Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman.

And I'm Ellie Anderson.

Welcome to Overthink.

The podcast were two friends, who are also professors,

put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.

Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

Just imagine. You are a French person living in Paris in 1895. It's a cool December night, and you've entered into the basement of the Salon Indian

Du Grand Café de Paris.

It's a cafe.

It's a grand cafe, Ellie.

Grand Cafe, yeah.

You've been invited to the first screening of the Lumiere Brothers film, which depicts a train

rolling into the station. It's a silent film, of course. This is 1895. And as you behold, for the very

first time in your entire life, an actual moving image, and it's of a train coming towards you,

speeding, hurtling, in your direction.

You become terrified. You fail to recognize that the train is just an image because you've

never seen a moving image before, and you run screaming out of the room.

This is the story of cinema's origin. When cinema was first introduced to Parisian audiences in the late 19th century,

the feeling from spectators was one of confusion, shock, and excitement. Because people couldn't

quite tell the difference between what was real and what was imaginary, between what was reality

itself and what was merely a projection

of it on their screen.

...