Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

The best of all possible podcasts, Leibniz would say. Putting big ideas in dialogue with the everyday, Overthink offers accessible and fresh takes on philosophy from enthusiastic experts. Hosted by professors Ellie Anderson (Pomona College) and David M. Peña-Guzmán (San Francisco State University).

  • 58 minutes 50 seconds
    Extinction

    Dinosaurs, mammoths, ibexes, frogs: a great deal of animals have gone the way of the dodo. Are we next? And would the world be better off without us? In Episode 116 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about extinction, from Christian eschatology, to the perils of Anthropocene, to cutting-edge de-extinction technology. They turn to animal ethics and scientific dilemmas in search of the ethical approaches that might equip us to think about the extinction of animals, and perhaps even our own. Plus, in the bonus, they talk love, cyborgs, tech bros, and the ethics of the future.

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Thom Van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction
    Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
    Todd May, Should We Go Extinct?
    Jacob Sherkow and Henry Greely, “What if Extinction is not Forever?”
    Émile Torres, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation
    Children of Men (2006) dir. Alfonso Cuarón
    Episode 46. Anti-Natalism

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    5 November 2024, 1:00 pm
  • 58 minutes 14 seconds
    Hope

    It’s the one you’ve been hoping for. In episode 115 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the meaning of hope, from casual travel plans, to electoral optimism, to theological liberation. They discuss how hope motivates action, and how its rosy tint might be paralyzing. They explore Kant’s ambitions for perpetual peace, and discuss the Marxian imperative to transform the world. They ask, is it rational to hope? How does hoping relate to desire and expectation? And should we hope for what seems realistic, or reach for impossible utopias? Plus, in the bonus, they discuss chivalry, the future, agency, tenure, burritos, and capitalist realism.

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Augustine, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love
    Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope
    Joseph J. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope
    Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Religion Within The Limits of Reason Alone, Perpetual Peace
    Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
    John Lysaker, Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness: Essays in Finitude
    Adrienne Martin, How We Hope: A Moral Psychology
    Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
    Anthony Steinbock, Moral Emotions: Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart
    Baruch Spinoza, Short Treatise
    Katja Vogt, “Imagining Good Future States: Hope and Truth in Plato’s Philebus”

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    22 October 2024, 9:00 am
  • 59 minutes 57 seconds
    Friendship

    Even with endless social scripts around romance, we hardly know what it means to be a good friend. In episode 114 of Overthink, Ellie and David reflect on the highs and lows of friendship, from their own bond to Montaigne’s intimate connection to Étienne de La Boétie. From Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics to today’s loneliness epidemic, they question what friends do, how they hold each other accountable, and the deep ways in which our vices and virtues are shaped by our friends. Plus, in the bonus, they talk Ralph Waldo Emerson, intimacy, dyadic relationships, high school friends, and… pluralectics?

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
    Francis Bacon, “Of Friendship”
    Lydia Denworth, Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond
    Elijah Milgram, “Aristotle on Making Other Selves”
    Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship”
    Lawrence Thomas, “The Character of Friendship”

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    8 October 2024, 1:00 pm
  • 55 minutes
    Awkwardness with Alexandra Plakias

    Clogged toilets, odious jokes, difficult condolences… awkward moments are everywhere you look. In episode 113 of Overthink, Ellie and David invite philosopher Alexandra Plakias to talk through her research on awkwardness. They discuss everything from hasty clean-ups to snap decisions, from oversharing online to uncomfortable silences, as they explore the ways that awkwardness is bound up with power, morality, and the core scripts of our social expectations. Where does cringe end and awkwardness begin? Are we living through especially awkward times? Who gets to decide what is awkward? And, what if awkward people… don’t exist at all? Plus, in the bonus, they discuss The Office, weddings, weird eye contact, and more.

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness
    Adam Kotsko, Awkwardness
    Alexandra Plakias, Awkwardness: A Theory & “Awkward? We’d Better Own it”
    Thomas J. Spiegel, “Cringe”
    YouGov poll, "Awkwardness"

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    24 September 2024, 1:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 12 seconds
    Hyperreality

    Why is there a Parthenon… in Nashville? Jean Baudrillard might have the answer. In Episode 112 of Overthink, Ellie and David pick apart hyperreality: the provocative suggestion that our reality today is so inundated by signs that the gap between reality and simulation has all but broken down. Your hosts talk through the history and experience of hyperreality, from its presence in Superman and Bridgerton to its uncanny role in legitimizing presidential power. And they wonder: does the idea of hyperreality motivate political action, or does it slide into complacent provincialism?

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Jean Baudrillard, America
    Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
    Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
    Don DeLillo, White Noise
    Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality
    Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
    Sadie Plant, The Most Radical Gesture
    Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

    An American Family (1973)
    Superman (1978)
    Love Island (2023)
    Bridgerton (2005)

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    10 September 2024, 1:00 pm
  • 54 minutes 53 seconds
    Envy

    Why are you so obsessed with me!? In episode 111 of Overthink, Ellie and David untangle envy, jealousy, and admiration, in everything from Sigmund Freud to Regina George. They think through the role of envy in social media and status regulation alongside Sara Protasi's The Philosophy of Envy, and investigate the philosophical lineage of this maligned emotion. Does the barrage of others’ achievements on social media lead to ill-will or competitive self-improvement? Why do we seek to deny our own envies? And how might Freud's questionable theory of 'penis envy' betray the politics of how we assign and deflect desire?

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Aristotle, Rhetoric
    Basil of Caesarea, On Envy
    Christine de Pizan, City of Ladies
    Justin D'arms, Envy in the Philosophical Tradition
    Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”
    Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One
    Plato, Philebus
    Plutarch, Moralia, “Of Envy and Hatred”
    Sara Protasi, The Philosophy of Envy
    Max Scheler, Ressentiment
    Genesis 4, Exodus 20

    Snow White (1937)
    Mean Girls (2004)

    Overthink epiosdes
    60. Influencers
    82. Regret
    98. Reputation

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    27 August 2024, 1:00 pm
  • 58 minutes 48 seconds
    Intensity

    What do skydiving, guitar-playing teenagers, and deep-seated psychic states have in common? They're all intense! In episode 110 of Overthink, Ellie and David untangle the role of intensity in shaping our aspirations, cultural tropes, and political goals. They trace the concept’s history from its tricky roots in Aristotle's theory of change, passing through medieval science and princely romanticism, to the thrills of skydiving and breathwork today. They turn to Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze’s accounts of consciousness and emotion to explore how intensity looks beyond the scientistic impulse to categorize and quantify, and question if intensity is of any help in addressing capitalist acceleration today.

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Aristotle, Categories
    Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life
    Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will
    Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
    Gustav Theodor Fechner, Elements of Psychophysics
    Tristan Garcia, The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession
    Mary Beth Mader, “Whence Intensity? Deleuze and the Revival of a Concept”
    Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative
    Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams, “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics”
    The Bachelorette
    Inside Out 2 (2024)

    Mentioned Overthink episodes
    61 - Self Knowledge
    32 - Paradox
    107 - Organisms

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    13 August 2024, 1:00 pm
  • 55 minutes 53 seconds
    Predictive Brain with Andy Clark

    Phantom phone buzzes? Painless mosquito bites? Toy masks flipped inside-out? It might be your brain bringing order to its complex world. In episode 109 of Overthink, Ellie and David interview cognitive philosopher Andy Clark, whose cutting edge work on perception builds off theories of computation to offer an intriguing new model of mind and experience. He explains why the predictive processing model promises a healthier relation to neurodiversity, and they all explore its real-world applications across placebos, road safety, chronic pain, anxiety, and even the accidental success of ‘positive thinking.’ Plus, in the bonus, Ellie and David discuss depression, plasticity, qualia, zombies, and what phenomenologists can bring to the cognitive table.

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed:
    Thomas Bayes, An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances
    Anjali Bhat, et al., "Immunoceptive inference: why are psychiatric disorders and immune responses intertwined?"
    Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
    Sarah Garfinkel, et al., "Knowing your own heart: distinguishing interoceptive accuracy from interoceptive awareness"
    Hermann von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics
    David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
    Alva Nöe, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness
    Anil Seth, Being You
    This Might Hurt (2019)

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    30 July 2024, 1:00 pm
  • 58 minutes 27 seconds
    Success

    Cooked, slayed, delivered, ate. In episode 108 of Overthink, Ellie and David break down what it means to succeed, and why this sneaky word pervades our society today - in everything from the ambitions of classic American stage figures, to the refined effortlessness in Zhuangzi’s tales, to the corporate world of buzzwords. Your hosts discuss party planning, tenure tracks, inspirational quotes, haters, why science seems so successful, and the pitfalls of thinking we’ve got it all figured out. Plus, in the Patreon bonus, they reflect on the interpersonal tensions of sharing successes, and making the best of our mishaps.

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
    Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
    William Desmond, “Philosophy and Failure”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson, What is Success?
    Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
    Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, Matter and Method
    Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
    Tim Wu, “In Praise of Mediocrity”
    Zhuangzi, “The Secret of Caring for Life”

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    16 July 2024, 12:00 pm
  • 48 minutes 3 seconds
    Organisms

    In episode 107 of Overthink, David and Ellie take up a philosophical perspective on biology’s squirmiest concept: the organism. From Kant’s distinction between organisms and mechanisms, to Deleuze and Guattari’s infamous call for ‘bodies without organs,’ they uncover and question the ontological and metaphorical baggage behind the concept. Their exploration takes them from the bottom of Sea of Naples to the heights of Romantic Idealism, passing through the tensions of contemporary genetics. Plus, in the Patreon bonus, they discuss the unexpected relations between organisms, politics, and reason through the thought of Lukács and Canguilhem.

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Georges Canguillhem, Knowledge of Life
    Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
    Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
    Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
    Georg Lukács, The Destruction of Reason
    Jennifer Mensch, Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy
    Friedrich Schelling, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature
    Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail
    D. M. Walsh, Organisms, Agency, and Evolution

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    2 July 2024, 11:00 am
  • 58 minutes 20 seconds
    Fun

    Even philosophers need downtime. In episode 106 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a break and chase down fun’s place in today’s world — from its aesthetic opposition to the highbrow realm of beauty, to its peculiar absence from philosophical discourse. What role does fun play in the good life? How does fun relate to art, play, and ritual? Can you really have fun by yourself? And what happens when the lines blur between the fun and the political?

    Check out the episode's extended cut here!

    Works Discussed
    Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment
    Rey Chow, The Age of the World Target
    Erna Fergusson, Dancing Gods
    Michel Foucault, The History of Madness
    Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Plato to Foucault
    Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
    Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
    Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow
    Alan McKee, Fun!: What Entertainment Tells Us About Living a Good Life
    David Peña-Guzmán and Rebekah Spera, "The philosophical personality"
    Jen D’Angelo & Mariana Uribe, Mamma Mia! But Different

    Support the show

    Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
    Website | overthinkpodcast.com
    Instagram & Twitter | @overthink_pod
    Email | [email protected]
    YouTube | Overthink podcast

    18 June 2024, 12:00 pm
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