms and mechanisms, to Deleuze and Guattari’s infamous call for ‘bodies without organs,’ they uncover and question the ontological and metaphorical baggage behind the concept. Their exploration takes them from the bottom of Sea of Naples to the heights of Romantic Idealism, passing through the tensions of contemporary genetics. Plus, in the Patreon bonus, they discuss the unexpected relations between organisms, politics, and reason through the thought of Lukács and Canguilhem.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Georges Canguillhem, Knowledge of Life
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
Georg Lukács, The Destruction of Reason
Jennifer Mensch, Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy
Friedrich Schelling, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature
Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail
D. M. Walsh, Organisms, Agency, and Evolution

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Fun Jun 18, 2024

Even philosophers need downtime. In episode 106 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a break and chase down fun’s place in today’s world — from its aesthetic opposition to the highbrow realm of beauty, to its peculiar absence from philosophical discourse. What role does fun play in the good life? How does fun relate to art, play, and ritual? Can you really have fun by yourself? And what happens when the lines blur between the fun and the political?
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment
Rey Chow, The Age of the World Target
Erna Fergusson, Dancing Gods
Michel Foucault, The History of Madness
Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Plato to Foucault
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow
Alan McKee, Fun!: What Entertainment Tells Us About Living a Good Life
David Peña-Guzmán and Rebekah Spera, "The philosophical personality"
Jen D’Angelo & Mariana Uribe, Mamma Mia! But Different

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Civil Disobedience with Noëlle McAfee Jun 04, 2024

Do political subjects have a default obligation to obey the law? In episode 105 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss civil disobedience in the present context of university activism for divestment from genocide in Gaza. They chart the genealogy of the concept of disobedience in political theory, from Thoreau and MLK through to today. Together with guest Noëlle McAfee, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University, they reflect on the relationship between legal protest, civil disobedience, and political dialogue, and think about why activism must be part of any healthy democracy. Focusing on the psychoanalytic concept of ‘breakdown’, McAfee discusses the disproportionate administrative and militarized crackdown on student organizing that we are witnessing across American campuses today.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror
Noëlle McAfee, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis
Noëlle McAfee, Democracy and the Political Unconscious
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government
Donald Winnicott, “Fear of Breakdown”
Iris Marion Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy”

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Reading May 21, 2024

This is one for the books. In episode 104 of Overthink, Ellie and David consider what makes reading so rewarding, and, for many people today, so challenging! How did society shift toward inward silent reading and away from reading aloud in the Middle Ages? How have changes in teaching phonics and factors of classism, accessibility, and educational justice made it harder for the young to read? Why is reading philosophy so hard, and how can we increase our reading stamina?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

Marcel Proust, Journée des Lecteurs
Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Julie Andrews, Mandy
Adam Kotsko, “The Loss of Things I Took for Granted,” Slate
Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid

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Laziness May 07, 2024

We’re taking it easy! In episode 103 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a leisurely dive into laziness, discussing everything from couchrotting to the biology of energy conservation. They explore Devon Price’s idea of the ‘laziness lie’ in today’s hyperproductive society and search for alternatives to work through Paul Lefargue’s 19th century campaign for ‘the right to be lazy.’ They also look into the racialization of laziness in Ibn Khaldun and Montesquieu’s ideas on the idle tropics, and think through how the Protestant work ethic punishes laziness, even when technology could take care of the work.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist
Roland Barthes, “Let us dare to be lazy”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel
Christine Jeske, The Laziness Myth
Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah
Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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Mixed-Race Identity Apr 23, 2024

In episode 102 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss diverse ideas of racial mixedness, from family-oriented models of mixed race to José Vasconcelos’ and Gloria Anzaldua’s idea of the ‘mestizo’ heritage of Mexican people. They work through phenomenological accounts of cultural hybridity and selfhood, wondering how being multiracial pushes beyond the traditional Cartesian philosophical subject. Is mestizaje or mixed-race an identity in its own right? What are its connections to the history of colonialism and contemporary demographic trends? And, how can different relations to a mixed heritage lead to flourishing outside of white supremacist categories?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera
Rosie Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory
Elisa Lipsky-Karasz, “Naomi Osaka on Fighting for No. 1 at the U.S. Open”
Mariana Ortega, In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self

Naomi Osaka, “Naomi Osaka reflects on challenges of being black and Japanese”

Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude
Adrian Piper, “Passing for White, Passing for Black”
Carlin Romano, “A Challenge for Philosophy”
José Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósmica
Naomi Zack, Race and Mixed Race

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AI Safety with Shazeda Ahmed Apr 09, 2024

Welcome your robot overlords! In episode 101 of Overthink, Ellie and David speak with Dr. Shazeda Ahmed, specialist in AI Safety, to dive into the philosophy guiding artificial intelligence. With the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT, the lofty utilitarian principles of Effective Altruism have taken the tech-world spotlight by storm. Many who work on AI safety and ethics worry about the dangers of AI, from how automation might put entire categories of workers out of a job to how future forms of AI might pose a catastrophic “existential risk” for humanity as a whole. And yet, optimistic CEOs portray AI as the beginning of an easy, technology-assisted utopia. Who is right about AI: the doomers or the utopians? And whose voices are part of the conversation in the first place? Is AI risk talk spearheaded by well-meaning experts or investor billionaires? And, can philosophy guide discussions about AI toward the right thing to do?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence
Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking
Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality
Mollie Gleiberman, “Effective Altruism and the strategic ambiguity of ‘doing good’”
Matthew Jones and Chris Wiggins, How Data Happened
William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future
Toby Ord, The Precipice
Inioluwa Deborah Raji et al., “The Fallacy of AI Functionality”
Inioluwa Deborah Raji and Roel Dobbe, “Concrete Problems in AI Safety, Revisted”
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
Amia Srinivisan, “Stop The Robot Apocalypse”

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Overthinking Mar 26, 2024

Overthink goes meta! In the 100th episode Ellie and David reflect on the podcast’s journey and the origins of its (flawless!) title. They take up the question, “What is overthinking?” Is it a kind of fixation on details or an unwanted split in the normal flow of ideas? Then, they turn to psychology to make sense of overthinking’s highs and lows, as the distracting voice inside your head and a welcome relief from traumatic memories. Through the philosophies of John Dewey and the Frankfurt School, they look at different ways to understand the role of overthinking in philosophy and the humanities. Is overthinking a damper on good decisions, or perhaps the path to preserving the possibility of social critique?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

John Dewey, How We Think
Max Horkheimer, “The Social Function of Philosophy”
Herbert Marcuse, “Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture”
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, “Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of depressive episodes”
Charles Orbendorf, “Co-Conscious Mentation”
Suzanne Segerstrom et al., “A multidimensional structure for repetitive thought”
Stephanie Wong et al., “Rumination as a Transdiagnostic Phenomenon in the 21st Century”

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Zombies Mar 12, 2024

Who’s afraid of zombification? Apparently not analytic philosophers. In episode 99 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk all about zombies and their unfortunate legacy in the thought experiments of academic philosophy. Their portrait as brain-eating and consciousness-lacking mobs is a far cry from their origins in the syncretic sorcery at the margins of Haitian Voodoo. This distance means that the uncanny zombie raises provocative questions about the problematic ways philosophy integrates and appropriates nonwestern culture into its canon. Your hosts probe beyond limits of the tradition when they explore zombification in animals, in reading, in Derrida, and beyond.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

Ellie Anderson, “Derrida and the Zombie”
David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind
Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow
Descartes, Meditations
Leslie Desmangles, The Faces of the Gods
Daniel C. Dennett, "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies" & Consciousness Explained
Zora Neale Hurston, Tell my Horse
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”
Justin Smith-Ruiu, “The World as a Game”

The Last of Us (2023)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Get Out (2017)

Overthink, Continental Philosophy: What is it, and why is it a thing?

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Reputation Feb 27, 2024

They say this one is the real deal. In Episode 98 of Overthink, Ellie and David untangle the philosophy behind the way we compare, judge, and defend our reputations. From Machiavelli’s advice to despots looking to stay popular, to disgruntled students venting on their professors online, reputation can glide you to victory or trigger your fall from grace. Exploring concepts like the Matthew effect, the homo comparativus, and informational asymmetry, your hosts ask: Why do both Joan Jett and Jean-Jacques Rousseau refuse reputation’s fickle pleasures? Does David actually have a good work-life balance, or is everyone else hoodwinked? And, what is the place of quantified reputation in an increasingly digital world?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Bad Reputation

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Louise Matsakis, “How the West Got China’s Social Credit System Wrong,” Wired Magazine

Gloria Origgi, Reputation: What It Is and Why It Matters

Gloria Origgi, "Reputation in Moral Philosophy and Epistemology"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Jordi Xifra, “Recognition, symbolic capital and reputation in the seventeenth century”

Overthink Episodes

Ep 28, Cancel Culture

Ep 19, Genius

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Cities Feb 13, 2024

The village is aglow! In episode 97 of Overthink, Ellie and David guide you through the ideas that make a metropolis tick. From Plato’s spotless Republic to Saudi Arabia’s futuristic The Line, they talk the foul and the vibrant of what it means to live in a city. Why are there so few public plazas in Brasilia? Why did David lose his wallet in Mexico City? How do gridded street layouts reflect colonial fantasies? And how did a medieval woman writer, Christine de Pizan, beat Greta Gerwig to the punch in imagining a Barbie-like City of Ladies?
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
Don T. Deere, “Coloniality and Disciplinary Power: On Spatial Techniques of Ordering”
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Jane Jacobs, The Life and Death of Great American Cities
Quill R. Kukla, City Living
Christine de Pizan, City of Ladies
Plato, Republic
Angel Rama, The Lettered City
Georg Simmel, “Metropolis and Mental Life”
Iris Marion Young, "City Life and Difference"
Blade Runner (1982)
Parasite (2019)
Barbie (2023)
Overthink ep. 32, Astrology

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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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Fatphobia with Kate Manne Jan 30, 2024

“They find our bodies repulsive.” On episode 96 of Overthink, Ellie and David bring on Dr. Kate Manne, philosopher and author of Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia. She explains the moral failures and biomedical perils of our fatphobic culture and its misleading imperative to diet. This look at the politics of fat, fatness, and fatphobia in the philosophical canon and beyond to reveal rich links to questions of accessibility, justice, and intimacy. Should we trust the BMI (Body Mass Index) as a measure of health? Is the future in Ozempic? Why are we encouraged to see our body’s biological need for nutrition as “food noise”? And what might it take to hear the music of our human bodily diversity?
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth
Ancel Keys, et al., “Indices of relative weight and obesity”
Adolphe Quetelet, On Man and the Development of His Faculties
Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body
Audre Lorde, A Piece of Light
Thomas Nagel, “Free Will”
Kate Manne, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia
Overthink ep 27. From Body Positivity to Fat Feminism (feat. Amelia Hruby)

Follow Dr. Kate Manne on Substack!

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Biohacking Jan 16, 2024

Night vision. Superhuman strength. And… kale salad? In episode 95 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore the weird world of biohackers, who leverage science and technology to optimize their bodies. The movement raises rich philosophical questions, from the blurry ethics of self-experimentation, to the consequences of extreme Cartesian dualism, to the awkward tension in our technological nostalgia for a pastoral paradise. If biohacking taps into the basic human desire to experience and investigate, it perhaps also pushes too far toward transcending our bodies. The stakes are political, metaphysical, and ethical — and your hosts are here to make philosophical sense of it all.
Works Discussed
Dave Asprey, Smarter Not Harder
Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby
Mirjam Grewe-Salfeld, Biohacking, Bodies, and Do-It-Yourself
Michel de Montaigne, "Of Experience"
Max More, The Transhumanist Reader
Joel Michael Reynolds, "Genopower: On Genomics, Disability, and Impairment"
Smithsonian Mag, “200 Frozen Heads and Bodies Await Revival at This Arizona Cryonics Facility”
Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics
Washington Post, “The Key to Glorifying a Questionable Diet? Be a tech bro and call it ‘biohacking'"
Patricia J. Zettler et. al., “Regulating genetic biohacking”
Austin Powers (1997)
If Books Could Kill Podcast
Overthink ep 31. Genomics feat. Joel Michael Reynolds

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Debt Jan 02, 2024

You owe this one a listen. In episode 94 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss everything debt, from student loans and bank bailouts to the importance of honoring one’s intellectual forebears. Did Shakespeare’s Antonio really pay Shylock with “a pound of flesh”? Why does Nietzsche say that the Christian God is a creditor of infinite debt? Who really benefits from bailouts under capitalism today? And might it be time to bring back good old “jubilees,” i.e., sanctioned acts of collective debt cancellation? As they talk through these questions, your hosts explore how debt has structured social, family, and religious bonds across history, from Vedic India, to Plato’s Athens, and how the notion of being “indebted” to one’s cultural past conditions the experience of immigrants in America today.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism
Jeffery R. Di Leo, "Corporate Humanities in Higher Education"
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings
Geoffery Ingham, The Nature of Money
Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
Plato, Republic
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Shatapatha Brahmana
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
HEROES act

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Pity Dec 19, 2023

Tell us who you pity and we’ll tell you who you are! In episode 93 of Overthink, Ellie and David guide you through the philosophy behind this “well-meaning” emotion. From Aristotle’s account of pity in theater, to problematic portrayals of disability in British charity telethons, pity has had an outsized role our social and cultural worlds. But who is the object of our pity, and why? Your hosts dissect various archetypes of pity, such as Father Mackenzie (a character in Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles) and the elusive Corn Man (a figure invented by Ellie while in Greece!). Where is the line between pity and compassion? How does pity interact with our social responsibilities and power structures? And, is pity a meaningful part of the good life, or is it an emotion we would all be better off without?
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Aristotle, Poetics & Rhetoric
The Beatles, Eleanor Rigby
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
Kristján Kristjánsson, “Pity: A Mitigated Defense”
Martha Nussbaum, “Tragedy and Self-Sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Joseph Stramondo, “How an Ideology of Pity is a Social Harm for People With Disabilities”
Bernard Whitley, Mary Kite, and Lisa Wagner, Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination
Special thanks to Alexandra Peabody for her support in researching this episode!

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Non-Monogamous Love with Justin L. Clardy Dec 05, 2023

Let a thousand flowers bloom! In episode 92 of Overthink, Ellie and David have a panoramic conversation on love beyond monogamy with philosophy professor, podcaster, and author of Why It's OK To Not be Monogamous, Justin L. Clardy. They envision relations of love and special attachment that aren't bound to the notion of sacrifice. They also turn to personal stories and question the role of marriage in consumer capitalism and its nonstop pressure to find the One and Only. Together, they find in non-monogamous pathways to reimagine agency, identity, and community — and a nudge toward a richer philosophy of our relations with the world around us.
Note: Ellie misspeaks when she mentions that married couples have lower satisfaction levels than unmarried ones. The correct claim, based on this study, is that they have fewer social ties. We apologize for the mistake!
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Marina Adshade, "The Origins of the Institutions of Marriage"
Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay
Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage
Justin Clardy, Why It’s OK to Not Be Monogamous
Carrie Jenkins, What Love Is
Robert Nozick, "Love's Bond"
Pages The Reading Group

Related Overthink episodes
15. Marriage
16. Monogamy
17. Open Relationships
18. Polyamory

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Mommy Issues Nov 21, 2023

Is mom still doing your laundry!? In episode 91 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore the twisty world of mommy issues, from the OG mother Mary to today’s seducing MILFs. They look into psychonalytic theories of the mom-child bond, paying close attention to ways these theories have been challenged and expanded in the 20th century. They also discuss Simone de Beauvoir’s critique of maternal devotion by diving into some its most extreme, and problematic, manifestations. Your hosts ask: Is it true that mothers identify more easily with their children of the same gender? Do macho men and wimpy boys sexualize their mothers in similar ways? And of course: who’s the biggest mama’s boy of them all?
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity
Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering
Michelle Dean, "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, …"
Jacques Derrida, Reflections on the Mother Tongue
Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader
Donald Winnicott, The Good Enough Parent
Don Jon (2013)
MILF Manor (2023)

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Daddy Issues Nov 07, 2023

Who’s your daddy? Episode 90 is all about daddy issues. Ellie and David investigate father-child relations and the sexual, emotional, and familial worlds they create. From summer zaddies and sexy dad bods to hero feminist dads, your hosts travel from psychoanalysis all the way to theology to explore the expansive world of father figures. Do we all, as Julia Kristeva says, harbor unconscious fantasies of seeing our fathers “beaten”? Could civilization itself, as Freud suggests, be rooted in an archaic act of patricide for which we still feel guilty without realizing it? Ellie and David tackle hard questions about how parenthood, gender, and vulnerability interact. They even wonder whether they might have “daddy issues” of their own!
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Katherine Angel, Daddy Issues
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, and "A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men"
Carl Jung, A Theory of Psychoanalysis
Julia Kristeva, A Father is Being Beaten
Jenn Mann, "Think You Have Daddy Issues?"
Father of the Bride (1991)
The Golden Bachelor (2023)

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Psychedelics Oct 24, 2023

No, you’re not hallucinating! In episode 89 of Overthink, Ellie and David investigate the loopy world of psychedelics. Did you know that after doing psychedelics Jean-Paul Sartre went through a “lobster phase” during which he hallucinated lobsters everywhere he went? Once paraded as mind-opening gateways to the nature of reality, psychedelics are back in the conversation today as tools of therapy and neuroscience. Your hosts take a crack at the philosophy of these puzzling substances, from their implications for phenomenology and the nature of consciousness, to the ethics of their medicinal use, in light of their risks and long-lasting effects. If a trip can transform our mind and senses, it might be that our everyday perception really is far weirder than we think.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Robin Carhart-Harris, et al. “The Entropic Brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs”
Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
Mike Jay, “Sartre’s Bad Trip”
Chris Letheby and Jaipreet Mattu, "Philosophy and Classic Psychedelics: A review of some emerging themes"
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind
Anil Seth, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
Dana G. Smith, “What Does Good Psychedelic Therapy Look Like?”
Simeon Wade, Foucault in California

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Food with Shanti Chu Oct 10, 2023

Ellie and David are serving… dinner! In episode 88 of Overthink, your favorite podcasters explore the philosophy of food, discussing everything from Glaucon’s plea for fancy meals in the Republic, to the rich ways in which food is intertwined with our individual and cultural identities. They welcome food critic and philosophy professor Shanti Chu for a lively conversation about the gendering of meals, the ethics of food systems (lab-grown meat, anyone?), the future of restaurants, and much more. Bon appetit!
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat
Shanti Chu, “Nonviolence through Veganism” and “Public Philosophy and Food: Foodies, Ethics, and Activism”
Claude Fischler, "Food, Self, and Identity"
A. Breeze Harper, Sistah Vegan
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity
Plato, Republic
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

Support the show

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Authenticity Sep 26, 2023

Time to be real! In episode 87 of Overthink, Ellie and David go back and forth about authenticity. They explore its deep roots in existentialist philosophy and Romanticism, and grapple with the paradoxes of being authentic in the era of reality TV, social media, and friendly-branded megacorps. They dive into philosophical critiques of authenticity, and explore how Heidegger’s writings on “Eigentlichkeit” (often translated as “authenticity” or “actuality”) stand up today. Is authenticity the same thing as sincerity? Can you be authentic and insincere, or sincere and inauthentic? Who do we try to be authentic for: ourselves or other people? And might drag queens be the greatest example of postmodern authenticity?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

Taylor Carman, "The Concept of Authenticity"
Skye Cleary, How to Be Authentic
Brit Dawson, “Buying and selling authenticity: a decade of reality TV”
Alessandro Ferrara, The Critique of Authenticity
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile
Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity
Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity
Drag Race Spain S2
The Bachelor

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World Sep 12, 2023

Give us a listen, and we’ll give you the world! In Episode 86 of Overthink, Ellie and David ask: what does it mean to live in a world? From animal spirit masters in Labrador to the foundations of climate science, they discuss why the concept of "world" is so contentious, and even at the brink of collapse. They navigate our entangled concepts of nature, culture, and the idyllic nurturing earth through the work of Hannah Arendt and Arturo Escobar. Is the world of animals the same as our own? And, what could it mean to imagine a world where many worlds fit? In times of deep planetary transformation, philosophizing our place in this world has never been more important.

This episode was produced by Emilio Esquivel Marquez and Aaron Morgan as part of their Summer Undergraduate Research Program at Pomona College.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition and The Origins of Totalitarianism
Mario Blaser, “Doing and undoing Caribou/Atiku”
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Planetary Humanities”
Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The Ends of the World
Arturo Escobar, Pluriversal Politics
Martin Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics
Travis Holloway, How to Live at the End of the World
Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia
Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects
Conservation International, Mother Nature (2015)

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Sexual Consent Aug 29, 2023

This episode gets an enthusiastic yes from us. In episode 85 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into the crux of sexual consent. They work through some of the earliest attempts on the part of American universities at developing a sexual consent policy, before unpacking the fiery debates surrounding consent today — ranging from complex legal cases as well as instances of “gray rape.” They probe the limits of popular understandings of consent with cases involving intense physical pain, and cases which undo the very stability of our idea of consent. (Can one meaningfully consent to one’s own murder?) They explore Ellie’s own proposal for rethinking our idea of consent. Is consent contractual? Performative? Magic? And, should it really be the central tenet of our sexual ethics?
Content warning: this episode contains graphic discussions of sexual violence and bodily harm.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Linda Martín Alcoff, Rape and Resistance
Ellie Anderson, “A Phenomenological Approach to Sexual Consent” and “The Limits of Consent in Sexual Ethics”
Katherine Angel, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again
Ann Cahill, Rethinking Rape
Heidi Hurd, “The Moral Magic of Consent”
Jonathan Ichikawa, “Presupposition and Consent”
Joseph Fischer, Screw Consent
Joan McGregor, Is it Rape?
Caleb Ward and Ellie Anderson, “The Ethical Significance of Being an Erotic Object”
Bari Weiss, “Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader”
Is It Date Rape? (1991 SNL Skit)

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Standpoint Epistemology with Briana Toole Aug 15, 2023

What does it mean to be marginalized? Does marginalization give some people more epistemic authority than others? And, if so, what should we all do with this information? In episode 84 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about standpoint theory, its complex intellectual history, and its relationship to W. E. B. DuBois’ concept of double consciousness. They welcome an expert on the subject: Dr. Briana Toole, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. In their conversation, they chat about how standpoint theory makes sense of electoral politics, educational policy, bizarre reality TV, and much more. They also discuss Corrupt the Youth, a philosophy outreach program founded by Dr. Toole that brings philosophy to high schools in the U.S.
Check out this episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Briana Toole, “On Standpoint Epistemology and Epistemic Peerhood” and “Demarginalizing Standpoint Epistemology”
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Jennifer Nash, Black Feminism Reimagined
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture
David Foster Wallace, This Is Water
Black. White. (2006)

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Exercise Aug 01, 2023

Western philosophy started… at the gym. In episode 83 of Overthink, Ellie and David tackle the philosophy of workouts, from Plato’s days as a wrestler to the modern loneliness of a solitary bench press. As they discuss the role of exercise — which the Greeks called gymnastics — in building bodies and training souls, they consider the ancient Olympics, the cravings for health and beauty that guide us through what David calls the "Protestant work-out ethic," and Jean Baudrillard's thoughts about Americans' passion for jogging.
Works Discussed
Jean Baudrillard, America
Mark Greif, “Against Exercise”
Drew Hyland, Philosophy of Sport
Plato, The Republic, The Laws, and Euthyphro
Heather Reid, Introduction to the Philosophy of Sport
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, and “The Government of Poland”
Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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Regret Jul 18, 2023

Coulda, woulda, shoulda… In Overthink’s long-awaited epsiode 82, David and Ellie fret over the meaning of regret, in everything from life-altering career decisions to sloppy teenage breakups. They consider the usefulness of regret — if it has one at all — and explore its relation to a life well lived, investigating its philosophical lineage from Confucius and Aristotle to today. Can 20-year-olds regret? Can dogs? Is regret ever rational? And, when does remorse turn into existential despair?

Works Discussed
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
John Danaher, “The Wisdom of Regret and the Fallacy of Regret Minimization”
Shai Davidai and Thomas Giolvich, “The Ideal Road Not Taken”
Michael Ing, The Vulnerability of Integrity in Early Confucian Thought
Paddy McQueen, “When Should We Regret?”
Michel de Montaigne, “On Repentance”
Carolyn Price, “The Many Flavors of Regret”
Justin White, “Revelatory Regret and the Standpoint of the Agent”
Russian Doll (2019)
Sliding Doors (1998)
Magnolia (1999)

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Fashion Jul 04, 2023

Tweed suits, penny loafers: who said philosophers were out of touch? In episode 81 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk everything from Shein to Ferragamo, from high school lunchbox trends to Machiavelli’s nightgowns. As they chart the history of clothing, and the shift from functional Egyptian togas to extravagant medieval breeches, they investigate the refrain that clothes reveal the wearer’s personality. They ask, where does being timely turn into being classist? What does our sense for what’s hip tell us about perception? And, how do we square our drive for style with the injustices of consumption?
Works Discussed
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
Gwenda-lin Grewal, Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion
Tansy E. Hoskins, The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion
Gilles Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion
Georg Simmel, “Fashion”
Iris Marion Young, Responsibility and Global Labor Justice
Amie Zimmer, Mere Appearance: Redressing the History of Philosophy
Funny Face (1957) with Audrey Hepburn
The White Lotus, Season 2

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Art and AI with Raphaël Millière Jun 20, 2023

Machine minds can work a paintbrush, but are they really making art? In episode 80 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk with guest Raphaël Millière, scholar and philosophy lecturer at Columbia University, on the aesthetic merits of computer-generated art. They discuss the thorny marriage of art and technology in everything from the early days of photography to YACHT’s AI-assisted pop songs. Why do we expect art to express human emotions? Is prompt-engineering for AI models an art in itself? And, if ‘great artists steal,’ is DALL·E the greatest artist of us all?
Works discussed
AARON
DALL·E
David Bowie, Outside
R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art
Raphaël Millière, AI Art is Challenging the Boundaries of Curation
Obvious, The Portrait of Edmond de Belamy
YACHT, Chain Tripping

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Intellectuals Jun 06, 2023

From Émile Zola to Edward Said, from Antonio Gramsci to… Joe Rogan? In episode 79 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the figure of the high-minded ‘intellectual’ and their role in today’s mass-media landscape. Who are intellectuals, what do they do, and what are they for? Ellie and David ask whether intellectuals have a duty to participate in public debate, and whether they can truly partake in liberatory action in such a capacity.

Works Discussed
Julien Benda, The Treason of Intellectuals
Christoph Charles, Birth of the Intellectuals: 1880-1900
Didier Eribon, Returning to Reims
Antonio Gramsci, The Intellectuals
Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?
Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academia
Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual
Émile Zola, J’accuse...!
Armchair Expert Podcast
Binchtopia Podcast
SmartLess Podcast

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Boredom May 23, 2023

One must imagine Sisyphus…bored. Take a break from boredom and listen to episode 78 of Overthink as David and Ellie guide you through the fabulously idle realm of this “bestial, indefinable affliction.” They discuss the peaceful highs and painful lows of their middle school summer slumps, the endless days of pandemic panic, and the sluggish mornings of monks during the Medieval period. What can boredom teach us about existence? Is Kierkegaard right that the masses are boring while the nobles bore themselves? Can 9-year-olds be existentially bored? Maybe all we need to overcome boredom is a little bit of fun, perhaps a holiday. Or is it?
Works Discussed

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
Andreas Elpidorou, The Feeling of Boredom, Boredom and Poverty
Evagrius, Of the Eight Capital Sins
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Pascal, Pensées
Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom
Michel de Montaigne, Of Sorrow
The Twilight Zone

* In the episode, we misattributed the quote “The cure for boredom is curiosity” to Dorothy Parker. The quote belongs to Ellen Parr.

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Orgasm May 09, 2023

Fireworks, a gushing waterfall, little death. The orgasm. In episode 77 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss how phenomenology and psychoanalysis interpret the experience of orgasm. They talk about evolutionary theories of the orgasm, including the theory that the body can suck up...“higher quality sperm.” They tackle what the orgasm gap says about the state of gender and sex in our society.

Works Discussed

George Bataille, Erotism

Sigmund Freud, “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes”

Sigmund Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”

Sara Heinämaa, “The Phenomenology of Desire and Orgasm”

Jacques Lacan, Jouissance

Elisabeth Lloyd, The Case of the Female Orgasm Bias in the Science of Evolution

Emily Nagoski, Come As You Are

Thomas Percy, “Walking in a Meadow Green”

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Bad Movies with Matthew Strohl Apr 25, 2023

Guilty pleasures or cult classics, at the end of the day they’re just bad movies. In episode 76 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk with Matthew Strohl about bad movies and why it’s okay to love them. Strohl is a professor of philosophy at the University of Montana who specializes in aesthetics and ancient philosophy. He is the author of Why It’s Okay to Love Bad Movies. Here, he talks with Ellie and David about what makes certain movies “bad” yet also somehow “good,” and introduces us to two ways of relating to bad movies: bad movie ridicule vs bad movie love. What value do bad movies add to our lives and how can we develop community around the practice of watching bad movies?

Works Discussed
Dancin’: It’s On! (2015)
Looking Glass (2018)
Showgirls (1995)
Matthew Strohl, Why It's Okay to Love Bad Movies

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Silence Apr 11, 2023

*cricket noises* In episode 75 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss silence and its connection with awe, ecstasy, and the experience of the divine. They talk about David’s experience staying silent during a collegiate debate and Ellie’s practice of meditation as it relates to silence. How does being silent reveal the inner and outer noise that so often surrounds us? They talk about Christian mysticism, Dauenhauer's deep silence, and Heidegger’s call of conscience and explore the various forms of silence that shape our everyday lives.

Works Discussed

St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica

John Cage, 4’33”

Bernard Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and its Ontological Significance

Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with John Cage

Louis Pelletier, “Silence please! A brief history of silence at the theater”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Dōgen Zenji, Shōbōgenzō

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Lived Experience Mar 28, 2023

What kind of authority do we appeal to when we invoke lived experience? Isn't all experience "lived"? Why does the *discourse* today so frequently refer to this concept, and what are its philosophical origins? In episode 74 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the phenomenology of lived experience, including its roots in Dilthey, who considered lived experience to be historical. They incorporate Fanon’s work into the conversation to answer the question of if our lived experience of the world is something that varies along identity lines such as race.

Works Discussed

Wilhelm Dilthey, Poetry and Experience

Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Martin Jay, Songs of Experience

Becca Longtin, “From Factical Life to Art: Reconsidering Heidegger's Appropriation of Dilthey”

Pamela Paul, “The Limits of ‘Lived Experience’”

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Cultural Appropriation Mar 14, 2023

What do Gwen Stefani, Iggy Azalea, and Camille Monet have in common? They are all blonde women who are probably guilty of cultural appropriation. In episode 73 of Overthink, Ellie and David tackle cultural appropriation, starting with the kerfuffle over Claude Monet’s painting La Japonaise at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Pulling from their own experiences of cultural appropriation and from academic explorations of the topic, they consider whether individuals should even be called out for cultural appropriation. They talk about Nguyen and Strohl’s concept of “group intimacy” and debate whether we can ever draw a clear line between insiders and outsiders in a particular cultural group.

Works Discussed

Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture

Jesa Marie Calaor, “Gwen Stefani: “I Said, ‘My God, I’m Japanese’”

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures

Erich Hatala Matthes, “Cultural Appropriation Without Cultural Essentialism?”

C. Thi Nguyen and Matthew Strohl, “Cultural Appropriation and the Intimacy of Groups”

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Why Live? with Céline Leboeuf Feb 28, 2023

To be or not to be? That is the question. At the center of Hamlet’s soliloquy is the issue of whether life is worth living. In episode 72 of Overthink, Ellie and David consider this issue with philosopher and existentialism expert Céline Leboeuf. How can we find meaning in our lives when the world seems random and indifferent to our interests? Leboeuf talks about how her personal experience with an existential crisis and her philosophical search for a way out of it led her to consider religious, atheist, and spiritual answers to the question "Why Live?" Ellie and David also consider Camus’ notion of the absurd, and whether life is just a series of blips of suffering with no higher purpose.
Works Discussed
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
William James, “Is Life Worth Living”
Céline Leboeuf, "Why Live? The Three Authors Who Saved Me During an Existential Crisis"
John Jay McDermott “Why Bother: Is Life Worth Living?”
Samuel Scheffer, Death and the Afterlife
Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

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Emotional Labor Feb 14, 2023

Is the emotional opacity of men a social justice issue? In episode 71, Ellie and David break down the concepts of emotional and hermeneutic labor. The notion of emotional labor was originally created to shed light on gendered workplace interactions, but it has since been applied to romantic and other kinds of relationships. Is this expanded use of the term justified? Ellie’s research suggests that the concept of hermeneutic labor may better explain asymmetries of power in romantic relationships between men and women. Hermeneutic labor imbalances are produced by men’s inability to name and interpret their feelings and by the societal expectation that women manage their own emotions and those of their male partners simultaneously. How does Ellie’s research on hermeneutic labor shift our perspective on the issue of gender in emotional work?
Works Discussed
Ellie Anderson, “Hermeneutic Labor: The Gendered Burden of Interpretation in Intimate Relationships Between Women and Men”
Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart
bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
Judith Farr Tormey, "Exploitation, Oppression and Self-Sacrifice"
Ronald Levant, “Desperately seeking language: Understanding, assessing, and treating normative male alexithymia”
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, “Stoicism (as Emotional Compression) Is Emotional Labor”
Kathi Weeks, "Hours for What We Will: Work, Family, and the Movement for Shorter Hours”

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FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Jan 31, 2023

In the next hour, I might miss out on the greatest thing that could happen to me. Or maybe that’s just the FOMO talking. FOMO, the fear of missing out, has infiltrated the zeitgeist in the past decade. What does the obsession with FOMO tell us about our desire to connect with others in an age of consumer capitalism and social media? In episode 70, Ellie and David consider the fear of missing out in light of Nietzsche’s ressentiment, Freud’s psychoanalysis of Little Hans, and how FOMO has changed due to COVID. They consider whether the movement toward JOMO, or the joy of missing out, provides a viable solution to the fear.

Svend Brinkmann, The Joy of Missing Out: The Art of Self-Restraint in an Age of Excess Paperback
Sigmund Freud, Obsessions and Phobias
Sigmund Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy”
Mayank Gupta and Aditya Sharma, “Fear of missing out: A brief overview of origin, theoretical underpinnings and relationship with mental health”
Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”
Mark Morford, “Oh My God You are So Missing Out”
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
James A. Roberts and Meredith E. David, “The Social Media Party: Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), Social Media Intensity, Connection, and Well-Being”

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Animal Justice with Martha Nussbaum Jan 17, 2023

Wild animals who build communities, domestic companions who love, and captive creatures who suffer. In episode 69 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk with renowned philosopher Martha Nussbaum about her capabilities approach to animal justice. They touch on topics as varied as animal sentience, factory farming, habitat destruction, and the ethics of predation. Together, they discuss the failure of established ethical frameworks to fully incorporate the more-than-human world, explore our ethical responsibilities to other animals, and consider how our legal system might need to change in order to facilitate the flourishing of all life on earth.
Works Discussed
Rachel Aviv, The Philosopher of Feelings
Martha Nussbaum, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility

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Heroes Jan 03, 2023

I’m holding out for a hero. From Achilles to Odysseus and modern day heroes, what does it mean to be a hero, and why are we obsessed with hero worship? In episode 68 of Overthink, Ellie and David dissect the figure of the hero, from its masculinist overtones to how it differs from other morally praiseworthy figures, such as the saint. They discuss how the concept of heroism has changed over time from the time of Homer to the age of CNN.

Works Discussed
Ari Kohen, Untangling Heroism
Marina McCoy, Wounded Heroes
Friedrich Nietzche, “On the Uses and Liabilities of History for Life”
J.O. Urmson, “Of Saints and Heroes”
Philip Zimbardo and Zeno Franco, “The Banality of Heroism”
Zeno Franco, Scott T. Allison, et. al, "Heroism Research: A Review of Theories, Methods, Challenges, and Trends"

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Taste Dec 20, 2022

It’s corn! A big lump with knobs, it has the juice, I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing. Wise words about corn that relate to the sense of taste. In episode 67 of Overthink, Ellie and David finish their series on the five senses talking about the gustatory experience. They consider if taste is merely a subjective experience or are there some things that objectively taste good? Ellie and David discuss how having good taste relates to the perceptual experience of taste and why taste is such a big part of community.
Works Discussed
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy
A. S. Barwich, Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind
David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste
Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste
Mengzi, Mengzi
Passport to Paris (1999)

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Smell with Benjamin Young Dec 06, 2022

Have you ever experienced the headache-inducing odor of Axe body spray? Smell has immense power, but why has it been undervalued in philosophy? In episode 66, Ellie and David are joined by philosophy professor Dr. Benjamin Young to discuss the sense and how we perceive smell. They talk about everything from Anosmia, the loss of smell, to the smellscape of middle school.
Works Discussed
Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
Bill Lichen, “The Sliding of Smell”
James McHugh, Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell In Indian Religion And Culture
Larry Shiner, Art Scents: Exploring the Aesthetics of Smell and the Olfactory Arts
Marta Tafalla, “A World Without the Olfactory Dimension”
Benjamin Young, “Stinking Consciousness”
Benjamin Young, Theoretical Perspectives on Smell

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Hearing Nov 22, 2022

Have you heard? In episode 65 of Overthink, Ellie and David continue the series on the five senses as they discuss hearing. From wanting to close your ears to stop overhearing a conversation to the noise pollution outside your bedroom window, how does the sense of hearing make its way into our everyday lives? They also discuss how Deaf culture calls upon us to retool our understanding of the importance of hearing for human life.
Works Cited
Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews
Christopher Frith, “Disorders of self-monitoring and the symptoms of schizophrenia"
Karen Hanson, “The Self Imagined: Philosophical Reflections on the Social Character of Psyche”
Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness
Hans Jonas,“The Nobility of Sight”
Simon McCarthy-Jones, “Stop, Look, and Listen”
George Herbert Mead, Selected Writings
Alva Noë, Out of Our Heads: Why You are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness
Michel Serres, The Five Senses
Robert Sparrow “Defending Deaf Culture”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Logical Investigations
Defu Yap, Laura Staum Casasanto, and Daniel Casasanto, “Metaphoric Iconicity in Signed and Spoken Languages”

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Vision Nov 08, 2022

And at last I see the light. In episode 64 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss vision in the second installment of their ongoing series on the five senses. They discuss the prevalence of visual metaphors for knowledge, and why sight has historically been the most privileged of the senses. Ellie and David talk about the difference between Greek and Vedic approaches to vision and how culture and language can impact important aspects of the visual experience such as the ability to perceive the color blue.
Works Discussed
Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern World
Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass
William Gladstone, Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age
Luce Irigaray, Elemental Passions
Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, the Denigration of Vision in 20th Century French Thought
Hans Jonas,"The Nobility of Sight"
Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life Toward a Philosophical Biology
Plato, The Theaetetus
Plato, The Republic
The Upanishads

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Touch Oct 25, 2022

Touch, texture, and tickling. From touch working as a form of recognition to the sensation of shapes, touch is a part of our everyday lives. In episode 63 of Overthink, Ellie and David begin their series on the five senses with touch. They discuss the significance of Cinderella’s original fur slipper and why Lucretius believed that milk and honey particles have a smooth, round shape. They also consider why some ancient philosophers consider touch the primary sense and what we learn about the nature of the self from the phenomenology of touching and being touched.
Works Discussed
Matthew Fulkerson, The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of Human Touch
Galen, Complete Works
G. Stanley Hall, "The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing and the Comic"
William Harvey, The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations
Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers and Charles T. Wolfe,“The senses in philosophy and science: from the nobility of sight to the materialism of touch”
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible
Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation
Michel Serres, The Five Senses

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Curiosity (feat. Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett) Oct 11, 2022

Curiosity led Pandora to open a box, but what does being curious look like in our everyday lives? In episode 62, Ellie and David discuss the vilification of curiosity and the role of curiosity in the modern education system. To help, they talk with philosophy professor Perry Zurn and bioengineering professor Dani S. Bassett, twins who co-authored the book Curious Minds: The Power of Connection. Together, they consider how we can understand and cultivate different types of curiosity.
Works Discussed
Saint Augustine, The Confessions
Francis Bacon, "Of Tribute"
Barbara Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Richard Phillips, “Curiosity: Care, Virtue and Pleasure in Uncovering the New”
Alastair Reed, “Curiosity”
Joelle Thomas and David M. Peña-Guzmán, “Review of Vinciane Despret’s What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?”
Perry Zurn, Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry
Perry Zurn & Dani S. Bassett, Curious Minds: The Power of Connection

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Self-Knowledge Sep 27, 2022

Know thyself, the inscription at the shrine of Delphi reads. But can we truly know ourselves, like the Ancient Greeks believed? In episode 61 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore the concept of self-knowledge from looking inside ourselves to the reflection we put out into the world. Do we gain self knowledge through introspection, or are there better ways of finding out who we are? They discuss everything from imagination to doubting as a way to get a sense of ourselves.
Works Discussed
Catriona MacKenzie, Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics
Jimena Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time
Krista Lawlor, “Knowing What One Wants”
Montaigne, Essays of Montaigne
Plato, Dialogues
René Descartes, Discourse on Method
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
Richard Moran, Authority and Estrangement
William James, The Principles of Psychology

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Influence(rs) Sep 13, 2022

Likes, lighting, and Lil Miquela. Influencers have taken over the online world, promoting everything from brands to lifestyle changes. But, what does it mean to exert influence over somebody and how has the rise of social media created a whole new category of the influencer? In episode 60 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the job and person we now know as the influencer and how objectification and relationships play into this role.
Works Cited
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Talcott Parsons, “On the Concept of Influence”
Time Magazine, “The 25 Most Influential People on the Internet”

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Film Aug 30, 2022

Since the invention of film, we’ve seen an unimaginable shift in the nature of human perception — but what is film, really? In episode 59 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into the nature of film. What distinguishes film from other art forms, like photography and theater? Do films depict reality as it is, or are films separate worlds in themselves? They dissect the ideology of the movie theater, human perceptions of montage over time and across cultures, the condition of the film spectator, and more!
Works Discussed
Béla Balázs, “Theory of the Film”
Jean-Louis Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus”
Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed
Bernd Elzer & Martin Loiperdinger, “Lumiere’s Arrival of the Train: Cinema’s Founding Myth”
Jean Epstein, “The Intelligence of a Machine”
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
Susan Sontag, “The Decay of Cinema”
Susan Sontag, “Film and Theater”
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

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Feminism (feat. Carol Hay) Aug 16, 2022

In the wake of #MeToo, the controversial Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, where does feminism stand today? In episode 58 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore feminist philosophy to diagnose the status and future of the feminist movement. To help think about these issues, they bring on Dr. Carol Hay, feminist philosopher and author of the book Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution. The trio talk theories of oppression, recent anti-feminist backlash, capitalist appropriation of feminism (see: #girlboss), and more!
Works Discussed
Carol Hay, Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution
Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Clotilde de Maricourt and Stephen R. Burrell, "#MeToo or #MenToo? Expressions of backlash and masculinity Politics in the #MeToo era."
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

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Waiting Aug 02, 2022

Has society progressed past the need for waiting? In the time of smartphones and their 24/7 carousels of distraction, the liminal agony of waiting seems like a thing of the past. In episode 57 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore waiting as a persistent mood of existence. Why do we flee waiting? How can waiting be an active, liberatory act rather than something we just passively endure? They dive into absurdist theater, the figure of the messiah, time under capitalism, and modern life’s discomfort with uncertainty.
Works Discussed
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
Manpreet Janeja and Andreas Bandak, Ethnographies of Waiting: Doubt, Hope, and Uncertainty
Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having
Gabriel Marcel, “Desire and Hope”
Harold Schweizer, On Waiting
Imad Shouery, “Phenomenological Analysis of Waiting”

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Kitsch Jul 19, 2022

What do garden gnomes, the #BlackLivesMatter black squares of June 2020 Instagram, and formulaic pop songs all have in common? They’re kitsch. In episode 56 of Overthink, Ellie and David investigate the history of kitsch as an aesthetic category distinct from art. How does the superficiality and mass-reproducibility of kitsch explain its uses as a tool of fascist propaganda? They discuss the American cultural instinct to deploy inspirational quotes in response to national trauma, kitsch as an antidote to working class alienation, the decline of emotionally significant, critical art, and more.
Works Discussed
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch”
Tomáš Kulka, Kitsch and Art
Catherine A. Lugg, Kitsch
Zach Brown Band, “Chicken Fried”
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, Dogs Playing Poker

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Surveillance Jul 05, 2022

Feeling watched? Suspicious your Google Home is a front for Big Brother? From period tracking apps to police body cams, surveillance has immense social-political implications for our everyday lives. In episode 55 of Overthink, Ellie and David draw on social philosophy to understand our experiences of mass surveillance. How do technologies of surveillance that promise convenience and freedom lead us to welcome new forms of control into our lives? They also consider how these technologies have empowered people to take up new methods of resisting state violence.
Works Discussed
Anders Albrechtslund, “Online social networking as participatory surveillance”
Roger Clark, “Information technology and dataveillance”
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson, “The surveillant assemblage”
Steve Mann, “’Sousveillance’: inverse surveillance in multimedia imaging’”

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Animal Sociality (feat. Cynthia Willett) Jun 21, 2022

Are humans the only animals with culture? In episode 54 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore the social and cultural bonds that animals develop with one another. For instance, what can elephant mourning rituals tell us about elephant society and whether these creatures have a concept of death? Then, they sit down with philosopher Cynthia Willett to discuss her work on animal sociality. According to Willett, intra- and trans-species sociality challenges modern conceptions of ethical life as a matter of individual choices and abstract laws.
Works Discussed
David Peña-Guzmán, When Animals Dream
Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins
Cynthia Willett, Interspecies Ethics

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Animal Personhood Jun 07, 2022

A court case over an elephant’s right to liberation from the Bronx Zoo shows that we’ve come a long way from Descartes’ concept of animal-as-machine. In episode 53, Ellie and David break down an emerging question in animal rights activism: animal personhood and moral status. What does it mean to be a person? And, what are the implications of legally recognizing animals’ right to life and bodily freedom?
Works Discussed
David Peña-Guzmán, et al., Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief
Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On Instinct in Animals
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
Steven Wise, Unlocking the Cage

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Animal Consciousness May 24, 2022

From snoozing puppies kicking their legs to controversial octopi who change colors while asleep, nonhuman dreaming fascinates us. Science says that sleeping animals experience “reality simulations,” rich dreamscapes which they navigate as conscious agents. Inspired by David’s book When Animals Dream (fresh off the press!), this episode kicks off a 3-part series tracing his thrilling investigation into the nature and philosophical implications of animal dreaming. Episode 52 introduces David’s argument that animals’ capacity to dream reveals the need to radically rethink animals as conscious beings with complex inner lives.
Works Discussed:
David Peña-Guzmán, When Animals Dream
Nature (S38 E1), PBS TV
Elizabeth Preston, "Was Heidi the Octopus Really Dreaming?"
William Lauder Lindsay, Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and Disease
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
Evan Thompson, Waking, Dreaming, Being
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds
Ratatouille (2007)

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Gen Z (feat. Sam Hernandez and Anna Solomon) May 10, 2022

Generational differences emerge in subtle ways, but how do we identify these? And how does the new generation of youth culture Gen Z is defining differ from Ellie and David’s generation of millennials? Feeling a bit out of touch, Ellie and David interview Overthink production assistants Anna Solomon and Sam Hernandez to tell them all about Gen Z values.
Works Discussed
Jose Ortega y Gasset, El tema de nuestro tiempo
William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations
William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning
Bobby Duffy, The Generation Myth
Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation

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The Unconscious Apr 26, 2022

What do Freudian slips, Josie and the Pussycats, and solving math problems have in common? Psychoanalysis claims to have some answers! Sigmund Freud suggests that unconscious desires, fears, and trauma influence us without us being conscious of them. In pop culture, the unconscious is often depicted as the realm of dirty thoughts and subliminal messages, but does the unconscious actually even exist? In episode 50 (!), Ellie and David explore the unconscious and the existentialist challenge to it from Jean-Paul Sartre.
Works Discussed
Sigmund Freud, “The Unconscious”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
The Exorcist (1973)
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Stanislas Dehaene, The Code of Consciousness
Jacques Hadamard, An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field
Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”

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Gossip Apr 12, 2022

Why do humans in every known culture love juicy gossip? Some theorists say gossip evolved as the modern version of picking fleas off our friends, reassuring those around us of our shared social bonds. Others argue that it reinforces social norms by outlining what behaviors are bad, or even scandalous. In episode 49, Ellie and David gossip about gossip — when is it wrong to gossip, and when might it be the ethical choice? Many scholars throughout history have condemned gossip as idle chitchat that slanders others, but some feminist and decolonial thinkers have reclaimed its utility for fighting against systems of oppression that exclude them from formal modes of communication. Episode 49 spills the tea on gossip.
Works Discussed
Sipping with Socrates, “Socrates’ view of gossip”
Immanuel Kant, Anthropology
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age: On the Death of Rebellion
The Bible, 1 Timothy 5:13
Megan L. Robbins and Alexander Karan, “Who Gossips and How in Everyday Life?”
Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language
Giambattista Vico, The New Science
Baumeister, Roy F., Liqing Zhang, and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Gossip as Cultural Learning”
Survivor
Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India
Sissela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation

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Productivity Mar 29, 2022

We’re always worried about being productive enough with our time, but where does this compulsion come from? In episode 48, Ellie and David examine productivity culture and the drive to produce. Although research says longer hours don’t equal more productivity, capitalism encourages us to always be working, even at the cost of our mental and physical health. How does this inefficient approach to work (and our lives outside of it) stifle our growth and creativity? According to Twitter memes and Bifo, refusing productivity for lazy relaxation on the beach may be a revolutionary rejection of productivity culture, but Adorno contends that laziness recycles us into merely consuming commodities for capitalism instead of producing them. What can a creative, process-based approach offer us that a productivist one cannot, and what value might there be in just producing less?
Works Cited
Amelia Horgan, “The ‘Dark Academia’ Subculture Offers a Fantasy Alternative to the Neoliberal University”
John Pencavel, “The Productivity of Working Hours”
Shainaz Firfiray, “Long hours at the office could be killing you – the case for a shorter working week”
Economic Policy Institute, “The Productivity-Pay Gap”
Foucault, History of Madness
Franco Berardi, Futurability
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life
Mihály Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Cal Newport, “It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity”
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

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Rage (feat. Myisha Cherry) Mar 15, 2022

Is rage a bad thing? Philosophers usually frame anger as an unhealthy or even immoral emotion that leads us away from compassion and towards violence, but episode 47 guest Myisha Cherry's new book makes The Case for Rage as a powerful tool for anti-racist work. Before their discussion with Dr. Cherry, Ellie and David discuss contrasting theories of anger from Martha Nussbaum and Buddhism. Can rage be rooted in love rather than hate, and drive us towards a more just world?
Works Discussed
Myisha Cherry, The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle
Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time
Martha Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice
Aeschylus, The Oresteia
Shantideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra
Emily McRae, "Metabolizing Anger: A Tantric Buddhist Solution to the
Problem of Moral Anger"
Silvan Tomkins, Exploring Affect
Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”
Myisha Cherry and Owen Flanagan, The Moral Psychology of Anger
Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
Amia Srinivasan, “The Aptness of Anger”

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Anti-Natalism Mar 01, 2022

Is it really better to exist than not exist? With rampant climate destruction, income inequality, and suffering in the world, some have begun to question whether it is ethical to create new life, knowing it will suffer. In episode 46 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore the intellectual tradition of anti-natalism. Why did Schopenhauer think that life was ultimately dominated by suffering, and why did Nietzsche think he was so wrong? How has anti-natalism emerged out of the trend of pessimism, and how can we be optimistic about generating new life in what can at times be such a hard world?
Works Discussed
Soul (2020)
Capernaum (2018)
David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Elizabeth Harman, “Critical Study of David Benatar. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
Thaddeus Metz, “Are Lives Worth Creating?”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Théophile de Giraud, The Art of Guillotining the Procreators: Anti-Natalist Manifesto
Plato, The Laws

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Trees Feb 15, 2022

Have you ever hugged a tree? In episode 45 of Overthink, Ellie and David head into nature to explore the philosophical side of trees. Often, trees have been ignored, even as they populate so much of the space around us. Why did Socrates say he could learn nothing from trees, and why did Nietzsche write so romantically about them? Deleuze and Guattari criticize trees for being too vertically organized, but Michael Marder argues that they're far more cooperative than we ever imagined. In that spirit, trees are clearly alive, but Peter Wohlleben goes as far as to say they could possibly be intelligent, and even have language of their own. Does that mean that trees deserve rights? Ellie and David get into the root of it in episode 45!
Works Discussed
Richard Powers, The Overstory
Plato, Phaedrus
Martin Buber, I and Thou
Aristotle, De Anima
Plotinus, Enneads
Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life
Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate
Massimo E. Maffei and Wilhelm Boland, “The Silent Scream of the Lima Bean”
Monica Gagliano et al., “Learning by association in plants”
Monica Gagliano et al., “Plants learn and remember: let’s get used to it”
Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka, The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness
Christopher Stone, “Should Trees Have Standing?”
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Michael Marder, “In (Philosophical) Defense of Trees”

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Heteropessimism Feb 01, 2022

Are the straights okay? In episode 44 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into “heteropessimism,” the sense of disillusionment or even shame associated with heterosexuality. From viral TikTok videos to studies showing that women are less dissatisfied than men in heterosexual relationships, post #metoo society is reckoning with the everyday sexism of many relationships. Ellie and David explore the reasons for heteropessimism, consider alternatives such as political lesbianism and boys' education, and ask: how can we be attracted to things that are bad for us, and how can we break out of a heteropessimistic approach to love?
Works Discussed
Asa Seresin, “On Heteropessimism”
Lena Gunnarsson, The Contradictions of Love
Mari Ruti, Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life
Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism
Sandra Bartky, Femininity and Domination
Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman, Sex, Or the Unbearable
Andrea Long Chu, “The Impossibility of Feminism”
Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste
Jack Halberstam, In A Queer Time and Place
Ronald F. Levant, Philip A. Allen, and Mei-Ching Lien, “Alexithymia in Men: How and when do emotional processing deficiencies occur?”
Ronald Levant, “Desperately Seeking Language: Understanding, Assessing, and Treating Normative Male Alexithymia”
Lauren Papp, Chrystyna D. Kouros, and E. Mark Cummings, “Demand-Withdraw patterns in marital conflict in the home”
D.L. Vogel, S.R. Wester, M. Heesacker, and S. Madon, “Dating relationships and the demand/withdraw pattern of communication”
Stephanie Coontz, “How to Make Your Marriage Gayer”

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Walking Jan 18, 2022

Some podcasts only talk the talk, but David and Ellie walk the walk (or talk the walk?) in episode 43 by diving into the philosophy of walking. Walking is a complex sociocultural practice that raises fascinating questions about history, power, and freedom. Why did our ancestors transition from walking on all fours to walking on two legs, and how did this shape our evolution as a species? Why have so many philosophers throughout history (from Aristotle to Rousseau) insisted on incorporating walks into their daily routines? And how do systems of oppression—such as classism, racism, sexism, transphobia, and ableism—mold our experience of walking, determining where and even how we can walk?
*correction: when Ellie says "James DeSilva," she meant "Jeremy DeSilva"! Our apologies to the author of First Steps.
Works Discussed
Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”
Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking
Gayle Salamon, The Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jennifer McDuff and Alison Phinney, "Walking With Meaning: Subjective Experiences of Physical Activity in Dementia"
Jeremy DeSilva, First Steps: How Upright Walking Made us Human
Jo Livingstone and Lovia Gyarkye, "Death to the Flâneur"
Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London
Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz, "Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking"
Michel de Certeau, "Walking in the City"
Quill R. Kukla, "City Spaces, Pace Bias, and the Production of Disability"

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Science Fiction (feat. Helen de Cruz) Jan 04, 2022

Would you willingly plug yourself into an experience-simulating machine such as The Matrix? What would happen to society if robots suddenly became conscious? What would you do if, for some reason, you encountered an utterly alien life form? Many of us first ponder big philosophical questions such as these through exposure to science fiction stories in books or movies. In episode 42, Ellie and David explore the power of sci-fi. After considering the origins of this genre, they interview Dr. Helen De Cruz, an expert on the philosophy of science fiction, about how our brains process sci-fi stories differently than other speculative narratives, including philosophical thought experiments!
Works Discussed
Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt, and Eric Schwitzgebel, Philosophy Through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the Possible
Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz. "The Epistemic Value of Speculative Fiction"
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview With Jean Baudrillard, 2004
Ted Chiang, "Story of Your Life"
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Zhuangzi, The Inner Chapters
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Matrix (film)
Zenon, Girl of the Twenty-First Century (film)
Arrival (film)
Dune (film)
I, Robot (film)
Robert Nozick, “The Experience Machine"
Ruth Garrett Millikan, “On Swampkinds"

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Intoxication Dec 21, 2021

Drunks, like children, always tell the truth. And after a night (or day) of drinking, everyone turns into a professional philosopher! What is it about intoxication that incites us to philosophize, to “wax poetic”? In episode 41, David and Ellie explore the theme of intoxication all the way from the wine-filled feasts of the ancient Greeks to contemporary debates about psychedelic drugs. They look at the fascinating “ergot hypothesis,” which holds that famous philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle came up with their most important metaphysical insights while tripping on an ancient psychedelic called “ergot.” And they consider what experiences of intoxication can teach us about power, privilege, and freedom.
Works Discussed
Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear
Plato, The Symposium
R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries
Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind
Evgenia Fotiou "The globalization of ayahuasca shamanism and the erasure of indigenous shamanism"
Marty Roth, Drunk the Night Before: An Anatomy of Intoxication
Jean-Luc Nancy, Intoxication
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom
Jacques Derrida, Plato’s Pharmacy

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Christmas-Industrial Complex Dec 07, 2021

Happy holidays! As Christmas approaches, the average American prepares to spend nearly $1,000 on presents, decorations, and family feasting. How did an originally religious festival become so caught up in capitalist consumption? What really defines Christmas in an increasingly secular America? This holiday season, David and Ellie try not to be scrooges as they explore the Christmas Industrial Complex. From Hallmark movies to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the stories we tell around Christmas can be incredibly varied. In looking at these narratives and more, Ellie and David discuss whether Christmas can be separated from the often heavily capitalist rituals around it. Episode 40.
Works Discussed
NewSong, “The Christmas Shoes”
Megan Garber, “The Cheesy Endurance of the Made-for-TV Holiday Movie”
A New York Christmas Wedding
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
History.com, “Saturnalia”
Mari Ruti, Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings
Jim Probasco, “Average Cost of American Holiday Spending”
Jonathan Berr, “Hallmark’s Christmas Movies Are Predictably Popular With Viewers”

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Secrets Nov 23, 2021

What’s this episode about? Shh, it’s a secret. Just kidding! In episode 39, Ellie and David take a deep dive into the concepts of secrets and secrecy. Some thinkers have argued that keeping secrets is destructive for the self, while others say that keeping secrets lets us feel like we have something (alt: a space?) for ourselves, that isn’t shared with other people. Moreover, the telling of secrets is often a key to creating a sense of trust and intimacy between BFFs or romantic partners. However, keeping secrets also often raises an ethical question — is it ever morally right to disclose another person’s secret, and if so, when? Ellie and David conclude with a discussion of government secrecy and its implications for public trust; how much transparency is too much?

Works Discussed
Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Should I Tell My Friend’s Husband She’s Having an Affair?”
Sissela Bok, Secrets
James Edwin Mahon, “Secrets vs. Lies: Is There a Moral Asymmetry?”
Anne Dufourmontelle, In Defense of Secrets
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Jacques Derrida, “Répondre — du secret, 1991-2 seminar”
Georg Simmel, “The Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies”
Giovanna Borradori, “Between transparency and surveillance: Politics of the secret"
C. Thi Nguyễn, “Transparency is Surveillance”

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Disgust Nov 09, 2021

Disgust is often assumed to be biological, but in what ways do cultural norms and personal preferences influence what disgusts us? Can we shape what we’re disgusted by over time? Ellie and David explore how disgust colors our interactions with food, art, and even sex, in episode 38. Given how disgust has helped enforce racism and homophobia, does it have any place in morality? And how does modern art's use of excrement, vomit, and blood change how we think about aesthetics?
Works Discussed

Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings
Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals
John Garcia, Donald J. Kimeldorf, and Robert A. Koelling, "Conditioned aversion to saccharin resulting from exposure to gamma radiation"
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Georges Bataille, Documents
Georges Bataille, L’érotisme
Downton Abbey, S3 E7
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement
Christopher Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

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Living Your Truth (feat. Tamsin Kimoto) Oct 26, 2021

Are you #LivingYourTruth? This buzzy catchphrase is all over Instagram, but might it actually justify selfish or irresponsible behavior? Alternatively, can it be a way of affirming marginalized identities--and perhaps even reveal the extent to which our lives are ultimately of our own making? Ellie and David speak with Dr. Tamsin Kimoto in episode 37 about how "living your truth" relates to transgender identity formation, "born this way" narratives of sexuality, and the idea of an authentic self. After the interview, David and Ellie suggest that existential authenticity is a way of "living your truth" without buying into the metaphysical idea of an inner self.

Works Discussed
Tamsin Kimoto, "Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, and Phenomenological Forays in Trans Life"
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
Talia Mae Bettcher, “Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Elizabeth Grosz, “Criticism, feminism and the institution: An interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak”
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator”
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
Theodor Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity

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Art as Commodity Oct 12, 2021

Today's art world is driven by multimillion-dollar auctions and fancy art fairs inaccessible to most Americans — Art Basel Miami, anyone? Those who do view art spend an average of just eight seconds per work, so it's not clear that we're even meaningfully experiencing those Monet water lilies. In episode 36, Ellie and David explore the way capitalism has turned art into a commodity. From Basquiat to Banksy, even street art seems to have been devoured by capitalism’s endless hunger for monetary exchange, selling aesthetics of revolution for millions of dollars at auction. How might intricate Tibetan sand paintings and even macaroni necklaces help us envision a future for art outside of commodification?

Works Discussed
John Dewey, Art as Experience
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art
Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry
Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience
Diana Crane, “Reflections on the Global Art Market”
Cynthia Freeland, What is Art?
McKenzie Wark, “Digital Provenance and the Artwork as Derivative”
Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting
Banksy, Love is in the Bin
Karl Marx, 1844 Manuscripts
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Pont Neuf Wrapped

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Hooking Up Sep 28, 2021

Hooking up: sexual liberation or unethical exploitation? With the rise of dating apps, sexual gratification seems like a few taps (or swipes) away at any given moment. What implications does this have for sexual ethics around consent, fantasy, and using other people merely for pleasure? In episode 35, Ellie and David dive into the history, theory, and criticisms of hookup culture. Is there a way to hook up ethically? Some argue that the power imbalances fundamental to hooking up prevent it from ever being on equal grounds, yet others claim that the shift to hooking up generates potential for queer exploration and for sexual discretion in ways that were previously unavailable. Let’s find out!
Works Discussed
F Boy Island (TV Show)
James Rocha, The Ethics of Hooking Up
Danielle M. Currier, “Strategic Ambiguity: Protecting Emphasized Femininity and Hegemonic Masculinity in the Hookup Culture”
Lisa Wade, American Hookup
Lisa Wade and Joseph Padgett, “Hookup Culture and Higher Education”
Lisa Rudd, “Beyond the Closet”
Lee Edelman, No Future
Slavoj Žižek, A&F Quarterly, Back to School Issue 2003
Leo Bersani, Is the Rectum a Grave?

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Paradox Sep 14, 2021

Ever want to have your cake and eat it too? Maybe you can! In episode 34, join Ellie and David (and the Olsen twins) in an investigation into paradox. Paradox refers to a self-contradictory statement that nonetheless rests on seemingly logically sound premises. From Meno to Zeno and his tortoises and arrows, from Christian theologians trying to uncover the nature of God and faith to Zen Buddhists exploring the origins of consciousness, paradox has a long history of keeping people stumped, but also of driving human innovation and creativity to new heights. However, we often still wonder: can paradoxes ever truly be solved, or are they just doomed as contradictions? Let’s find out!
Works Discussed
Zeno, Fragments
David M. Peña-Guzman, “Bergson’s philosophical method: At the edge of phenomenology and mathematics”
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript; Philosophical Fragments; Fear and Trembling
Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality and“Faith and Knowledge”
Plato, Meno
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Marcel Mauss, “The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies”
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Holiday in the Sun
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Diamond Sutra

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Synesthesia Aug 31, 2021

Have you ever tasted music or experienced numbers as having genders? If so, you might be a synesthete! Synesthesia refers to subjective experiences in which a stimulus associated with one sensory modality (e.g., vision) is experienced as having properties associated with an entirely different modality (e.g. sound, texture, or smell). This “mixing” of the senses raises fascinating questions about human experience and the life of the mind. In episode 33, Ellie and David discuss the science and philosophy of synesthesia while poking fun at people who brag about being synesthetes at parties. Are synesthetes born or made? What forms of synesthesia exist? And how might one go about cultivating synesthetic perception?
Works Discussed
Donielle Johnson, Carrie Allison, and Simon Baron-Cohen, “The Prevalence of
Synesthesia: The Consistency Revolution”
Simon Baron-Cohen, “Is There a Normal Phase of Synaesthesia in Development?”
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
Kenneth Peacock, “Instruments to Perform Color-Music: Two Centuries of Technological Experimentation”
Anina Rich, interview in "Synesthesia" episode of All in the Mind podcast
Jamie Ward and Peter Meijer. “Visual Experiences in the Blind Induced by an Auditory Sensory Substitution Device”
Jerry Fodor, The Modularity of Mind
Adam Wager, “The Extra Qualia Problem: Synaesthesia and Representationism”
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

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Astrology Aug 17, 2021

Astrology. Dangerous pseudoscience? Comforting salve in a cold capitalist world? Subjugated knowledge? It's all fun and games when you're looking up your Co-Star horoscope, but according to philosopher Theodor Adorno, even a playful belief in astrology encourages submission to the status quo--and promotes fascist thinking. In this can't-miss episode 32, Ellie and David discuss the psychological appeal of astrology, which is experiencing a huge resurgence today. They also dive deep into the history and science behind the practice. Did you know Johannes Kepler was an astrologer? Or that your star sign is...probably not actually your sign? The episode also gets into the Barnum Effect, and some surprising similarities between astrology, weather forecasts, and personality tests.
Works discussed:
Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth
Nicholas Campion, History of Western Astrology
Roger Beck, A Brief History of Ancient Astrology
Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution
Alexander Boxer, A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
Colin Koopman, How We Became Our Data
Bertram Forer, "The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility"

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Genomics (feat. Joel Michael Reynolds) Aug 03, 2021

From 23andMe to prenatal testing, genetic testing is everywhere these days! The use of these tests raises important concerns about "velvet eugenics" and the value of human life. In episode 31, Ellie and David address the ethics and politics of genomics. They talk with ethicist Dr. Joel Michael Reynolds, an expert on disability studies and genomics, about why your zip code is a much better indicator of health outcomes than your genome. Plus, Joel unpacks why genetic sequencing can cause anxiety for new parents and further social inequities.
Works discussed:
Joel Michael Reynolds, "Health for Whom? Bioethics and the Challenge of Justice for Genomic Medicine"
Joel Michael Reynolds, "Genopower: On Genomics, Disability, and Impairment"
Sivan Tamir, "Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing: Ethical-Legal Perspectives and Practical Considerations"
Jenny Reardon, The Postgenomic Condition
Rosemarie Garland Thomson, "Welcoming The Unexpected," in Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing, ed. Erik Parens and Josephine Johnson
National Human Genome Research Institute, "Human Genome Project FAQ"
Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class

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Brain in a Vat Jul 20, 2021

Have you considered that you might be a brain in a vat of liquid floating in a laboratory somewhere? How can you know that the world around you is real, not just a simulation being piped directly to your brain? In episode 30, Ellie and David unpack one of philosophy's favorite thought experiments: the brain in a vat. They also analyze our cultural obsession with the brain, common criticisms of this thought experiment from consciousness studies, and precursors in Descartes and science fiction. Also--what's with the Italian neuroscientist who keeps trying to do head transplants?
Works discussed:
Daniel Dennett, "Where Am I?"
Gilbert Harman, Thought
Alva Noë, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain
Evan Thompson and Diego Cosmelli, "Brain in a Vat or Body in a World? Brainbound Versus Enactive Views of Experience"
Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind
Bronwyn Parry, "Technologies of Immortality: The Brain on Ice"
John Desmond Bernal, The World, the Flesh and the Devil
Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus
John Tresch, "In a solitary place: Raymond Roussel’s brain and the French cult of unreason"
Harry Smit and Peter M. S. Hacker, "Seven Misconceptions About the Mereological Fallacy: A Compilation for the Perplexed"
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

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Alienation Jul 06, 2021

Do you fear the Sunday Scaries and Thank God It's Friday? You might be suffering from a case of what Karl Marx called "alienation." In episode 29 of Overthink, David and Ellie break down this key but often misunderstood concept for the modern workplace. After explaining Marx's four forms of alienation using the example of making Teva sandals, they discuss the gig economy and "bullshit jobs." Plus: in today's society, are even poets and Netflix viewers alienated? Or does Marx's concept only apply to an outdated model of industrial work under capitalism?
Works discussed:
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
Rahel Jaeggi, Alienation
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs
Byung-Chul Han, In the swarm: Digital prospects
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
Emmanuel Renault, From Fordism to Post-Fordism: Beyond or Back to Alienation
Louis Althusser, Reading Capital

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Cancel Culture Jun 22, 2021

In episode 28 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore cancel culture. Is it a thing--and if so, what are its merits and dangers? They unpack the origins of cancel culture in Black Twitter and debate whether "canceling" people is a tactic of neoliberalism. Should we be canceling Chrissy Teigen, J.K. Rowling, Nick Cannon, and Matt and Rachel from The Bachelor? Also discussed: carceral logic, restorative justice, and forgiveness.
Works discussed:
Meredith D. Clark, "DRAG THEM: A brief etymology of so-called 'cancel culture'"
Kimberly Foster of For Harriett, "We Can't Cancel Everyone" (YouTube)
Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life
Ellie Anderson, Cynthia Willett, and Diana Meyers, "Feminist Perspectives on the Self" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought

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Body Positivity to Fat Feminism (feat. Dr. Amelia Hruby) Jun 08, 2021

In episode 27 of Overthink, Ellie and David speak with feminist philosopher and author Dr. Amelia Hruby about fat feminism, intersectionality, alternatives to the male gaze, and her project #selfiesforselflove. Before the interview, Ellie and David discuss their issues with the "body positivity" movement using phenomenology, and suggest why Sonya Renee Taylor's account of radical self-love is a better alternative. The episode closes with a deep dive into the racist history of the thin ideal using the work of Sabrina Strings.
Works discussed:
Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body
Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat
Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body is Not an Apology
Alexandra Sastre, "Towards a radical body positive: Reading the online 'body positive movement'"
Amelia Hruby, Fifty Feminist Mantras
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception
Kimberlé Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color"
Patricia Hill Collins, "Controlling Images"
John Berger, Ways of Seeing

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Living Together During Covid May 25, 2021

In episode 26 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore cohabitation during Covid. They use philosopher Henri Bergson's theory of rhythm and the Africana philosophy concept of Ubuntu to better understand how we have had to re-negotiate and re-engage with space this year. Also discussed: Ellie's early Covid board games, David's living room, moving during covid, and lots more!
Works Discussed:
Taylor Trudon, Teenage Angst, Revisited in Isolation
Julius Gathogo, African Philosophy as Expressed in the Concepts of Hospitality and Ubuntu
Bhekizizwe Peterson, The Art of Personhood: Kinship and Its Social Challenges
Kai Kresse, Philosophizing in Mombasa
Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Dating During Covid May 11, 2021

In episode 25 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss dating during Covid--including their own experiences! With so many Americans getting vaccinated, the dating scene may be heating up again--but what philosophical lessons can we learn from the past year of pandemic dating? Ellie gives a sociological history of dating, and David wonders about how socially distant dating changes class dynamics. Then the two talk about how pandemic dating involves a "phenomenology of acceleration" and a "phenomenology of failure," as well as what attachment theory shows about dating in social isolation. Also discussed: going on a "first date" many months into dating, mental health, and David's support of "impurity culture."
Works Discussed:
Eva Illouz, Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
Lawrence L. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow
Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America
Moira Weigel, Labor of Love
John Bowlby, The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds
Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller, Attached

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Friendship During Covid (feat. Anna Koppelman) Apr 27, 2021

On episode 24 of Overthink, Ellie and David tackle friendship during Covid. They begin by discussing their dream day with friends, which includes: brunch, thrift store shopping, and team sports, all of which have been impossible to do during the pandemic. What has social distancing meant for friendship? They bring on special guest, undergraduate Anna Koppelman (Overthink's production assistant and social media coordinator!), to discuss how Covid has impacted college students' social lives. The three talk Heidegger, Aristotle, and how sad it is to have no fun gossip anymore! Finally, David and Ellie analyze how gender has affected Covid friendships, Epicurus supporting "pods" before it was cool, and more!
Works Discussed:
Lydia Denworth, Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond
Beverley Fehr, Friendship Processes
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Principles of Virtue
Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude
Samantha Schmidt, The Washington Post, Men find new ways to Bond During the Pandemic
Jeffrey A. Hall, How many hours does it take to make a friend?
Martin Heidegger, What Is Metaphysics?

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Games and Gamification (feat. C. Thi Nguyen) Apr 13, 2021

In episode 23 of Overthink, Ellie, and David sit down with philosopher Dr. C. Thi Nguyen to discuss his work on games and gamification. They begin by their love for The Sims and the out-of-body experiences video games can trigger. From there, they get into the works of thinkers including Ortega y Gasset, Nietzsche, Mill, Gadamer, discussing their theories on games and motivation. The trio also jumps into the function of games in community, how British and American drinking games differ, motivational states, Thi’s epic game nights, and more.
Works Discussed:
C. Thi Nguyen, Games: Agency as Art
Roger Callois, Man, Play and Games
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting
Gordon Burghardt, The Genesis of Animal Play
Matthew Broersma, “US Military Recruits Gamers To Fly Killer Drones”

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Free Britney! Conservatorship and Disability Mar 30, 2021

In episode 22 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the new Britney Spears documentary exposing her legal conservatorship. After bonding over their tween obsession with Britney, they dive into the laws around conservatorship and cultural narratives around mental health. The two argue that disability has been largely ignored in the conversation around Britney Spears, even though people with disabilities and the elderly are most affected by conservatorships. They show how disability studies and feminist theories of care illuminate the conversation. Also mentioned: translating toxic to Spanish, early 2000's choreographed dances, Grace and Frankie, and more.
Works Discussed:
Aristotle, Politics
Erica F. Wood, State Level Adult Guardianship Data: An Exploratory Survey
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception
Grace and Frankie (TV series)
Jan Baars, Aging and the Art of Living
Joe Coscarelli, What is a Conservatorship?
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
Jonathan Blakeson, I Care a Lot (Film)
Sara Luterman, The Darker Story Just Outside the Lens of “Framing Britney Spears”
Seneca, On Old Age
Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age
The New York Times, Framing Britney Spears (Documentary)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

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Gaslighting Mar 16, 2021

Ellie and David discuss the term "gaslighting" in episode 21. They begin by jumping into the origin of the term in the 1940s and its entrance into mainstream discourse today. Then the two go onto explore how gaslighting works, and whether it needs to be deliberate (spoiler alert: no!). Finally, David and Ellie think about structural and cultural gaslighting in systems of oppression. Also discussed in the episode: The Chicks, epistemic injustice, the medical establishment, and...is Socrates a gaslighter? Gaslit? Neither?
Works discussed:
George Cukor, Gaslight (film)
Veronica Ivy, “Allies Behaving Badly: Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice”
Cynthia A. Stark, “Gaslighting, Misogyny, and Psychological Oppression”
Nora Berenstain, “White Feminist Gaslighting”
Elena Ruíz, “Cultural Gaslighting”
Shelley Tremain, “Structural Gaslighting, Epistemic Injustice, and Ableism in Philosophy”
Lauren Duca, “Donald Trump is Gaslighting America”
Karen C. Adkins, “Gaslighting by Crowd”
Elinor Greenberg, “Are You Being "Gaslighted" By the Narcissist in Your Life?”
Diane E. Hoffmann and Anita J. Tarzian, “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain"
Ashley Fetters, “The Doctor Doesn’t Listen to Her. But the Media Is Starting To”

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Reparations (feat. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò) Mar 09, 2021

In episode 20 of Overthink, Ellie and David sit down with philosopher Dr. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò to discuss climate reparations and why they are needed as part of a broader discussion about reparations for racial injustice. Before that conversation, Ellie and David open the episode by addressing the history of reparations and the need for them both monetarily and as a signifier of justice. This episode looks at eco-fascism, whether direct payments via Cash App are viable reparations, and the need for reparations in the fight for justice.
Works Discussed:
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed
Cedric J. Robinson, On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, "What’s New About Woke Racial Capitalism (and What Isn’t)"
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, "An African case for carbon removal"
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Beba Cibralic, "The Case for Climate Reparations"
John Mbaria and Mordecai Ogada, The Big Conservation Lie
Adom Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire
Lisa J. Laplante, "The Plural Justice Aims of Reparations"

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Genius Mar 02, 2021

In Episode 19 of Overthink, Ellie and David debate the idea of genius. They begin by explaining Kant and Schopenhauer's theories of genius before diving into feminist critiques of the very idea that geniuses exist. They talk about why women were traditionally excluded from being geniuses, how male professors are called "genius" on Ratemyprofessor more than their female counterparts, and how sociological conditions determine who is considered a genius. Also discussed: Ellie's childhood belief that she was, in fact, a genius, David's competitive standardized test-taking, whether genius is innate, if a scientist can count as genius, the Hollywood "it factor," and more!
Works Discussed:
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Tom Leddy, "Kant on How to be a Genius"
Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"
Cynthia Freeland, "Gender, Genius, and Guerilla Girls"
Fran Lebowitz, "Pretend It’s a City" (Netflix TV show)
Storage et al., "The Frequency of “Brilliant” and “Genius” in Teaching Evaluations Predicts the Representation of Women and African Americans across Fields"

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Polyamory Feb 23, 2021

In episode 18 of Overthink, Ellie and David conclude their four-part series on intimate relationships with a discussion of polyamory. Many argue that polyamory has liberatory potential as a radical form of relating to others. Some say that polyamory is natural for humans--is this story from evolutionary biology true, and does it matter? Ellie and David discuss these issues and also explain how polyamory encourages us to rethink jealousy through the concept of compersion. The two also touch on the relation between polyamory and colonialism, and gender and racial dynamics in understanding poly identities!
Works Discussed:
Cacilda Jethá and Christopher Ryan, Sex at Dawn
Kim TallBear, The Critical Polyamorist blog
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization
Carrie Jenkins, What Love Is and What It Could Be
Slavoj Žižek, "The Need to Traverse the Fantasy"
Justin Leonard Clardy, "‘I Don’t Want To be a Playa No More’: An Exploration of the Denigrating Effects of ‘Player’ as a Stereotype Against African American Polyamorous Men."
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1

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Open Relationships Feb 16, 2021

In episode 17 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about open relationships. 50% of millennials are not interested in having purely monogamous relationships. With many still wanting a primary partner, some are turning towards open relationships. What do open relationships have to offer? Ellie and David start off by talking about their own experience with open relationships and its ties to their philosophical and feminist beliefs. Then the two dive into the open relationships of famous existentialist thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It’s juicy! By the end of the episode they also discuss the romantic mystique, the triangulation of desire, our ability to understand desire, and more!
Works Discussed
Carrie Jenkins, What Love Is
Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Tony Coelho, “Hearts, groins and the intricacies of gay male open relationships”

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Monogamy Feb 09, 2021

On episode 16 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into monogamy. Ellie jumps into her obsession with reality shows centered around monogamy that are actually examples of polyamory, aka the entire Bachelor franchise. Then they discuss the appeal to nature that is often made when talking about monogamy as well as Aristophanes’ story of the one, the potential negatives of all-consuming love, cheating, and more!

Works Discussed:
Plato, Symposium
Angela Willey, Undoing Monogamy
Harry Chalmers, "Is Monogamy Morally Permissible?"
Kyle York, "Why Monogamy is Morally Permissible"
Vinciane Despret, What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?
Tristan and Iseult
Louise Crane, "The Truth About Swans"

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Marriage Feb 02, 2021

In episode 15 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the history and philosophy of marriage. Why do married people in the U.S. receive over 1,000 legal benefits that single people do not? Ellie and David dive into Foucault's analysis of ancient Roman marriage and Hegel's idea that marriage unites the subjective and objective spheres. Then the two discuss the way it’s been used bio-politically, as well as queer critiques of marriage. They also discuss minimal marriage as a solution, how the average wedding in America costs thirty thousand dollars, their own experience with the idea of marriage, and much more!
Interested in works discussed?
Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume 3
Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage
G.W.F. Hegel, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right
Carrie Jenkins, What Love Is
Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy

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Buddhist Practice and Anti-Racism (feat. Jessica Locke) Jan 26, 2021

On episode 14 of Overthink, Ellie and David sit down with Dr. Jessica Locke, an expert in Buddhist philosophy, to discuss mindfulness as a tool for anti-racist education and social justice work. After investigating the ways that Western science and capitalism have watered down Buddhist mindfulness, they explore with Dr. Locke how Buddhist practices can be an important part of a social justice toolbox. Together, they explore how mindfulness practice changes one’s relationship to suffering, alters our view of the world, and can be especially important for white people unlearning habits of white privilege.
Works Discussed:
Jessica Locke, "Living Our Histories, Shaping Our Futures: Buddhist Practice and Anti-Racist Education for White People"
Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness
Ronald Purser, McMindfulness
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
Essential Mind Training, ed. Thupten Jinpa
Interconnected, the Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje

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Performativity Jan 19, 2021

On episode 13 of Overthink, Ellie and David explain what performativity is. They explain why the phrase "performative ally" is not philosophically accurate, and how performativity is rooted in theories about language and identity. They talk about First Amendment laws, the ball culture of Paris is Burning, Legally Blonde, pornography, and more!
Works Discussed:
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Jennie Livingston, Paris is Burning
J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words
Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech
Rae Langton "Subordination, Silence, and Pornography’s Authority" & "Beyond Belief: Pragmatics in Hate Speech and Pornography"
Rebecca Kukla, "Performative Force, Convention, and Discursive Injustice"

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Conspiracy Theories (feat. Brian Keeley) Jan 12, 2021

On episode 12 of Overthink, Ellie and David sit down with philosopher Brian Keeley to discuss conspiracy theories. The three examine both the appeal of conspiracy theories and the dire need for public trust in institutions to combat such beliefs. Following last week’s far-right attack on the Capitol, Ellie and David consider the particularly American nature of conspiracy theories that has existed since the nation's founding. Finally, they discuss the way conspiracy theories root within families and communities and pull people apart.

Works Discussed
Brian Keeley, "Of Conspiracy Theories"
Anne Applebaum, "Trump and His Heirs Dream of Endless Victory"
Jared Millson, "Conspiracy Theories"
Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook, "The Conspiracy Theory Handbook"
Charles Pigden, "Before Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom"
Mack Lamoureux, “People Tell Us How QAnon Destroyed Their Relationships”
J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, "Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion"

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Me, Myself, and Zoom Jan 05, 2021

On episode 11 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the ways in which Zoom has impacted our perception of the self and others. They begin by exploring the blurred lines of privacy that Zoom offers (who among us hasn’t cut their video feed to do a load of laundry?). Next, the two jump into the impact self-view has had on all of us now that we are able to see ourselves conduct our normal lives, tying it to Lacan’s mirror stage. Plus, they discuss disability theorists and the potential benefits that Zoom has for inclusion and accessibility.

Interested In the works discussed?

Paul Virilio, Open Sky
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Ellie Anderson, “You’re Not Staring at Yourself on Zoom, You’re Judging Yourself”
Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function"
Céline LeBoeuf, "Anatomy of the Thigh Gap"
Iris Marion Young, "Throwing Like a Girl"
Zoe Beery “When the World Shut Down, They Saw it Open”
danah boyd, "Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster"

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New Year's Resolutions Dec 29, 2020

On episode 10 of Overthink, Ellie and David debate the merit of New Year’s Resolutions. Only 8% of people keep the resolutions they set – so why do we continue to make resolutions? The duo discusses the importance of questioning the resolutions we make and desire. To understand the January 1st phenomena, they dive into Stoicism and Nietzsche.

Interested in works discussed?

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life
Epictetus and Sharon Lobell, The Art of Living
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

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Parrhesia - Speaking Truth to Power Dec 16, 2020

On episode 9 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into the concept of parrhesia (speaking truth to those in power). They discuss its origin in Ancient Greece with Socrates and Diogenes, as well as its resurgence in Foucault. The two get into modern day truth tellers such as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Tristan Harris, Emma Sulkowicz, and more.

Interested in the works discussed? Look no further:

Andreas Huyssen, “Foreword: The return of Diogenes as Postmodern Intellectual”
Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech
Gordon Hull, “The Banality of Cynicism: Foucault and the Limits of Authentic Parrhēsia”
Mary Anne Franks, “Fearless Speech”
“The Social Dilemma,” dir. Jeff Orlowski
Kurt Borg, “Foucault on Drugs: The Personal, the Ethical and the Political in Foucault in California”
Emma Sulkowicz, "Carry That Weight"

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Ghosting Dec 08, 2020

Have you ever been ghosted? In episode 8 of Overthink, Ellie and David deconstruct this dating dilemma. The duo discuss what ghosting does to our emotions; how the Greek notion of akrasia can help us understand why people ghost; how ghosting leaves us feeling, well, haunted; and more!

Interested in the works discussed? Here you go!
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves
“Derrida,” dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman
Carl du Prel, The Philosophy of Mysticism

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Empathy Dec 01, 2020

In episode 7 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into the sensation of empathy! The dynamic duo discuss mirror neurons, whether animals can feel empathy, nice boy syndrome, why the phrase “I feel your pain” is so annoying, and more!

Interested in the works discussed? You can find them here:
Frans De Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
Hal Herzog and Mel Foster, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat
Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy
Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie, eds. Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, ed.
Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others
Paul Bloom, Against Empathy

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Why Millennials Love Homemaking Nov 15, 2020

In episode 6 of Overthink, Ellie and David look at millennials' obsession with homemaking through the lens of Epicurus and Mariana Ortega. The duo talk about the Danish word “hygge,” alloparenting plants, IKEA, how 10-step skincare regimens are definitely the reason why millennials don’t own homes, and so much more!

Interested in the works discussed? You can find them here!
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life
Mariana Ortega, In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self
Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials
Epicurus, The Art of Happiness

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Nostalgia Nov 15, 2020

In episode 5 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about the taste, smell, and function of nostalgia. They dive into al pastor tacos, cottagecore, teenage diary entries, old shampoo bottles, M.A.G.A and more!

Interested in the works discussed? You can find them here!
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning
Lauren Berlant, "Big Man" (https://socialtextjournal.org/big-man/)
Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, volume 1: Swann's Way
Derek Walcott, Omeros
H.A. Kaplan, "The Psychopathology of Nostalgia"

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Existential Anxiety Oct 31, 2020

On episode 4 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about existential anxiety, FOMO, Netflix’s Emily in Paris, The Good Place, and the difference between the medical and existential model of anxiety. Then the dynamic duo discusses how to deal with existential angst through resoluteness, mindfulness, and faith--or what David likes to call “embracing your ugliness!”

Interested in the works discussed? You can find them here:
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Gordon Marino, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide
American Psychiatric Association website, “What are Anxiety Disorders?” https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/anxiety-disorders/what-are-anxiety-disorders Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
The Good Place (TV show)
Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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Anti-Maskers and American Individualism Oct 31, 2020

On episode 3 of Overthink, Ellie and David delve into the rise of Anti-Mask protests across the country. The two discuss American individualism in our conception of freedom, the role of breath in the Judeo-Christian tradition, how much freedom we actually have when choosing lunch, and so much more!

Interested in the works discussed? You can find them here:

G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
Simone de Beauvoir, America Day By Day and The Ethics of Ambiguity
Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
The Bible
Kate Manne, Down Girl
Deep Throat (adult film)

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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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Welcome to Overthink! Oct 30, 2020

Welcome to Overthink. A philosophy podcast you'll actually want to listen to. Smart but cool. Fun but deep. Hosted by professors Ellie Anderson (Pomona College) and David M. Peña-Guzmán (San Francisco State University).

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How Capitalism Commodifies Time Oct 30, 2020

On episode 2 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss how millennials love talking about hating capitalism, the influence capitalism has had on our understanding of time, and the blurring line between who you are as a worker and who you are as an individual. Then they discuss how Covid-19 has challenged our conception of time and what this means for the future!

Interested in the works discussed? You can find them here:
Edward Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”
Karl Marx, Capital
Judy Wajcman, Pressed for Time
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
Venkatesh Rao, “Pandemic Time: Distributed Doomsday-Clock”

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Website | overthinkpodcast.com
Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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