Awkwardness with Alexandra Plakias
Overthink
Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.
4.7 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2024
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clogged toilets, odious jokes, difficult condolences… awkward moments are everywhere you look. In episode 113 of Overthink, Ellie and David invite philosopher Alexandra Plakias to talk through her research on awkwardness. They discuss everything from hasty clean-ups to snap decisions, from oversharing online to uncomfortable silences, as they explore the ways that awkwardness is bound up with power, morality, and the core scripts of our social expectations. Where does cringe end and awkwardness begin? Are we living through especially awkward times? Who gets to decide what is awkward? And, what if awkward people… don’t exist at all? Plus, in the bonus, they discuss The Office, weddings, weird eye contact, and more.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness
Adam Kotsko, Awkwardness
Alexandra Plakias, Awkwardness: A Theory & “Awkward? We’d Better Own it”
Thomas J. Spiegel, “Cringe”
YouGov poll, "Awkwardness"
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey listeners, I am so excited to share that we have a brand new way for you to support |
| 0:05.1 | Overthink. We've partnered with Pomona College, where I teach, to allow you to submit |
| 0:09.4 | one-time donations to support our show. These donations are fully tax deductible, and funds from them |
| 0:15.1 | go directly to student assistants working for Overthink. You can learn more at our website, |
| 0:19.3 | overthinkpodcast.com. |
| 0:23.0 | Also, you probably know about our Patreon already, |
| 0:25.8 | but that's a great place to support us in an ongoing fashion to receive access to bonus segments, |
| 0:28.0 | our Discord community, |
| 0:29.3 | and monthly Zooms with David and yours truly. |
| 0:31.7 | Thank you. Hello and welcome to Overthink. |
| 0:47.3 | The podcast where, um... |
| 0:51.3 | I'm Dr. Ali Anderson. |
| 0:55.5 | And I'm Dr. David Peña-Gusman. |
| 0:57.8 | And, yeah, whether it's awkward laughter, awkward silence, or... |
| 1:02.8 | Awkward people. |
| 1:05.2 | Today's the day we're talking about it. |
| 1:08.6 | A recent study showed that one in four adult Americans consider themselves more awkward |
| 1:15.8 | than other people. |
| 1:17.6 | And among 18 to 29-year-olds, the number rises to 37%. |
| 1:23.8 | So like a third of young people, a third of our target audience feels awkward. And a quarter of |
| 1:31.0 | Americans in general feel they are more awkward than most people. Although I have to say the |
| 1:36.6 | statistics are kind of bizarre because it still less than 50%. So technically speaking, like they could be right. |
... |
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