Go for it, Jenny.

What I can't speak to because I don't watch a lot of horror films is I know that a lot of feminists out there, like, in film theory they look at horror films because it often centers on, like, cutting up young women and, you know, the w- women's sexuality.

Um, and that stuff I have nothing smart to say about because I don't watch enough of it.

But I like what you said about social commentary because the, the one horror film that I liked in the last couple years, and I haven't watched any more of his ho- horror films, is Jordan Peele's Get Out, and that would be similar, I think, to this in terms of social commentary.

And so the horror is less, like, gnarly kills and more, like, the horror of the social environment that we still live in.

So before I even kinda went in to look and see what some blog, feminist bloggers were, were writing about this, I went back and forth whether it was a feminist film or not, and I've decided that it's both.

I think that it, it does have a feminist subtext, and I think that they were going for that.

Oh, so because it's a pet cemetery sort of thing, then it also has a fascination with death?

Go for it, Jenny.

What I can't speak to because I don't watch a lot of horror films is I know that a lot of feminists out there, like, in film theory they look at horror films because it often centers on, like, cutting up young women and, you know, the w- women's sexuality.

Um, and that stuff I have nothing smart to say about because I don't watch enough of it.

But I like what you said about social commentary because the, the one horror film that I liked in the last couple years, and I haven't watched any more of his ho- horror films, is Jordan Peele's Get Out, and that would be similar, I think, to this in terms of social commentary.

And so the horror is less, like, gnarly kills and more, like, the horror of the social environment that we still live in.

So before I even kinda went in to look and see what some blog, feminist bloggers were, were writing about this, I went back and forth whether it was a feminist film or not, and I've decided that it's both.

I think that it, it does have a feminist subtext, and I think that they were going for that.

Oh, so because it's a pet cemetery sort of thing, then it also has a fascination with death.

Go for it, Jenny.

What I can't speak to because I don't watch a lot of horror films is I know that a lot of feminists out there, like in film theory, they look at horror films because it often centers on like cutting up young women and, you know, the women's sexuality.

And that stuff I have nothing smart to say about because I don't watch enough of it.

But I like what you said about social commentary, because the one horror film that I liked in the last couple of years, and I haven't watched any more of his horror films, is Jordan Peele's Get Out.

And that would be similar, I think, to this in terms of social commentary.

And so the horror is less like gnarly kills and more like the horror of the social environment that we still live in.

Yeah.

oh, so because it's a pet cemetery sort of thing, then it also has a fascination with death.

No such thing as too nerdy.

But I do love my math colleagues.

And when I teach ancient Greek philosophy, I often used to have one of my really cool math colleagues who actually just wrote a cool book on cats and math.

And he would come in and show them the way that the Greeks would have solved this math problem.

But anyways, he and I used to get in lots of debates about calculus because... calculus is kind of almost like, well, I'll just, just as part of it, I'm not going to get into like that stuff, but, but there, there's almost kind of like a hand waving in calculus where you just go, you know what? I know it seems like infinity, but trust me, it just goes to zero.

Like, like, because in the, the funny thing is the ancient Greeks were convinced that infinity had no crazy effects for us reality like you know these problems like the hare will never pass the turtle on a racetrack because there's an infinite number of spaces between them and they connect you can't cross infinite spaces in a finite time right so calculus just solves this and it's like and we've solved this there's no more infinite spaces and nobody really understands that it's like okay and so the engineers are like enough of your philosophy we're moving on oh god we went way off sorry nerd

You're not even thinking these things in the same way.

That's really interesting, actually.

Yeah.

But, but [laughs] no, I was thinking about the way that Mark just described Maslow as reminding me of a famous line from John Stuart Mill.

He's trying to make a criticism of Bentham's utilitarianism, that all we want is pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

The more pleasure, the more ethical, the better life is.

And, and Mill's trying to say, no, humans need more than pleasure.

And he said, "Better to be a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied pig," right? And that's a certain way of-

What?

... and he would come in and show them the way that the Greeks would have solved this math problem.

What are you working on right now that, that is like, feels nourishing and exciting to you?

Well, I think I started trying to tell you guys this last time.

I really am interested in the way that we are all having to interact with AI in various ways.

It's just everywhere, right? You know, like even just, I'm sure you get like, you know, I have mostly removed myself from social media, but I still get like, you know, ads like...

because I'll play the games on the phone, telling me how to figure out my perfect haircut because they're going to make an AI image of me.

But all the ways that we have to interact with these AI agents or these AI bots is making us, it has the potential to make us worse because they only fill us with maybe a kind of unearned narcissism.

Not unearned narcissism.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And is there a way that one could be thoroughly examined, self-examined, but yet has a more feminist tinge to it, does not use some of those, those aggressive masculine tropes?

Gosh, like, for sure.

[laughs] I think the problem sometimes with the way arguments unfold in professional conference settings that seems to have not gotten all of the genius humor in so many writers like Plato is that a dialogue is a dialogue.

[laughs] It is between people, and it is trying to figure out where you connect and where you share understanding and maybe lowering the bar for entry a little bit, you know, uh, having, a silly moments or cracking jokes, trying to make space for showing up in lots of ways.

And I think even if someone's not, as a philosopher, writing a dialogue, which is about communication and not about, like, destruction of opposing viewpoints, I think that a lot of philosophers have used all sorts of rhetorical tricks and metaphors and inside jokes to make it not so damn serious sometimes, right? Like, what if? [laughs] What if, you know, you're a bat? [laughs] What is life like as a bat, you know? I mean, sometimes you use ridiculous thought experiments to get people to not be intimidated, to open their minds, and I think, yeah, like-

[laughs]

Because Charlie Kirk is Euthyphro.

Charlie Kirk is Meno.

Go ahead.

[laughs] Kind of.

And, and yeah, and they may have been bullied even in their schooling and then they found this thing that gave them power, which was being the smartest person in the room and, you know, a whole set of assumptions about logic and men, and so they've used that to gain power rather than promote truth is sometimes my, my view.

But then like just getting away from like professional philosophers and that, yeah, I mean, I not too long ago taught a piece by Peirce, Charles Sanders Peirce, called The Fixation of Belief, and he has these different categories of ways in which people try to prevent having to confront alternative viewpoints, and one is like the tenacious, like, you know, tenacity.

And so I think sometimes people use rules or whatnot in order to not have to take in information that would challenge their worldview that they need because their identity depends on it.

[laughs]

... because Charlie Kirk is Euthyphro.

Charlie Kirk is Meno.