Hi, I'm Ellie Anderson.

And I'm David Peña Guzman.

Welcome to Overthink.

The podcast where two friends, who are also professors, put philosophy in dialogue with the

everyday, because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

Hi, Ellie.

Hey, what's up?

You know, just hanging out after the elections.

We have a new president, although the old one

hasn't recognized that publicly yet.

Or privately. Denial is a powerful drug.

I'm laughing, but I'm crying on the inside.

So now we are facing a new future with Biden as our president come January 2021.

And a number of people have already contrasted Biden's possible approach to domestic and international

policy to the Trump administrations on the basis of his emotional profile. So he is an empathic

person. He's relatable. He's like the grandpa that everybody loves to hang around with.

You know, many times he brings in aspects of his own lived experience and of his own traumatic past, like his son Beau's very tragic passing, as a way of connecting with voters.

Some people are beginning to talk about empathy as Biden's superpower and to speculate about the ways in which it might change

the future of the United States. Yeah, I had a really weird experience when I was watching his

acceptance speech. You know, Kamala Harris went on before Biden. And I'm sure you and I both have a lot

of thoughts about Kamala Harris's historic vice presidency, at the same time as we

might have some critiques of her role in the prison industrial complex, especially in the

...