Hello, and welcome to Overthink.
The podcast where two weirdos connect philosophy to your everyday lives.
I'm Dr. David Pena-Gusman.
And I'm Dr. Ellie Anderson.
We've talked about awkwardness before on Overthink, but today we're talking about a related concept,
weirdness, and a related concept to that, which is bizarreness.
However, whereas our awkwardness episode was a lot about our social lives.
Today's episode is going to be more about the world around us and how we relate to it
because it turns out the world is really weird and every single theory that we have about the world from the most well accepted to the most fringe is also weird,
at least according to the guests we're going to be speaking to today.
I'd love for us to start by thinking a little bit about what weirdness is and setting us up for some of the weird ideas that we're going to get into later in the episode.
David, when you think of the word weird,
I know you've read the book and we'll talk about our author's definition of it in a moment,
but let's keep that to the side for now.
When you think of the word weird, what do you think of?
I think of something unexpected somebody who is creepy and bizarre and especially
if it's about a person it's somebody that I just don't know how to engage.
Okay okay I think about it in maybe initially neutral terms
like I think about it as like a funky hair color you know and like a cool nail polish and it's like oh that person's weird you know oh my gosh you know what it is the weird person is that character from she's all that at the beginning of the movie before she has her glow up she's got like her glasses she's got kind of like her funky hairstyle she works at the local falafel shop and has like awkward interactions with people all the time okay but that it seems
like you are equating it with quirky something that's kind of cute but off the beaten path okay that's true that's why i said it's neutral for me whereas you're like no weird is like not a good thing well i would say that it's less that it's not a good thing and more that it's something that stands in need of an explanation i need to know how this thing came to me or how this person came to be who they are and without that explanation I just I'm stuck in this sense that there is a bit of an abyss or a screen between me and them that prevents us from really developing a mutual understanding.