Overthink

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

1 Creator

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).

#2 in the Top 100 Indie courses All time chart

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Top 10 Overthink Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Overthink episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Overthink for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Overthink episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Success

Overthink

07/16/24 • 58 min

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”

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3 Listeners

Lived Experience

Overthink

03/28/23 • 58 min

What kind of authority do we appeal to when we invoke lived experience? Isn't all experience "lived"? Why does the *discourse* today so frequently refer to this concept, and what are its philosophical origins? In episode 74 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss the phenomenology of lived experience, including its roots in Dilthey, who considered lived experience to be historical. They incorporate Fanon’s work into the conversation to answer the question of if our lived experience of the world is something that varies along identity lines such as race.

Works Discussed

Wilhelm Dilthey, Poetry and Experience

Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Martin Jay, Songs of Experience

Becca Longtin, “From Factical Life to Art: Reconsidering Heidegger's Appropriation of Dilthey”

Pamela Paul, “The Limits of ‘Lived Experience’”

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3 Listeners

Comfort

Overthink

12/03/24 • 53 min

Get comfy as you listen to this episode! In episode 118 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss all things comfortable...and uncomfortable. They talk through the conflation of comfort and luxury, modern architecture’s prioritization of comfort, and whether our need for comfort is the reason for our burning planet. With everything from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to “the comfort-industrial complex,” this episode will have you questioning what it takes for us to lead a full and happy life. Plus, in the bonus they get into the meaning of the phrase ‘too close for comfort’, alcohol as a destructive form of comfort, and the importance of attachment theory.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
Daniel Barber, “After Comfort”
J L Bottorff et al., “The phenomenology of comfort”
Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
Ryan Heavy Head, “Blackfoot Influence on Abraham Maslow, Presented by Narcisse Kainai and Ryan Heavy Head at the University of Montana”
Lynnette Leeseberg Stamler and Ann Malinowski, “Comfort: exploration of the concept in nursing.”
A. H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation
Teju Ravilochan, “The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy”.
Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres trilogy
Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

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2 Listeners

Non-Monogamous Love with Justin L. Clardy

Overthink

12/05/23 • 59 min

Let a thousand flowers bloom! In episode 92 of Overthink, Ellie and David have a panoramic conversation on love beyond monogamy with philosophy professor, podcaster, and author of Why It's OK To Not be Monogamous, Justin L. Clardy. They envision relations of love and special attachment that aren't bound to the notion of sacrifice. They also turn to personal stories and question the role of marriage in consumer capitalism and its nonstop pressure to find the One and Only. Together, they find in non-monogamous pathways to reimagine agency, identity, and community — and a nudge toward a richer philosophy of our relations with the world around us.
Note: Ellie misspeaks when she mentions that married couples have lower satisfaction levels than unmarried ones. The correct claim, based on this study, is that they have fewer social ties. We apologize for the mistake!
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Marina Adshade, "The Origins of the Institutions of Marriage"
Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay
Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage
Justin Clardy, Why It’s OK to Not Be Monogamous
Carrie Jenkins, What Love Is
Robert Nozick, "Love's Bond"
Pages The Reading Group

Related Overthink episodes
15. Marriage
16. Monogamy
17. Open Relationships
18. Polyamory

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2 Listeners

Envy

Overthink

08/27/24 • 54 min

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

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2 Listeners

Intensity

Overthink

08/13/24 • 58 min

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

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Hyperreality

Overthink

09/10/24 • 59 min

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)

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2 Listeners

Emotional Labor

Overthink

02/14/23 • 59 min

Is the emotional opacity of men a social justice issue? In episode 71, Ellie and David break down the concepts of emotional and hermeneutic labor. The notion of emotional labor was originally created to shed light on gendered workplace interactions, but it has since been applied to romantic and other kinds of relationships. Is this expanded use of the term justified? Ellie’s research suggests that the concept of hermeneutic labor may better explain asymmetries of power in romantic relationships between men and women. Hermeneutic labor imbalances are produced by men’s inability to name and interpret their feelings and by the societal expectation that women manage their own emotions and those of their male partners simultaneously. How does Ellie’s research on hermeneutic labor shift our perspective on the issue of gender in emotional work?
Works Discussed
Ellie Anderson, “Hermeneutic Labor: The Gendered Burden of Interpretation in Intimate Relationships Between Women and Men”
Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart
bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
Judith Farr Tormey, "Exploitation, Oppression and Self-Sacrifice"
Ronald Levant, “Desperately seeking language: Understanding, assessing, and treating normative male alexithymia”
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, “Stoicism (as Emotional Compression) Is Emotional Labor”
Kathi Weeks, "Hours for What We Will: Work, Family, and the Movement for Shorter Hours”

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2 Listeners

Breakups

Overthink

02/11/25 • 58 min

It’s not you, it’s me... In episode 123 of Overthink, Ellie and David get into the highs and lows of breakups. What, if anything, is valuable about breakups? Does society’s emphasis on monogamy affect how we conceptualize the end of relationships? And what do you do if your ex still has your Netflix password? Your hosts discuss everything from breakups in the age of social media and chemical solutions to heartache to what the laws against domestic abuse and stalking can tell us about how society views breakups. Plus, in the bonus, they take a look at Kierkegaard’s love life and discuss whether it’s ever truly possible to breakup with someone for purely altruistic reasons.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:

Brian D Earp et. al, “If I Could Just Stop Loving You: Anti-Love Biotechnology and the Ethics of a Chemical Breakup”

Kelli María Korducki, Hard To Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up

Pilar Lopez-Cantero, “The Break-Up Check: Exploring Romantic Love through Relationship Terminations”

Ovid, Remedia Amoris

Deborah Tuerkheimer, “Breakups”

Jennifer Wilson, “The New Business of Breakups”

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Kitsch

Overthink

07/19/22 • 53 min

What do garden gnomes, the #BlackLivesMatter black squares of June 2020 Instagram, and formulaic pop songs all have in common? They’re kitsch. In episode 56 of Overthink, Ellie and David investigate the history of kitsch as an aesthetic category distinct from art. How does the superficiality and mass-reproducibility of kitsch explain its uses as a tool of fascist propaganda? They discuss the American cultural instinct to deploy inspirational quotes in response to national trauma, kitsch as an antidote to working class alienation, the decline of emotionally significant, critical art, and more.
Works Discussed
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch”
Tomáš Kulka, Kitsch and Art
Catherine A. Lugg, Kitsch
Zach Brown Band, “Chicken Fried”
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, Dogs Playing Poker

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FAQ

How many episodes does Overthink have?

Overthink currently has 130 episodes available.

What topics does Overthink cover?

The podcast is about Society & Culture, Courses, Podcasts, Education and Philosophy.

What is the most popular episode on Overthink?

The episode title 'Success' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Overthink?

The average episode length on Overthink is 55 minutes.

How often are episodes of Overthink released?

Episodes of Overthink are typically released every 14 days.

When was the first episode of Overthink?

The first episode of Overthink was released on Oct 31, 2020.

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Overthink

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

Top 10 Overthink Episodes

FAQ

How many episodes does Overthink have?

What topics does Overthink cover?

What is the most popular episode on Overthink?

What is the average episode length on Overthink?

How often are episodes of Overthink released?

When was the first episode of Overthink?

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