Overthink

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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, 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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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: 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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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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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. 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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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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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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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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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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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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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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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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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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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
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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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Email | dearoverthink@gmail.com
YouTube | Overthink podcast

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