Overthink16 Jan 2024

Biohacking

Night vision. Superhuman strength. And… kale salad? In episode 95 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore the weird world of biohackers, who leverage science and technology to optimize their bodies. The movement raises rich philosophical questions, from the blurry ethics of self-experimentation, to the consequences of extreme Cartesian dualism, to the awkward tension in our technological nostalgia for a pastoral paradise. If biohacking taps into the basic human desire to experience and investigate, it perhaps also pushes too far toward transcending our bodies. The stakes are political, metaphysical, and ethical — and your hosts are here to make philosophical sense of it all.

Works Discussed

Dave Asprey, Smarter Not Harder
Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby
Mirjam Grewe-Salfeld, Biohacking, Bodies, and Do-It-Yourself
Michel de Montaigne, "Of Experience"
Max More, The Transhumanist Reader
Joel Michael Reynolds, "Genopower: On Genomics, Disability, and Impairment"
Smithsonian Mag, “200 Frozen Heads and Bodies Await Revival at This Arizona Cryonics Facility”
Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics
Washington Post, “The Key to Glorifying a Questionable Diet? Be a tech bro and call it ‘biohacking'"
Patricia J. Zettler et. al., “Regulating genetic biohacking”

Austin Powers (1997)
If Books Could Kill Podcast
Overthink ep 31. Genomics feat. Joel Michael Reynolds

Support the show

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(179)

Unemployment

After a BIG announcement (!!!), your hosts David and Ellie get into the economic and psychological features of the state no one wants to be stuck in: unemployment. How does capitalism structurally con...

14 Jul 55min

Beauty with Heather Widdows

Beauty is big business, and the rise of looksmaxxing and increasingly invasive treatments is raising the alarm on the ways that our looks matter in our personal and social lives. Ellie and David speak...

30 Jun 56min

Cheating

Is it easier to cheat now than ever? In episode 177 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about cheating. From micro-cheating on your girlfriend to doping in sports, cheating appears to have escalated in...

16 Jun 59min

Attention

Are you paying attention when you scroll online? 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...

2 Jun 57min

Coolness

Play it cool and play this episode. 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 attempt...

26 Mai 54min

Climate Action with Kyle Whyte

What resources do Indigenous studies provide for addressing the crisis of human-made climate change? And how is the climate crisis linked to settler colonialism? In episode 174 of Overthink, Ellie and...

19 Mai 55min

Theft

Thou shalt not miss this episode! In episode 173 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about theft. They discuss our moral intuitions around theft, how feudalism and capitalism may be founded upon an ori...

12 Mai 55min

Closer Look: Fanon, Wretched of the Earth

Does decolonization require violence? 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 b...

5 Mai 59min