Hello and welcome to Overthink.

The podcast where two professors explore the relevance of philosophy to daily life.

I am David Peña-Gusman.

And I'm Ellie Anderson.

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Ellie, today we're doing an episode on a topic that was recommended to us by our listener, Isabella Olivera Mello.

So we are really excited to be talking about manipulation, which seems to be something people want to hear about.

Yeah, thank you for the great recommendation, Isabella.

I actually want to start by talking about a book that I first came across in high school

and that has had an outsized impact in certain sectors of the public sphere since, namely like

Manosphere YouTube, let's say. And that is Robert Green's book, The 48 Laws of Power. Like,

there are so many videos about this, so many articles written about this. So many listicles.

Yeah, many listicles. Actually, the book is kind of like a glorified listicle itself.

It's a longsticle. Yeah. No, it's really just a bunch of stories about people who successfully manipulate others and gain power as a result. So I guess a listicle connotes like short and pithy little entries. This is more, I was going to say more substantive than that, but I'm actually not sure it is. It is longer than that. Yeah. Hence the longsticle. Since I assume it focuses mostly on men, it's a combination of long and testicle energy.

Oh, my God.

Sorry, I missed that, David.

All right.

So I will say, when I was in high school, I found other people very challenging to understand.

And I didn't quite know how to behave in the world, as you know, many teenagers often feel.

In particular, I had a lot of unrequited crushes on people.

And so I actually first came across Robert Green's work through another book he wrote that's

...