Overthink

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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