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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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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