As Overthink comes to a close, why not take a look back? In Episode 182, Ellie and David tackle the concept of reflection and explain why it is so central to philosophy. What is the value of reflection, and what are its drawbacks? How does philosophy go astray when it treats the self as a product of reflection, and how can phenomenology and existentialism shed light on the proper role of reflection in our lives? Your hosts analyze the myth of Narcissus, discuss studies on reflection among animals such as rats and dolphins, and consider reflection as a visual metaphor for thinking. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David reflect on Overthink and give some final thoughts before its end.

Works Discussed:

Ellie Anderson, Self-Relation: A Phenomenology of Ambiguity (forthcoming May 2027)

Hans-Johann Glock, “Do Animals Have Thoughts?”

Dieter Henrich, “Fichte’s Original Insight”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception

Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being

Ovid, Metamorphosis

David Peña-Guzmán, When Animals Dream

JD Smith et al. “The uncertain response in the bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)”

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Nothing can devastate us more than the loss of a loved one. In this episode of Overthink, David and Ellie talk about mourning. What kinds of losses hurl us into a state of mourning? Are there healthy and unhealthy ways of mourning? Or does this distinction not apply in cases when we are dealing with irreparable loss? And how do we deal with the loss of someone when the feeling of loss doesn't naturally resolve but rather stays with us like “an open wound,” as Freud says? To shed light on this difficult experience, your hosts explore Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia, Roland Barthes’ account of grieving the death of his mother, as well as Emilio Uranga’s analysis of the role that culture plays in our experience of death. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David discuss how Freud’s notion of ambivalence can help to make sense of mourning.

Works Discussed:

Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary

Julie Alev Dilmaç, “The new forms of mourning: Loss and exhibition of the death on the internet”

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Corina Sas and Alina Coman, “Designing personal grief rituals: An analysis of symbolic objects and actions”

Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”

Emilio Uranga, “Dos teorias de la muerte: Sartre y Heidegger”

Emilio Uranga, “Notas para un estudio del mexicano”

Emilio Uranga, Analysis of Mexican Being

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Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue! In this episode, Ellie and David talk about weddings. What kind of celebration is a wedding? And what social function do these festivities serve? Do weddings necessarily legitimize the institution of marriage? Or can weddings be dissociated from this legal institution and its problematic history? As they ponder these issues, your hosts walk you down the aisle of history by considering how early Christians developed their views about weddings by embracing some aspects of Roman weddings while rejecting others as vain and contrary to virtue. They also explore the meaning of weddings symbols that are still with us today and look at how weddings can challenge exclusionary nationalist ideologies. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David talk about the weddings they’ve been to and discuss historical factors that shape our current conception of weddings.

Works Discussed:

Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History

Laurie Essig, Love, Inc.

Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage

Brooke Leany, “Something borrowed: The origins of Christian wedding rituals.”

Ellen Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America

Lisa Schwarzbaum, “Mamdani, His Mother and a Movie of Prescient Grace”

Jonathan Wolff, “The Value of Ceremonies”

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After a BIG announcement (!!!), your hosts David and Ellie get into the economic and psychological features of the state no one wants to be stuck in: unemployment. How does capitalism structurally construct “wageless life” while nonetheless treating it as a personal failure or unhappy accident? What’s the connection between unemployment and reactionary politics? And is AI going to put us all out of a job? Correcting misconceptions about automation, UBI, and more, your hosts take you through some significant arguments about the impacts of unemployment and reflect on why this socially-constructed position can make us feel so worthless even when we know that we’re not the problem. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David reflect on the end of Overthink and share some reasons for it.

Works Discussed:

Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work

Aaron Benanav, “Is the AI Bubble About to Burst?”

Eloundou et al., “GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models”

Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machines and Manufactures

Michael Denning, “Wageless Life”

Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism

Regina Bateson, “Perceptions of pandemic resume gaps: Survey experimental evidence from the United States”

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Beauty is big business, and the rise of looksmaxxing and increasingly invasive treatments is raising the alarm on the ways that our looks matter in our personal and social lives. Ellie and David speak with philosopher Heather Widdows about how the emphasis on beauty in the present day constitutes a real shift from previous eras. Beauty is no longer taken as a sign of moral goodness, but itself has become a moral ideal. This applies worldwide. The “beauty ideal” is seeping into practically every culture and coming to be expected of more and more people for longer periods of their lifespan. They touch on the four elements of the beauty ideal that Widdows identifies and reflect on their own beauty practices and what it means to be complicit in a toxic system. In the Substack bonus segment, they touch on Lacan, America’s Next Top Model, and image-based profiles.

Works Discussed:

Heather Widdows, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal

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Is it easier to cheat now than ever? In episode 177 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about cheating. From micro-cheating on your girlfriend to doping in sports, cheating appears to have escalated in various domains. Your hosts explain the relationship between cheating and rule-breaking, then question norms surrounding cheating in romantic relationships. Why is cheating considered the ultimate dealbreaker? Is it always dishonest? Finally, they address the rise of generative AI cheating in schools and the ethical numbing that promotes it. How is ChatGPT different from using a calculator? And has it become rational for students to cheat? In the Substack Bonus Segment, Ellie and David question whether we should even use the word ‘cheating’ for romantic relationships rather than infidelity.

Works Discussed:

Stuart Green, “Cheating”

Natasha McKeever, “Is the Requirement of Sexual Exclusivity Consistent with Romantic Love?”

Deborah Rhode, Cheating: Ethics in Everyday Life

James D. Walsh, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College”

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Are you paying attention when you scroll online? In episode 176 of Overthink, Ellie and David draw your attention to attention. They explain why attention is so hard to define and debate the extent to which it should be equated with consciousness. Is attention the same thing as consciousness? Or are there important differences between these concepts? They consider different ways that attention has been classified, from “overt vs. covert” to “effortful vs. effortless” to “voluntary vs. involuntary.” Ellie and David then discuss the commodification of attention and how it has been intensified by the digital era, or what Chris Hayes calls “the age of attention.” How has social media changed the way we attend to the world, to ourselves, and to others? Is our attention still our own? Or has it become alienated? In the Substack Bonus Segment, Ellie and David talk about Simone Weil’s and Iris Murdoch’s ethical approaches to attention.

Works Discussed:

Jelle Bruineberg, “Rethinking the cognitive foundations of the attention economy”

Chris Hayes, The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

William James, The Principles of Psychology

Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haroutioun Haladjian, Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious Attention

The Friends of Attention, Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement

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Play it cool and play this episode. In episode 175 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about what it means to be cool. From swag gap relationships to Mark Zuckerberg and the manosphere’s failed attempts at being cool, your hosts examine coolness’s ties to youth and subversion and its opposition to displays of wealth. They trace how coolness emerged from Black American culture in the 1930s, before being associated with Beat Poets and punk musicians. They consider precursors to cool, like the Italian term sprezzatura, and question the ontology and the morality of coolness. Is coolness an attitude or a state? Is it inherently narcissistic? Can you ever successfully “try” to be cool? In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David discuss coolness through an ethical perspective.

Works Discussed:

Joel Dinerstein, “Jazz Cool”

Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz

bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

Dick Pountain and David Robins, Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude

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What resources do Indigenous studies provide for addressing the crisis of human-made climate change? And how is the climate crisis linked to settler colonialism? In episode 174 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with Indigenous philosopher and activist Kyle Whyte about his work on climate action. They discuss how Indigenous people are often blocked out of conversations about environmental impact, the common mischaracterization of the land back movement, and the importance of kinship. How are certain groups disproportionately affected by climate change? Is climate change actually a new problem? And how can respecting land rights of Indigenous people offer some solutions to climate change? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts question who is called upon to respond to the crisis of climate change and how non-Indigenous people should engage in discussions surrounding climate change and colonialism.

Works Discussed:

Kyle Whyte, “Climate Action at the Speed of Consent”

Kyle Whyte, “Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene”

Kyle Whyte, “Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice”

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Thou shalt not miss this episode! In episode 173 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about theft. They discuss our moral intuitions around theft, how feudalism and capitalism may be founded upon an original (and large scale) act that of theft, and the gendered association between kleptomania and women. They also critique the lack of legal repercussions for tech companies that steal information to train new AI models. Finally, they look at representations of theft and capital in film and television. What does the move from heist films to grift docudramas say about 21st century capitalism? And why do we love to take the side of thieves? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss the ethics of stealing from large corporations.

Works Discussed:

Elaine Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store

Anna Kornbluh “Falling Heists, Rising Grift: Filming Capital in the Already Long Twenty-First Century”

Robert Nichols, Theft Is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory

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