In episode 146 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with philosopher Dan Zahavi about his book, Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology. They discuss how the increase in communication through screens has shifted what it means to be together, the decline of social bonds in political life, and what phenomenological understandings of empathy tell us about being together. How do dyadic relationships such as romantic love and friendship shape our identities? Does there need to be a conception of the self that precedes sociality? What are the different types of wes? And how can phenomenology help us think about the importance of face-to-face interactions?

In episode 139 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about neighbors. They think through the parasocial relationships that exist between neighbors, how the values of our neighbors affect us, and how neighborly relations blur the public/private distinction. They look to Levinas’s understanding of the neighbor as the other and think about how this understanding can help us in day-to-day interactions. How do our relationships with neighbors differ from our other kinds of relationships? To what extent do we choose our neighbors, and how does this change according to people’s amount of wealth? And what actually makes a neighbor a neighbor?