Welcome to Overthink.

The podcast where two friends who are also philosophy professors put big ideas in dialogue with everyday life.

I am Dr. David Pena

Guzman, and I'm co-host, Dr. Ellie Anderson. Dostoevsky calls boredom a bestial and

indefinable affliction. Whether you agree that it's bestial or indefinable, boredom is quite the

affliction. I remember being in middle school and being hopelessly bored over the summers.

Three months without school seems great at first, but a couple weeks into it, and I had no idea what to do with myself.

I was too young to be able to drive myself anywhere, too young to be able to walk most places living in a suburb, too young to have a job.

And so I would just, like, sit and wonder, what do I do with myself?

I remember making a 50 things to do over the summer list that I color printed on our home

printer in party L.T font, if anybody remembers that. Classic, classic 90s, early 2000s font.

This was a time before Wi-Fi, before smartphones. And I just like never really knew what to do.

Sure, I had friends, but how many play dates can you have when you're in middle school?

So you were presumably old enough to know that you were bored,

but not old enough to have the means to do something about it. Exactly. Trapped in this existential,

dreadful condition of knowledge and inaction. Other than write a list of 50 things to do over the

summer, which included like not exciting things, like lie outside, you know, and like read, well, which included, like, not exciting things, like, lie outside, you know,

and, like, read.

Well, I mean, reading is exciting, but you can't do it all the time.

I mean, you mentioned that at this time you didn't have a smartphone or Wi-Fi.

So I wonder whether this type of boredom that your younger self experienced would even be intelligible for middle schoolers nowadays.

When they can be on social media, they can FaceTime their friends, so on and so forth.

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