Overthink

Content warning: this episode involves discussion of sexual violence and sexual assault.
Can pornography be liberating or does it just promote the hatred of women? 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.

Works Discussed:
Laura Bates, The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny
Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Catharine MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination
Oriana Small, Girlvert: A Porno Memoir
Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex

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Is the way we interact with technology moving us towards a cyborg future? 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 the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss how the cyborg can be found in popular media like Severance and Crimes of the Future, and how the cyborg differs to Frankenstein’s monster.

Works Discussed:
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”
Dave Yan, “Posthuman Creativity: Unveiling Cyborg Subjectivity Through ChatGPT”

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Can Buzzfeed quizzes, Myers-Briggs Types, and Enneagrams tell us anything valid about who we are? 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 the Substack bonus segment, your hosts think about how personality tests might be susceptible to the Barnum effect and their reduction of the self to egos.

Works Discussed:
Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality
Merve Emre, What's Your Type? The Story of the Myers-Briggs, and How Personality Testing Took Over the World
Colin Koopman, How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person

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To what extent is drug addiction voluntary? 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 the Substack bonus segment, your hosts think about the temporality of addiction and what it means to hold an “addict identity.”

Works Discussed:
Alan Leshner, “Addiction Is a Brain Disease, and It Matters”
Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
Hanna Pickard, What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction

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What does it mean to be spontaneous? 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 the Substack bonus segment, your hosts think through the relationship between spontaneity and habit, how spontaneity plays into the recording of Overthink episodes, and the habitual spontaneity of those with Tourette’s Syndrome.

Works Discussed:
Aristotle, Physics
Lucy Cooke, The Truth About Animals
Jonathan Gingrich, “Spontaneous Freedom”
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Vladimir Lenin, What is to Be Done?

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Join our Substack for ad-free versions of both audio and video episodes, extended episodes, exclusive live chats, and more: https://overthinkpod.substack.com/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.