Very Bad Wizards
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Very Bad Wizards
Very Bad Wizards is a podcast featuring a philosopher (Tamler Sommers) and a psychologist (David Pizarro), who share a love for ethics, pop culture, and cognitive science, and who have a marked inability to distinguish sacred from profane. Each podcast includes discussions of moral philosophy, recen...
Episodi recenti
323 episodi
Episode 318: A PTA Meeting
David and Tamler share some brief thoughts about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest masterpiece One Battle After Another before going deep on his most unde...
Episode 317: For Shame
What is the psychology of shame? Is the experience of shame a human universal? How can we investigate the nature of shame across cultures? David and T...
Episode 316: A Four-Letter Man (Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber")
David and Tamler go big game hunting and explore their first Hemingway short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” We dig into his charact...
Episode 315: Ceaseless Striving (Schopenhauer’s Pessimism)
David and Tamler tackle the topic chosen by our beloved Patreon supporters in the first VBW madness tournament – Schopenhauer. We discuss his essays “...
Episode 314: The In-Betweeny Place
David and Tamler go long on McDonagh’s 2008 masterpiece "In Bruges." We talk about the terrific performances and all the weighty themes - sin, guilt,...
Episode 313: The Spontaneous Eruption of Now
David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the metaphysics of past and future via the Borges essay(s) “A New Refutation of Time.” What does it me...
Episode 312: MechaSkeptic
David and Tamler return to David Hume’s somewhat slippery brand of skepticism, this time focusing Chapter 12 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understan...
Episode 311: The Way to Dusty Death (Shakespeare's "Macbeth")
David and Tamler screw their courage to the sticking place and talk about their first Shakespeare play – The Tragedy of Macbeth. Plus we select 16 top...
Episode 310: Bayes, Brains, and Buddhists
David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the predictive processing theory of the mind and brain function and talk about a paper that applies th...
Episode 309: Dissolving Into the One
David and Tamler heed the call to journey into the realm of Joseph Campbell. What are the unifying elements shared by myths and religions across time...
Bonus Episode: Va Va Boom (Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly")
We kick off our Bonus "Noir Summer" series with Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly" (1956). While the rest of the bonus series will be for Patreon subsc...
Episode 308: The Gray Man who Dreamed (Borges' "Shakespeare's Memory")
David and Tamler return to their happy place and talk about two pieces by JL Borges – the story “Shakespeare’s Memory” and the [essay/story/poem/liter...
Episode 307: What's in the BOX?
David and Tamler talk about two famous puzzles that for different reasons have bedeviled the rationalist community – The Monty Hall Problem and Newcom...
Episode 306: What to Expect When You're Expecting (David Lynch's "Eraserhead" with Barry Lam)
David and Tamler welcome Barry Lam back to the show. In the first segment we violate one of our own rules by talking about his new book "Fewer Rules,...
Episode 305: Emile Is the Name of the Goat (with Paul Bloom)
VBW favorite Paul Bloom joins us to break down the Severance season finale and season 2 in general. We all agree that it’s a much-needed return to for...
Episode 304: The Planes Don't Land
What has four thumbs and can effortlessly glide from the a priori to the a posteriori in a single episode? These guys. In the first segment we tackle...
Episode 303: Measure This
Everyone knows Tamler hates numbers but he’s not the only one who worries about them. We talk about the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen’s excellent paper “V...
Episode 302: Metaphysical Edging
What makes something weird? What makes something eerie? David and Tamler wander into Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie to learn more about these c...
Episode 301: Believing is Seeing?
It’s Back 2 Basics: Psychology edition! Do coins look bigger to poor people? Do hills look steeper to people wearing heavy backpacks? What’s the diffe...
Episode 300: If We Only Had A Brain
David and Tamler celebrate their 300th episode with a deep dive into the movie that inspired the podcast’s title. Why is "The Wizard of Oz" the most i...
Episode 299: Oh the Humility!
David and Tamler wrap up the new year talking about intellectual virtues and Rachel Fraser’s excellent essay “Against Humility.” What is intellectual...
Episode 298: Pass the Peace Pipe
Why do we punish people? How did our punishment practices evolve and what is their primary function? David and Tamler talk about a new paper that exam...
Episode 297: No Pleasure in Meanness (Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find")
David and Tamler face off with the Misfit in Flannery O’Connor’s classic short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” We sort through the biblical allusi...
Episode 296: The Other CRT
David and Tamler share a few brief thoughts on the election and then raise some questions about Tucker Carlson being attacked by a demon as he slept i...
Episode 295: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
David and Tamler hop into their Scooby Van and drive into Tobe Hooper’s mad and macabre horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does this en...
Episode 294: The Scandal of Philosophy (Hume's Problem of Induction)
CD Broad called induction “the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy.” As a matter of habit, we’re all confident that the sun will rise tomor...
Episode 293: Who Is the Dreamer? (Borges' "The Circular Ruins")
David and Tamler crawl up a riverbank, kiss the mud, and dream a discussion of Borges’ “The Circular Ruins.” We sort through various interpretations a...
Episode 292: Boundary Issues
David and Tamler lead off with a breakdown of the new commercial for “friend (not imaginary)” a new AI necklace that takes hikes with you, interrupts...
Episode 291: Shoe Shining
Cornell philosopher David Shoemaker joins us for a long winding journey up to the Overlook Hotel, a DEEP dive on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. We tac...
Episode 290: Blinded by the Light (Plato's Cave Pt. 2)
David and Tamler continue their discussion of Plato’s allegory of the cave. We talk about the connections with mystical traditions including Gnosticis...
Episode 289: Shadows on the Wall (Plato's Cave Pt. 1)
Over the years we’ve referred repeatedly to Plato’s cave, Platonic forms, and phrases like “copies of copies” without ever really explaining what we m...
Episode 288: The Despised Foot (The Denial of Death Pt. 2)
David and Tamler conclude their discussion of Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death. We talk about Becker’s philosophy of science (does he have one?), h...
Episode 287: Gods With Anuses (The Denial of Death Pt. 1)
David faces his greatest fear as he and Tamler dive into Ernest Becker’s 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner The Denial of Death. Blending existentialist ideas...
Episode 286: Laugh and the World Laughs With You
David and Tamler dive into the mysteries at the heart of Park Chan-wook’s deeply disturbing masterpiece "Oldboy" (2003). An ordinary man, Oh Dae-su, i...
Episode 285: On Culture and Agriculture
It’s an old-school episode as David and Tamler dive into some intriguing research on the origins of cultural differences. Two neighboring communities...
Episode 284: Reel Choices
David and Tamler choose an episode topic that will define the identity and meaning of the Very Bad Wizards podcast going forward – our top 3 existenti...
Episode 283: When Elephants Podcast
David and Tamler talk about Caitrin Keiper’s wonderful sprawling essay on elephant life and society and the many philosophical questions surrounding t...
Episode 282: Fearful Symmetry (Borges' "Death and the Compass")
A Rabbi is found dead in a hotel room, stabbed in the chest. The room is filled with Kabbalah texts and a single page in an typewriter that reads “The...
Episode 281: Choose Your Fighter
We dig into the biggest rivalry in Tamler’s profession, analytic vs. continental philosophy. Are analytic philosophers truly the rigorous, precise, cl...
Episode 280: Mad Masque (with Phil Ford and J.F. Martel)
Phil Ford and J.F. Martel from the great "Weird Studies" podcast join us for a whirling discussion of Edgar Allan Poe’s mesmerizing tale of decadence...