In episode 133 of Overthink, Ellie and David close out their four-part series on the elements with air. They consider Anaximenes of Miletus’s belief that all things are made of air, Luce Irigaray’s belief that air is feminine, and the modern use of air as a weapon of battle. What can the TV series The Last of Us tell us about the inescapability of air Why have some philosophers thought the soul is made of air? And how does air allow itself to be forgotten?

In episode 132 of Overthink, Ellie and David dig into the topic of earth for the third part of their four-part series on the elements. They discuss everything from earthworms and carbon dating to the earth as a living being. They look to Foucault, Freud, and Husserl for their ideas on how the earth can act as a metaphor for the past. Are there limitations to thinking about the Earth as a solid substance? What are the similarities between humans and earth? And what is it that we actually mean when we talk about earth as an element?  

In episode 131 of Overthink, David and Ellie take a deep dive into the topic of water as part of their four-part series on the elements. They discuss how all life begins in water, and the conceptual features of water, such as its fluidity and shapelessness. What did Thales of Miletus mean by ‘all is water’? How is water used as a metaphor for the Dao? And at what point does being in water go from feeling like Moana to feeling like Jaws?

In episode 130 of Overthink, David and Ellie launch a four-part series on the elements, starting off hot with fire. They look at the role of fire in Greek mythology (focusing on the myth of Prometheus), the evolution of humans’ relationship with fire, and fire’s role as the universal metaphor. Why did Prometheus steal fire from the Olympians and give it  to humans? Why does Bachelard believe that fire is “the” philosophical element par excellence? How did Western culture turn fire from friend to foe? And what would a non-antagonistic relationship to fire look like?