Overthink

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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*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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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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