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, recent work on moral psychology and neuroscience, and the overlap between the two.
Episodes
![The Lotus Eaters Episode 4: I Am Odysseus [unlocked]](https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/1/b/8/f/1b8f3e29dd82c6aa16c3140a3186d450/The_Lotus_Eaters-20260820-e6j5by3e84.jpg)
The Lotus Eaters Episode 4: I Am Odysseus [unlocked]
Tamler and David discuss books 7 & 8 of The Odyssey--while at Alcinous' palace in Phaeacia, Odysseus listens to poetry, plays some games, cries some more, and finally starts to regain his identity.
![The Lotus Eaters Episode 3: The Halfway House to Humanity [unlocked]](https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/7/c/5/f/7c5f97754682db9016c3140a3186d450/The_Lotus_Eaters-20260813-pm6k0410rz.jpg)
The Lotus Eaters Episode 3: The Halfway House to Humanity [unlocked]
Tamler and David discuss books 5 & 6 of The Odyssey, where we follow Odysseus as he finally leaves Calypso's Island and returns to the realm of the human. We also finally pick a name for the podcast. But only after recording this episode (as will be obvious from the first few minutes).
![The Lotus Eaters Episode 2: Intangible as Wind [unlocked]](https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/4/a/f/3/4af363136ac859f616c3140a3186d450/The_Lotus_Eaters-20260806-maawitbml5.jpg)
The Lotus Eaters Episode 2: Intangible as Wind [unlocked]
Welcome to The Lotus Eaters! This is part 2 of our 12 part series on Homer's Odyssey that will be released every Thursday. The series was supported by our Patreon community, but we are now making it available to everyone who would like to listen to our discussions to accompany their reading of The Odyssey. We hope you enjoy! Episode Notes: Tamler and David finish up the Telemachy (the saga of Ody
![The Lotus Eaters Episode 1: The Journey Begins [unlocked]](https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/a/9/c/1/a9c113f9de71c47f16c3140a3186d450/The_Lotus_Eaters.jpg)
The Lotus Eaters Episode 1: The Journey Begins [unlocked]
Welcome to The Lotus Eaters! This is part 1 of our 12 part series on Homer's Odyssey that will be released every Thursday. The series was supported by our Patreon community, but we are now making it available to everyone who would like to listen to our discussions to accompany their reading of The Odyssey. We hope you enjoy! [Note that this discussion of Books 1 & 2 was already published as the ma
Episode 338: The Lotus Eaters (Nolan's "The Odyssey")
Dropping this a week early - after completing a 12-part series on Homer's Odyssey for our beloved Patreon supporters, we now dive into Christopher Nolan's version of this epic tale. We're mixed on the movie. David enjoyed the spectacle, Tamler had some nice things to say about Anne Hathaway's Penelope but overall...well you'll see. And don't skip through the listener support/promo segment or you'l
Episode 337: First Contact? (Tarkovsky's "Solaris")
First it was a book, then it was a groundbreaking movie… that's right it's Solaris. After having discussed the Stanislaw Lem novel in the previous episode, David and Tamler try to make contact with Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 classic film. We talk about all the ways Tarkovsky's adaptation reflects and diverges from the source material. We also discuss how to interpret the ending, opening act (not feat
Episode 336: That Oceanic Feeling (Stanisław Lem's "Solaris")
David and Tamler tackle the first half of the VBW Madness topic tournament winner, Stanislaw Lem's science fiction masterpiece, Solaris, about a mysterious ocean planet that resists all attempts to understand and communicate with it. We talk about the epistemological obstacles that obscure the meaning of the ocean's behavior, the "guests" that appear to the researchers drawn from their buried memo
Episode 335: The Wright Stuff
The great Robert Wright returns to the podcast to talk about his new book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. We debate the magnitude of AI's potential impact, the natural selection analogy Bob presses in the book, and a whole lot more. Plus, a new AI-powered collar can translate your pet's sounds and behavior into language with 95% accuracy! Still skeptical abou
Episode 334: Let's Get Metaphysical
What are the legitimate ways to inquire about the nature of the universe? We have science, metaphysics, phenomenological inquiry, but what about mystical and meditative practices? David and Tamler talk about a paper that argues for allowing mystical insight into our broader search for insight into fundamental reality. Plus, since the dawn of time man has wondered why people act like simps – we loo
Episode 333: P-hacking the Mind
David and Tamler do another tier ranking--this time on philosophical thought experiments, so as not to further alienate our chemistry-adjacent listeners. We hit most of the big ones: Pascal's wager, Pascal's mugging, Mary the color scientist, the Ring of Gyges, Jarvis Thomson's violinist, the experience machine, the utility monster, and a lot more. Can you guess our grade for the trolley dilemma?
Episode 332: Talking to Myself ("The Other" by Jorge Luis Borges)
David and Tamler talk about Jorge Luis Borges' disorienting short story "The Other." A 70-year-old Borges sits on a bench by the Charles River and who should he encounter but himself as a 19-year-old, by the Rhône River in 1918 Geneva. Is this a dream? Who is dreaming it? What does the Heraclitean river metaphor reveal about this impossible meeting? (Stick around after the closing music, David rea
Episode 331: Who's Your Law Daddy? (Plato's "Crito")
In another Back 2 Basics episode, David and Tamler talk about Plato's "Crito," a dialogue that takes place two days before Socrates' death by hemlock. His friend Crito wants him to escape, but Socrates will only agree if they judge that it's the right thing to do. One imagined debate between him and the Laws of Athens later, Socrates decides to accept his punishment. Plus we open with "Contrarian
Episode 330: A Fact-Based Podcast (Gogol's "The Overcoat")
David and Tamler return to the strange world of Nikolai Gogol and discuss his absurdist masterpiece "The Overcoat," a story that both calls for and steadfastly resists interpretation. But first we discuss a forthcoming Phil Studies article "Philosophy as Fact-Based Discipline: 200 Philosophical Facts." Wait until you hear what they are. Frances, B. (2026). Philosophy as fact-based discipline: 200
Episode 329: Why We Suffer
David and Tamler return to the work of Richard Shweder and colleagues, focusing this time on his foundational paper "The "Big Three" of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the "Big Three" Explanations of Suffering. What are the various ways that people explain suffering and illness across cultures? What do we lose when we only emphasize biomedical explanations? Why can't social psycholog
Episode 328: Weapons Free
David and Tamler cross the border into Denis Villeneuve's taut and propulsive thriller Sicario, the story of an FBI agent who gets pulled into a task force drawn from the shadiest elements of the US government. The assignment: to disrupt, infiltrate, and take down a major Mexican cartel. But what's the deal with Alejandro, and who does he work for? This is Roger Deakins in God mode and Villeneuve,
Episode 327: You Ain't So Smart (Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People")
David and Tamler return to the Southern Gothic well and talk about Flannery O'Connor's short story masterpiece "Good Country People." A nihilistic atheist philosophy PhD named Joy or Helga (depending on who you ask) lives with her mother and some tenants on a farm in rural Georgia. One day 19-year-old aw-shucksy Bible salesman comes to the house and shakes up her philosophical convictions. Plus a
Episode 326: The Most Important Episode of Your (Academic) Life
Are you a college student or about to be one? Do you have friends or family in college? This is the most important episode of your life. David and Tamler do something a little different this episode and tier rank a wide range of academic fields from engineering to art history, computer science to women & gender studies. Step aside U.S. News and World Report, the new definitive rankings have just d
Episode 325: It Is Happening Again
David and Tamler return to Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and Profane and discuss the chapter "Sacred Time and Myths." How does viewing time as circular give us a periodic window into the sacred? What does it mean to reactualize the creation of the universe in ritual and to view time as "starting anew"? How did Christianity radically change the experience of time by locating the incarnation of the sac
Episode 324: Irruption of the Sacred
David and Tamler consecrate their podcast with a discussion of "The Sacred and the Profane" by Mircea Eliade. We focus on the first chapter on sacred spaces, where the divine breaks through (or irrupts) our homogenous and chaotic reality, creating a center that gives us meaning and allows us to orient our lives. Plus speaking of the profane, a new study shows that cursing makes you stronger – but
Episode 323: Debate Me 'Phro
David and Tamler dive into Plato's Euthyphro, part of our intermittent Back 2 Basics series. A young cocksure priest, confident in his holiness, bumps into Socrates on his way to court to prosecute his father for a wrongful death. After a few rounds with Socrates on the nature of piety, he becomes a little less sure of himself. We talk about Plato's decision to set the dialogue in the days befor
Episode 322: A Theater of Simultaneous Possibilities (William James' "The Stream of Thought")
David and Tamler return to William James' monumental "Principles of Psychology", this time wading through his famous chapter "The Stream of Thought." We talk about his rejection of empiricist theories of consciousness in favor of a view that consciousness is a continuous stream of thoughts, sensations, and emotions without any elements (atoms) that repeat or appear in other people's streams. We ta
Episode 321: The Journey Begins (Plus Blind Ranking Philosophers)
David and Tamler begin their long journey home to Homer's Odyssey, the tale of king Odysseus' 10 year journey home after the Trojan war (maybe the greatest story ever told). We dive into the first two books, which focus on Odysseus' 20-year-old son Telemachus, the swarm of suitors who have descended on Odysseus' house during his long absence in the hopes of marrying his clever and beautiful wife P
Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")
David and Tamler return to one of their favorites, Frans Kafka, this time on his beautiful and distressing short story "The Hunger Artist," a story that brims with metaphorical possibilities but also implores us to accept it on its own mysterious terms. Plus gooning. The Goon Squad by Daniel Kolitz [harpers.org] "Gooning" definition [urbandictionary.com] A Hunger Artist [wikipedia.org] A Hunger A
Episode 319: The Shadow of the Object (Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia")
David and Tamler transfer their libidinal energy to Freud's 1917 article "Mourning and Melancholia," in which he tries to understand what's going on with depression, attempts to distinguish it from normal grief, and arrives at some ideas that laid the groundwork for his later theory of normal human development. Plus, another blind ranking segment--this time Tamler gives David a list of rappers to
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 underrated movie Inherent Vice. We explore the many connections between the two movies - Pynchon adaptations, shadowy forces, snitches who abandon their families, the blend of comedy and political fatalism, and the intrinsic and external forces that thre
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 Tamler dive into Richard Shweder's "Towards a Deep Cultural Psychology of Shame." We talk about the methodological challenges of studying shame in other contexts and languages, the virtues of ethnographic approaches, studying literature, and more. Plu
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 characteristic themes of courage, cowardice, shifting power dynamics in marriages, and what it truly means to live a happy life. Plus, neuroscience may be complex, but can these AI generated neuroscience jokes tickle David's funny bone? And a super timely d
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 "On the Sufferings of the World" and "The Vanity of Existence," their strikingly modern perspectives on human life and behavior and the influences Schopenhauer took from Eastern thought. Plus, David has Tamler do a blind ranking of movie directors. A
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, redemption, honor, language, and very inappropriate jokes. Plus philosophers talk about "sex within the discipline" and Tamler can't handle it. To Philosophers of Easy Virtue by Alex Rails [dailynous.com] In Bruges (2008) [wikipedia.org]
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 mean to be a time skeptic or a time realist for that matter? If you're a Berkeleyan idealist and Humean skeptic about the self, do you have to deny succession and simultaneity? The world, unfortunately, is real; and we, unfortunately, are Very Bad Wiza
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 Understanding. Plus speaking of things to be skeptical about, we dive into a recent paper called "Your Brain on ChatGPT" – does neuroscience show that LLM users incur a "cognitive debt"? MIT study shows ChatGPT reshapes student brain function and reduces cre
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 topics for our first VBW topic tournament suggested and voted by our beloved Patreon patrons.
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 the framework to meditation practices. But first a new Psychological Science article expresses skepticism about the existence of people who have no inner voice. So is David a new kind of human or is he just making up this condition to get attention? As
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 and culture? Does myth give us a portal into the hidden cosmic forces of the universe? Can it take us into depths of our unconscious and the nature of our own being? What is the legacy of Campbell's thought today? Plus, three brave scholars of fasci
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 subscribers only, the first is free to all.
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/literary sketch??] "Everything and Nothing." What would it mean to have the memory of a supreme artist like Shakespeare? Would it help us understand his work, or how he was able to produce masterpiece after masterpiece What does it mean to have our own m
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 Newcomb's "paradox." Why is it so hard for people to see that a 66% chance of winning a car is better than a 33% chance? Why do famous mathematicians struggle with this problem? And David and Tamler split on the Newcomb case – can you guess which one of us
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, Better People", a full frontal attack on David's strict Kantian worldview. Then we dive DEEP into David Lynch's first movie, "Eraserhead," and eventually arrive at a few coherent interpretations of Lynch's "most spiritual film." Barry Lam [ucr.edu] F
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 form and debate some of the choices and questions the episode raises. Plus, an evolutionary account of the 'ick' and the adaptive trait of graceful ping-pong ball chasing. Collisson, B., Saunders, E., & Yin, C. (2025). The ick: Disgust sensitivity, n
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 a brand new paper called "Being Exalted: an A Priori Argument for the Trinity." That's right, the Holy Trinity arrived at through reason alone. Then in the main segment we talk about Richard Feynman's classic 1974 Caltech commencement address "Cargo
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 "Value Capture" which examines how the ever-increasing presence of metrics, data, indicators, rankings, and other forms quantification shape our values as individuals and institutions. Plus, VBW Does Conceptual Analysis – we're on to the 'S' words now:
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 concepts. How does weird art expand our imagination of what's possible? Why does the feeling of eeriness dissolve when we get an explanation for what we see? What draws us to phenomena that evoke these unsettling feelings? Plus – DeepSeek has Silico
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 difference between perception and attention, or perception and judgment? David and Tamler discuss the long standing debate over whether our beliefs, desires, and past experience can penetrate our vision and change our visual perception. Plus some thoughts
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 influential American movie of all time? How does it dig deep into our collective psyches? What makes the effects so timeless and effective? And what's the actual moral of the story? Plus we crawl up our own asses and talk about what we're proud of fro
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 humility exactly and do we need it for knowledge and understanding? Does the value of humility depend on the person or the circumstances? Are there contexts where intellectual arrogance is the epistemic virtue? We arrive at the definitive answers to
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 examines punitive justice in three small-scale societies - the Kiowa equestrian foragers in late 19th century North America, Mentawai horticulturalists in Indonesia, and Nuer pastoralists. The authors challenge the dominant view of punishment as a means
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 allusions, dark comedy, nihilism, and the possibility of grace or rebirth (but whose?). Plus why do motorists dehumanize cyclists? Is it the helmets? Sounds like a job for the insect-based "Ascent of Man" scale. Limb, M., & Collyer, S. (2023). The effect o
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 in the woods with his wife and four dogs (still don't believe in ghosts, people?). In the main segment we talk about one of the most popular measures in social psychology – the cognitive reflection test (CRT). Originally designed to identify differenc
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 endlessly imitated movie still have the power to scare the shit out of people fifty years after its release? We talk about the sounds, smells, heat, and sweat (but not so much the blood) that pour out of the screen. And we dare to ask the question: are
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 tomorrow morning and that we can predict where the planets and stars will be tomorrow night. But what's the rational justification for beliefs like this? According David Hume, there is none. Deductive justifications can't give you new information about th
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 and allusions, the story as a metaphor for artistic creation, gnostic cosmology, solipsism, eternal recursion, and the unstable boundary between reality and illusion. How does Borges fit all of this and much more in a 5 page story? Plus, Scientific 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 your favorite shows, and will be there for your first kiss. Then we talk about a new paper co-authored by VBW favorite Joe Henrich that challenges cognitive science for pretending to be universal without offering evidence. A good discussion punctuate
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 tackle all the big questions - is the hotel truly haunted? What if anything does it symbolize? Why are there two Gradys and two sets of daughters? How does the filmmaking – and the Steadicam in particular - amplify our sense of dread? Does Jack shine
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 Gnosticism, Sufism, and Buddhist paths to awakening. We also dig deeper into what Socrates calls 'dialectic' – what allows this method to journey towards the first principle (the Form of the Good) and then double back to justify the initial assumptions made a
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 mean by these things. So as part of a new mini-series we're going dive deeper into Plato's famous images of the cave, the sun, and the divided line from Republic Books 6 and 7. What are Plato's forms and how do they fit into the overall structure of h
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?), his sweeping explanations for strongman leaders, neuroses, mental illness, sexual fetishes, and the refreshing absence of an answer or resolution to the existential paradox at the heart of being human. Plus, a special Pod Save the Wizards intro - we 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 within a psychoanalytic framework, Becker argues that the ultimate source of human motivation is not the repression of sexual drives (as Freud thought) but our terror of death and the yearning for an immortality we can never possess. This episode fo
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, is imprisoned for 15 years in an old, windowless hotel room. After being abruptly released Oh Dae-su embarks on a mission to discover why he was imprisoned and to get revenge on the man who did it. But does Oh Dae-su really want to know the answers? A
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 in communist China were assigned to be wheat farmers and rice farmers. Seventy years later, the people in the rice farming communities showed signs of being more collectivist, relational, and holistic than the people in the wheat farming 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 existentialist movies. Plus, you're gonna be shocked to hear this, you might want to sit down, but there has been surprisingly little research on the metaphysics of puns. We look at a recent paper that remedies this appalling gap in the literature – and maybe
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 these extraordinary creatures. What kind of mental states can we attribute to them? Do they have a kind of language? Are they moral? What are our moral duties to them? What accounts for the long-standing taboo against 'anthropomorphizing' elephants an
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 first letter of the name has been written." The celebrated detective and "reasoning machine" Erik Lönnrot suspects a rabbinical explanation but is he seeing patterns that may not be there? David and Tamler get out their pipes, magnifying glasses, an
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, clear thinkers they take themselves to be? And is continental philosophy really just a bunch pretentious charlatans spouting French and German gibberish and writing obscure prose to mask the incoherence of their ideas? We look at a nice paper by Neil L
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 and disease "The Masque of the Red Death." We also talk about weird fiction more generally, why it's so suited to the short story genre, how it creates a mood that drips and bursts from the seam of the page. Plus David and Tamler in the opening segm
Episode 279: The Greenhouses We Burned Along the Way (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 2)
David and Tamler conclude their discussion of Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" – we talk about the hunger dance at twilight, Ben's greenhouse burning habit, Shin Hae-mi's mysterious disappearance, Lee Jong-su's clumsy and doomed quest to find out what really happened, and what to make of that final scene. Plus we choose the finalists for our Patreon listener selected episode.
Episode 278: Schrödinger's Everything (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 1)
David and Tamler fall under the spell of Lee Chang-dong's 2018 masterpiece Burning, a movie where nothing is what it seems, or maybe it is. An alienated young man meets what seems like his dream girl from his small town, but she's about to leave for Africa. Will he take care of her cat? Is there a cat? When she comes back she's attached (maybe) to a slick rich guy played by Steven Yeun and then sh
Episode 277: The Merits of Buggery (Nagel's "Sexual Perversion")
David and Tamler play the old hits – Thomas Nagel and sex robots. In the main segment we talk about Nagel's essay "Sexual Perversion", a surprising essay on many fronts (Sartre, erotic fiction, conceptual analysis, much more). What's the nature of sexual desires? Can we say that some sexual interactions are perversions? Which ones? Can we have a perverse form of a hunger? Plus, a new study examine
Episode 276: Attention Please
David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on William James. Today we talk about his account of 'Attention' from his 1890 volume The Principles of Psychology – another remarkably prescient chapter that still feels more than relevant today. What is attention and how does it function in the mind? What accounts for the different ways that we attend t
Episode 275: The Ineffable Center (Borges' "The Aleph")
An episode interesting from every point of view, we train our eyes on Jorge Luis Borges' "The Aleph." The first segment wins the kudos of the learned, the academician, the Hellenist, as we talk about the favorite things we saw this year. The second segment — baroque? decadent? the purified and fanatical cult of form? — dives into the philosophy, comedy, satire, and poignancy of this classic story.
Episode 274: Can I Get a Kidney Voucher? (with Vlad Chituc)
RETURNING guest Vlad Chituc joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about donating his kidney to a stranger, the effective altruism movement, and his sexuality. Was EA's turn to 'long-termist' goals like preventing evil AI inevitable? Have they strayed too far from their Peter Singer/Jeremy Bentham inspired roots? And why won't David and Tamler donate their kidneys? Plus a new article in Nature C
Episode 273: Ah. Ah. (Miyazaki's "Spirited Away")
David and Tamler board the train for Hayao Miyazaki's mystical dreamy coming of age masterpiece Spirited Away. This is a true VBW deep dive. Plus a study by our secret crush suggests we may not be optimizing the value of our conversations. Mastroianni, A. M., Gilbert, D. T., Cooney, G., & Wilson, T. D. (2021). Do conversations end when people want them to?. Proceedings of the National Academy of S
Episode 272: Neigh Means Yay
The morality of zoophilia has received shockingly little attention in contemporary ethical discourse…until now. David and Tamler break down the paper "Zoophilia is Morally Permissible" from the latest issue of The Journal of Controversial Ideas. We explore issues of harm, consent, and more… like a lot more. Then we talk about Robert Putnam's classic article "Bowling Alone" (the paper that led to h
Episode 271: Concept-Con 2023
It's the first annual "Concept-Con" – a not at all cringe episode where David and Tamler apply the methods and rigor of analytic philosophy to dissect not one, not two, but four new concepts. We start out with a Gen-Z special "mid" and then after a break we analyze the concept "cool." After that we have two mystery concepts that we sprung on each other. Spoiler alert – David had never heard of Tam
Episode 270: Take Me to the River (Blood Meridian, Pt. 3)
David and Tamler conclude their three-part discussion of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. We talk about the Judge's coin trick by the fire and the question of the supernatural in the novel. Next we dive into the imbecile's "baptism" by the river, and then try to wrap our heads around the cryptic epilogue. Baffled at first, we ultimately arrive at the definitive interpretation of the epilogue's me
Episode 269: Death Hilarious (Blood Meridian, Pt. 2)
In part 2 of our journey into Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Tamler and David talk about the kid and his form of resistance to the judge's gleeful nihilism - does he (as the man) ultimately succumb at the end of the novel? We also discuss other notable members of the Glanton gang and go deep into several scenes, including the Comanche attack, Elrod's sad fate, and the tarot reading from the fam
Episode 268: Blood Meridian, Part 1
In part one of our two-part episode on Cormac McCarthy's blood-soaked phantasmagorical 1985 masterpiece Blood Meridian, David and Tamler talk about the historical sources of the novel, the cosmic questions the book poses, the capriciousness of the near-constant violence, and the ethical neutrality of McCarthy's prose. We also get into the religious imagery, the gnostic elements, and the judge – wh
Episode 267: The Thickness of Reality
David and Tamler return to the work of old favorite William James and argue about the 6th lecture (inspired by the French philosopher Henri Bergson) of his 1909 book "A Pluralistic Universe." James attacks the philosophical habit of elevating unchanging concepts over the continuous ever-changing flux that characterizes raw experience. Concepts, James argues, carves joints where there are none. But
Episode 266: I Want to Half-Believe
Last December, with Argentina minutes away from a World Cup championship, friend of the show Yoel texted David "congratulations." David was furious, and soon after (with less than 2 minutes left in extra time) France's Mbappe scored a game-tying goal to send the match into penalty kicks. (Argentina ended up winning or Yoel might have become 'former friend of the show.') David says he doesn't belie
Episode 265: Kekulé (Oh Yeah!)
The Summer of Cormac McCarthy continues – this time we dive into his one piece of non-fiction, the short essay "The Kekulé Problem." How does our unconscious mind solve problems that conscious deliberation can't crack? Why does it often work elliptically, in code, rather than giving us the answer directly in language? Is McCarthy right that the unconscious doesn't trust language because it's such
![[BONUS] Overton Windows Episode 1: Israel and Palestine](https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/a/6/2/4/a624bfbda5134b94a04421dee9605cbd/OvertonWindows_LogoDesign_02_1.png)
[BONUS] Overton Windows Episode 1: Israel and Palestine
A new mini-series with Tamler Sommers and Robert Wright on the range of politically acceptable discourse for a given topic and how this "Overton window" changes over time. This episode is available for free for everyone, the remaining episodes will appear at the Very Bad Wizards Patreon and Robert Wright's Nonzero Newsletter on Substack. 00:33 What is this new Overton Windows series about? 10:05
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