Overthink

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

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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

Support the show

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Website | overthinkpodcast.com
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.