Shows / Very Bad Wizards
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
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 239: Lose Yourself
David and Tamler lose themselves in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's (pr. 'chick sent me high') classic paper on the concept of flow. We talk about the features of…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 238: I Am Not Ivan Ilyich...Am I?
Ivan Ilyich is a man. All men are mortal. So Ivan Ilyich is mortal. Sure absolutely, that's true for Ivan Ilyich and for all men. But we're not Ivan Ilyich and…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 237: Glitches Ain't Shit
David and Tamler explore the many variations of simulation theory, the view that our universe is just a computer generated model created by an advanced…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 236: Your Outie Is Skilled at Lovemaking (With Paul Bloom)
We welcome Paul Bloom to talk about the first season of "Severance," the new mind-bending and mind-splitting TV series on Apple TV+. What happens when you…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 235: Animated Objects
Panpsychism didn't give us river spirits or mischievous sootballs, so this time we go straight to the source - a defense of animism, and in a top 10 analytic…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 234: Like A Dog (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 2)
David and Tamler conclude their discussion of "The Trial," Franz Kafka's darkly comic vision of an opaque and impenetrable bureaucracy that comes for us all in…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 233: Keeping It Surreal (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 1)
David and Tamler wander through the bewildering dream-like world of Franz Kafka's "The Trial." In part one of a two-part discussion we discuss the…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 232: Mind Over Matter
It's the topic voted on by our beloved Patreon patrons, panpsychism! David and Tamler delve into the resurgent debate over whether consciousness is the…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 231: Ideal Critics (Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste")
Many of us think that art is subjective, but at the same time it seems like some artistic judgments are better than others. Do you think Crash deserved to…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 230: Be Happy (Lars von Trier's "Melancholia")
David and Tamler sink deeper and deeper into Melancholia, Lars von Trier's harrowing and stunningly beautiful depiction of depression, anxiety, and a wedding…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 229: Skin Deep?
We think racism is wrong but what about "lookism" – a bias that favors attractive people over unattractive ones? If it's wrong to judge people by the color of…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 228: Forever Jung
David and Tamler confront their shadows and dive into Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. What are the central differences between Jung and…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 227: A Terrible Master (David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water").
David and Tamler dive into David Foster Wallace's celebrated and surprisingly earnest Kenyon College commencement speech "This is Water". How can we escape the…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 226: Unraveling Time Traveling (with Barry Lam and Christina Hoff Sommers)
First, it's the return of the annual drunken Thanksgiving segment! Tamler and based wicked stepmom Christina Hoff Sommers fight about JFK, systematic racism…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 225: Forbidden Modules
David and Tamler talk about the often rancorous debate among cognitive scientists and evolutionary psychologists over whether the mind is modular -- composed…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 224: Hurts So Good (With Paul Bloom)
VBW favorite Paul Bloom joins us to talk about the pleasures of suffering, flow states, Sisyphus, meaning, and dating questions. Check out his new book The…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 223: The Hopeless Dream of Being (Bergman's "Persona")
David and Tamler dive into Ingmar Bergman's 1966 masterpiece Persona, a film about two (?) women, Elisabet, a famous stage actress who has stopped speaking…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 222: Choosing Sartre for All Mankind
David and Tamler don black turtlenecks and light up a couple of Gauloises to talk about Jean Paul Sartre's classic essay "Existentialism is a Humanism." Why…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 221: Granite Cocks vs Robot Overlords
David and Tamler wind their way through the long-requested "Meditations on Moloch" by Scott Alexander, a comprehensive account of the coordination problems…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 220: On Your Marx
In honor of Labor Day, David and Tamler dive into two works by Karl Marx - "The Communist Manifesto" and "Estranged Labor." What is Marx's theory of historical…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 219: Multiplied by Mirrors
It's a Borges bonanza! David and Tamler dive into two stories: "Emma Zunz" and "Borges and I." The first seems like a straightforward daughter revenge story…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 218: ...But You Can't Hide (Michael Haneke's "Caché")
David and Tamler go deep on Michael Haneke's unnerving psychological thriller Caché. An upper middle class French intellectual couple receives mysterious…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 217: Dropping Paradigms (Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions")
David and Tamler hit the books and cram for their beloved Patreon listener-selected episode – this time on Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 216: Oral Judgments
We've promised you for years that we would do an episode on apologies and never got to it until today. So we both want to say from the bottom of our hearts…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 215: Touch My Pink Monkey
David and Tamler argue about the philosopher L.A. Paul's ideas on "transformative experiences" – big life decisions that will change you and your values so…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 214: You Shouldn't Feel Bad (Except You Should)
Tamler welcomes social psychologist David Pizarro of Cornell University to the podcast to talk about his recent article (along with Raj Anderson, Shaun…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 213: What Is It Like To Be a Robot Fish Man? (with Ted Chiang)
We've done deep dives on three of his stories, and now THE MAN HIMSELF, multi-award winning science fiction author Ted Chiang, joins us to explore the…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 212: Follow Your Nose (with Yoel Inbar)
Canada's leading Russian literature scholar Yoel Inbar joins us to try to make sense of Gogol's 1836 short story "The Nose." A nose goes missing from a Russian…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 211: To Live and Die in Kurosawa's "Ikiru"
"Sometimes I think of my death," Akira Kurosawa said, "I think of ceasing to be...and it is from these thoughts that Ikiru came." David and Tamler explore what…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 210: The Priming of the American Mind (with Jesse Singal)
Journalist, podcaster, and rapper Jesse Singal joins us to talk about his new book The Quick Fix, positive psychology (scam?), cancel culture in the media and…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 209: Basic Instincts (with Paul Bloom)
VBW favorite Paul Bloom joins us to talk about William James' account of instinct and its parallels to the nativism/empiricism debates in developmental…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 208: Dream Theater
We’ve always had nothing but praise for neuroscientists and their work, and today is no exception. We talk about a fantastically rich and ambitious essay by…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 207: Sometimes a Paper Tray is Just a Paper Tray
David and Tamler wander through the maze of Room 237, the great documentary by Rodney Ascher about five people and their views about what Stanley Kubrick's…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 206: Angel Chasing (Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God")
David and Tamler return to the TCU (Ted Chiang Universe) to talk about his short story "Hell is the Absence of God." How would we behave if we had unequivocal…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 205: Making Your Nervous System Your Ally (William James on "Habit")
Ever wonder why you're still listening to VBW all of these years? Or why you check your phone 50 times a day? Or why you put on your pants the same way every…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 204: Happy Freedom Day! (with Lauren Anderson)
The legendary Houston Ballet dancer Lauren Anderson joins us to talk about the Atlanta Episode "Juneteenth" (Season 1, Episode 9), a hilarious exploration of…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 203: Gorgias, Tell Me Something I Don't Know (with Agnes Callard)
Philosopher Agnes Callard joins us to talk about Plato and his dialogue the Gorgias. Why did Plato write dialogues – are they the best way of presenting…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 202: Not as It Ought to Be (H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space")
A phosphorescence casts a pale sickly glow on David and Tamler as talk only in verbs and pronouns about H.P. Lovecraft's 1927 story "The Colour Out of Space."…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 201: Very Bad Lizard People
David and Tamler dive deep into the psychology and epistemology of conspiracy theories. What makes people so prone to believe in complex malevolent plots that…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 200: Our 200th Episode Spectactular
David and Tamler celebrate their 200th episode with bourbon and a return to their potty humor roots. First we talk about holes, zoom dicks, and the election…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 199: When Philosophy Goes Sideways
David and Tamler check out some recent work in metaphysics and applied ethics. Does playing a Nina Simone song sideways show that Einstein was wrong about…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 198: Is Mental Illness a Myth? (Thomas Szasz's "The Myth of Mental Illness")
David and Tamler explore Thomas Szasz's provocative and still relevant 1961 book "The Myth of Mental Illness," the topic selected by our beloved Patreon…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 197: The Long Slow Death That Is Life
The psychologist Yoel Inbar has always tried to imbue his work with a sort of interiority, and now he joins us for a deep dive into Charlie Kaufman's baffling…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 196: The Loneliest Paper in Philosophy
She's beautiful, smart, funny, and head over heels in love with you. There's only one problem – she's from a possible world, not the actual one. What we…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 195: Jesus on Trial (Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov")
David and Tamler dive into the most celebrated and philosophically rich scenes in Dostoevsky's masterpiece "The Brothers Karamazov." Alyosha gets in the middle…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 194: God Has No Mother (with Chris Matheson)
David and Tamler welcome special guest Chris Matheson - co-writer of the "Bill and Ted" movies and author of "The Story of God" and "The Buddha's Story" - to…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 193: Free Wanting (Frankfurt's "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person")
David and Tamler want to go old school and discuss a classic Frankfurt paper on free will. But do they want to want that? Are they free to want what they want…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 192: Postmodern Wet Dreams (Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote")
David and Tamler dive into "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," a very funny Borges story that also raises deep questions about authorship, reading, and…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 191: All the Rage
A lotta anger out there right now, but does it do more harm than good? Is anger counterproductive, an obstacle to progress? And even when it is, can anger be…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 190: We Pod. We Pod-Cast. We Podcast. (Frankfurt's "On Bullshit")
David and Tamler talk about police violence, the protests, and Harry Frankfurt's journal article turned bestseller "On Bullshit." Plus we dive into a comic…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 189: The Anality of Evil (Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents")
David and Tamler dive into Sigmund Freud's world of unconscious drives, death instincts, and thwarted incestuous urges in his classic text "Civilization and…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 188: Conceptual Mummies (Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols")
Socrates was ugly and tired of life, so he made a tyrant of reason. Philosophers are mummies who hate the body and the senses. Reason is a tricky old woman…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 187: More Zither
With a global pandemic and a collapsing economy upon us, it's time to ask ourselves some tough questions. Sex robots or platonic love robots - what are you…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 186: The One with Peter Singer
The legendary Peter Singer joins us to talk about effective altruism, AI, animal welfare, esoteric morality, future Tuesday indifference, and more. I mean…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 185: The Devil's Playground
David and Tamler begin by talking about the question on everyone's mind right now – are we obligated to be pansexual? Then, since many of us have more free…
- Very Bad Wizards
Bonus Episode: Top 5 Deadwood Characters
Here's something that might help with the Coronavirus blues: we're releasing our latest Patreon bonus episode for everyone. In this (unedited) episode, Tamler…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 184: Tainted Glove
David and Tamler start off talking about the infamous Richard Dawkins eugenics tweet. What does it mean for eugenics to "work"? And given the sensitive nature…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 183: Accept the Mystery (with Paul Bloom)
VBW favorite Paul Bloom takes a short break from his Sam Harris duties to help us break down the Coen Brothers' ode to uncertainty, A Serious Man. Does…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 182: The Paper That Launched a Thousand Twitter Wars (With Yoel Inbar)
Podcasting legend Yoel Inbar (from Two Psychologists Four Beers) joins us to break down Tal Yarkoni's "The Generalizability Crisis," the paper that launched a…
- Very Bad Wizards
Episode 181: The Fraudulence Paradox (David Foster Wallace's "Good Old Neon")
Our whole lives we've been frauds. We're not exaggerating. Pretty much all we've ever done is try to create a certain impression of us in other people. Mostly…