Waiting

Overthink

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

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Has society progressed past the need for waiting? In the time of smartphones and their 24/7 carousels of distraction, the liminal agony of waiting seems like a thing of the past. In episode 57 of Overthink, Ellie and David explore waiting as a persistent mood of existence. Why do we flee waiting? How can waiting be an active, liberatory act rather than something we just passively endure? They dive into absurdist theater, the figure of the messiah, time under capitalism, and modern life’s discomfort with uncertainty.

Works Discussed

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
Manpreet Janeja and Andreas Bandak, Ethnographies of Waiting: Doubt, Hope, and Uncertainty
Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having
Gabriel Marcel, “Desire and Hope”
Harold Schweizer, On Waiting
Imad Shouery, “Phenomenological Analysis of Waiting”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman.
0:08.4	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:10.2	Welcome to Overthink.
0:12.0	The podcast were two friends, who are also professors, put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.
0:18.6	Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.
0:30.1	Ellie, you pitched this idea a while ago, and voila, we don't have to wait anymore.
0:36.3	It is happening.
0:37.8	And I didn't know where to start when thinking about waiting.
0:42.9	And so I decided to read a text that is probably the most referenced in the philosophy of waiting that I should have read a long time ago, but that I have never read, waiting for Godot.
0:55.6	Oh, wow. You didn't have to read that in high school?
0:58.2	In Mexico, no.
1:00.4	When you went to high school partly in the U.S.?
1:02.5	Yeah, also no.
1:06.3	Okay, so I imagine that many of our listeners have seen or at least heard of or perhaps read the play by Samuel Beckett waiting for Godot.
1:15.6	But since you were going in with fresh eyes and ears, tell us about this play.
1:20.6	Give us a quick and dirty overview of it.
1:23.9	Well, the overview in terms of my reactions is that I liked it, but the overview in terms of the plot.
1:29.2	Okay, thanks.
1:30.2	Really subtle take on the play, David.
1:34.8	Waiting for a good note?
1:36.0	Yay.
1:36.6	Other things, maybe nay.
	...

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