Episode 97. Cities
The village is aglow! In episode 97 of Overthink, Ellie and David guide you through the ideas that make a metropolis tick. From Plato’s spotless Republic to Saudi Arabia’s futuristic The Line, they talk the foul and the vibrant of what it means to live in a city. Why are there so few public plazas in Brasilia? Why did David lose his wallet in Mexico City? How do gridded street layouts reflect colonial fantasies? And how did a medieval woman writer, Christine de Pizan, beat Greta Gerwig to the punch in imagining a Barbie-like City of Ladies?
Works Discussed
Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
Don T. Deere, “Coloniality and Disciplinary Power: On Spatial Techniques of Ordering”
Sarah Elwood, PIECE ON PUERTO RICAN NEIGHBORHOODS
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Jane Jacobs, The Life and Death of Great American Cities
Quill R. Kukla, City Living
Camille de Pizan, City of Ladies
Plato, Republic
Angel Rama, The Lettered City
Georg Simmel, “Metropolis and Mental Life”
Iris Marion Young, PIECE ON CITY LIFE AS STRANGERS TOGETHER
Blade Runner (1982)
Parasite (2019)
Barbie (2023)
Overthink ep. 32, Astrology