In episode 176 of Overthink, Ellie and David draw your attention to attention. They explain why attention is so hard to define and debate the extent to which it should be equated with consciousness. Is attention the same thing as consciousness? Or are there important differences between these concepts? They consider different ways that attention has been classified, from “overt vs. covert” to “effortful vs. effortless” to “voluntary vs. involuntary.” Ellie and David then discuss the commodification of attention and how it has been intensified by the digital era, or what Chris Hayes calls “the age of attention.” How has social media changed the way we attend to the world, to ourselves, and to others? Is our attention still our own? Or has it become alienated?

In episode 175 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about what it means to be cool. From swag gap relationships to Mark Zuckerberg and the manosphere’s failed attempts at being cool, your hosts examine coolness’s ties to youth and subversion and its opposition to displays of wealth. They trace how coolness emerged from Black American culture in the 1930s, before being associated with Beat Poets and punk musicians. They consider precursors to cool, like the Italian term sprezzatura, and question the ontology and the morality of coolness. Is coolness an attitude or a state? Is it inherently narcissistic? Can you ever successfully “try” to be cool?

In episode 174 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with Indigenous philosopher and activist Kyle Whyte about his work on climate action. They discuss how Indigenous people are often blocked out of conversations about environmental impact, the common mischaracterization of the land back movement, and the importance of kinship. How are certain groups disproportionately affected by climate change? Is climate change actually a new problem? And how can respecting land rights of Indigenous people offer some solutions to climate change? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts question who is called upon to respond to the crisis of climate change and how non-Indigenous people should engage in discussions surrounding climate change and colonialism. 

In episode 173 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about theft. They discuss the lack of legal repercussions for tech companies stealing information to train new AI models, how feudalism and capitalism produced the conditions for stealing land with the creation of private property, and what the historic association between kleptomania and women demonstrates about the gendered dimension of theft. What does the move from heist films to grift docudramas say about 21st century capitalism? Can you steal land if it’s not already property? And why do we sometimes take the side of thieves?

In episode 172 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a closer look at Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, “the bible of decolonization.” They discuss Fanon’s bold stance on violence, his condemnation of rituals and dance, and some potential criticisms. They also question what the subjectivity of colonized people looks like given colonialism’s psycho-affective effects. What does violence do for the colonized? Who gets liberation movements off the ground? And what are the challenges that a newly independent nation might face once a colonial power has been overthrown?

In episode 171 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about butts. Why do humans have bigger rear ends than other animals? Why are butts often seen as a site of aversion? And is anal sex a metaphor for the universe? They discuss the evolutionary history of butts, how the music industry helped normalize bigger butts, and how the exploitation of Sara Baartman in the 19th century is part of a larger story about the sexualization of black women.

In episode 170 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss how this works with Premilla Nadasen, author of Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. They discuss how gender fits into the care industry, the harms of associating care work with emotion, and how the practice of care has been commodified. How is it that we deny the most basic care from those who need it most? What are the harms of framing care workers as family members? And how has racial capitalism produced the explosion of the care economy that we're seeing today? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts think about the distinction between the practice of care and care itself and how labor workers can learn from care workers in their modes of organizing.

In episode 169 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about discipline. They think about modern culture’s rejection of discipline and how this manifests on the left vs the right, the association between discipline and punishment, and Michel Foucault’s seminal ideas on how disciplinary power rose in society. How can we discipline children without resorting to punishment? And are there models of self-discipline that don’t need to be rooted in punishment of the self?

In episode 168 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a closer look at Emmanuel Levinas’s article “On Escape.” They discuss Levinas’s claim that escape is central to the human condition and explore what exactly we try to escape from and escape to. They explain how this aspect of human existence is crystallized by our experiences of need, pleasure, and even nausea. Are we condemned to being needy beings? How does Levinas’s view of shame put him at a distance from Sartre? And is Levinas right that to be a human is to never be at peace with oneself?

In episode 167 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about all things evil. They think through the characterization of evil with darkness in Disney, Leibniz’s best of all possible worlds theory, the conflation of evil with badness, and Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. How does Manichaeism attempt to resolve the problem of evil? Is evil simply the lack of good in the world? Can evil be disambiguated from its religious past? And does evil still have relevance in an age of secular ethics or should we give up on the concept altogether?

In episode 166 of Overthink, Ellie and David think about the figure of the pedant with philosopher Arnoud S. Q. Visser about his book, On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All. They discuss the history of the pedant, how the charge of pedantry can promote anti-intellectualism, and the inherently gendered nature of the pedant. Why are pedants usually men? Who were considered pedants in antiquity, and how does pedantry show up nowadays? What are the moral flaws of the pedant? Is pedantry objective, or does it lie in the eye of the beholder? And what does it mean to say someone is pedantic?

In episode 165 of Overthink Ellie and David discuss pornography. They talk about the feminist ‘sex wars’ and the pro-porn and anti-porn views that emerged from it. They talk about how the figure of the porn star has changed in the era of OnlyFans, and how porn blends sex with visuality. How might porn endanger women as a class? Can sex in pornography be considered art? And are AI and deepfakes enhancing the harms of pornography? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts chat about Heated Rivalry and discuss the relationship between art and porn.

In episode 164 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a closer look at Donna Haraway’s seminal essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” in which Haraway critiques the increasing technologization of everyday life and questions what it means to be a feminist and a socialist in the age of informatics and cybernetics. They discuss her critique of identity politics, her notion of the “homework economy,” the increase of miniaturization in technology, and her appeal to pleasure and responsibility. Why should we discard the assumption that technology has deepened mind-body dualism? And what might the theory of the cyborg look like in light of the rise of generative AI?

In episode 163 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss personality. They talk through the Big Five personality test and its legitimacy, the history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test (MBTI), and how the concept of personality emerged out of abnormal psychology. Why did the concept of personality replace using literature to understand the self? How does the concept of personality presuppose a fixed concept of the self? And what is the connection between MBTI and World War II?

In episode 162 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with philosopher Hanna Pickard about her book, What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction. They discuss how the “broken brain model” of addiction emerged to combat the moral model of addiction and explore the consequences of both of these models. What drives some people into addiction? What does it mean to say that addiction is a brain disease? How should responsibility and blame fit into our understanding of this condition? And how do we identify when somebody’s patterns of drug use have crossed the threshold into addiction?

In episode 161 of Overthink, Ellie and David get spontaneous. They look at Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation, at spontaneity’s role in politics, and at the dark side of spontaneity. How do different cultures and physical spaces enable or inhibit spontaneity? What is the relationship between spontaneity and human freedom? And is Lenin correct in arguing that leftists need to resist spontaneity in political organizing?

In episode 160 of Overthink, Ellie and David investigate the teachings of Epicurus in The Epicurus Reader. They explain his four-part cure on how to life a better life, including why we shouldn't be worried about death. They also offer critiques on his view of justice and its lack of application to political life. How can attaining ataraxia lead us to achieving eudaimonia and living the good life?

In episode 159 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss illness. They explore how illness has been mythologized, how it may alienate us from our bodies, and how it impacts social relationships. Is science the solution to the mythologization of illness, or is the scientific model of illness its own form of mythology? How should we conceptualize illness? Is it as a “deviation” from a norm? And if so, what norm? Finally, what can we learn about illness from a phenomenological approach that centers the patient’s first-person experience?

In episode 158 of Overthink, Ellie and David speak with Sarah Stein Lubrano, author of Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds, about why discourse is not the solution to political polarization. They discuss the problems with thinking about political opinions as a "marketplace of ideas," why public debates don't change our political views as much as personal relationships, and how social atrophy weakens citizenship. What is the value of political protests? How does the ideal of debate perpetuate politics as war? And should we re-imagine social media platforms like X to encourage productive dialogue, or log off of them completely?

In episode 157 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about manipulation. They discuss what makes up a manipulative personality, why manipulators see social interaction as inherently combative, and what you can do when you find yourself entangled with a manipulator. They also explore what Niccolo Machiavelli tell us about the role of manipulation in politics. Should political leaders always be kind? Or, as Machiavelli says, do they need to learn to “be bad”? And what can we say about manipulation outside of politics? Does manipulative behavior require awareness and intention? Are all forms of manipulation inherently bad? And where do we draw the line between manipulation and other types of social influence?