Breakups

Overthink

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

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to Overthink.
0:16.9	The podcast where two friends who are also professors show that philosophy is not just some ivory tower pursuit, but can help you understand your everyday problems.
0:25.8	If not, well, get over them.
0:28.3	I'm David Peña Guzman.
0:30.1	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:31.6	There was a New Yorker article recently called The New Business of Breakups, in which the author, Jennifer Wilson, went through what
0:40.0	we might call a whole cottage industry for breakups that has emerged in recent years.
0:45.4	She talks about a hotel that offers a program called Healing Heartbreak, where newly single
0:51.7	guests can undergo a full-body exfoliation treatment to symbolize the scrubbing away of the past.
0:59.5	She also discusses an app called MEND, which leads you through a 17 module online course that will, quote, turn your breakup into a breakthrough and all sorts of other things. It's just like,
1:12.7	basically, yes, this new cottage industry of helping people overcome breakups is a thing.
1:18.9	I really want to believe, Ellie, that you have either been to this hotel or worked your way
1:24.7	through the modules of one of these apps. Please tell me that that's the case.
1:28.6	Well, no, in fact, it's the case that I wish I had created the 17 module online course
1:34.8	about turning your rake up into a breakthrough.
1:37.5	Because I feel like I could kind of slay with that.
1:40.5	And I do hope that perhaps in the future, I will be teaching one of the in-person classes at this like a heartbreak hotel because it sounded honestly really beautiful.
1:50.2	One of the locations is in the Yucatan.
1:52.1	Oh my God, Ellie 10 years from now, you're going to be a sham guru for emotional heartbreak selling tickets at $10,000 for access to one of your emotional mending workshops
2:03.7	in the Yucatan or in Bali.
2:06.3	I know, right?
2:07.1	Well, okay, you know that real talk.
	...

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