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PODCAST

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

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.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

01:22:32

Episode 261: Death of the Author

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/05/30

What’s the meaning of a work of art? Does the text mean just what the author intends it to mean? Does it matter what Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark thinks about the end of 2001? Or is the artist’s interpretation just one interpretation among many once the text is out in the world? We explore the question of authorial intent, and brace yourselves - this is just about as postmodern as David gets. Plus – do we have what it takes to get an invite to the thought criminals club? Links The Party is Canceled

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01:29:12

Episode 260: The Scream That Never Found a Voice...

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/05/09

David and Tamler take the first excursion into the work of Haruki Murakami and talk about his short story “Sleep.” A thirty-year-old woman, the wife of a dentist and mother of a young boy, has a terrifying dream and when she wakes up, she no longer needs to sleep. This isn’t insomnia, it’s something else – she has never felt so alive, strong, and awake. She can swim laps for an hour in the afternoon and read Anna Karenina with perfect concentration until dawn. What is this condition? Is it real

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01:56:38

Episode 259: Losing Time ("Tár" with Paul Bloom)

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/04/25

The great Paul Bloom returns to the show to explore the many mysteries of Todd Field’s 2022 film “Tár.” Is it a ghost story? A movie about cancel culture and abuse of power? Guilt? Professional disappointment? The anxiety of getting old, losing touch with youth and reality? Reminds me of my freshman year at Smith… Plus – Paul gets into trouble on Twitter for saying he’s mildly pro-trigger warnings in certain cases. But is he ignoring the science??? Special Guest: Paul Bloom. Sponsored By:

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01:33:42

Episode 258: Mystic Peeza

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/04/11

David and Tamler talk about William James’ chapter on mysticism from his book "Varieties of Religious Experience." What defines a mystical experience? Why do they defy expression and yet feel like a state of knowledge, a glimpse into the window of some undiscovered aspect of reality? Is Tamler right that David has a little mystic inside of him just waiting to burst forth from his breast? Plus – another edition of VBW does conceptual analysis and we’re sticking with ‘c’ words – this time the

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01:39:39

Episode 257: Aural Fixation

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/03/28

David and Tamler deliver a PODCAST episode, one of many that comes from the INTERNET, that you’ll probably listen to through Air Pods or some other kind of WIRELESS HEADPHONES as you go about your day. (Incidentally, the topic of the episode is Marshall McLuhan on how new forms of media profoundly shape our experience and identity, but in a way that makes us focus on the content of the specific medium and not the medium itself.) Plus, can algorithms help to optimize our well-being, and Steven Pinker

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01:36:50

Episode 256: The Right to Punish?

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/03/14

Here’s an episode with something for both of us – a healthy serving of Kantian rationalism for David with a dollop of Marxist criminology for Tamler. We discuss and then argue about Jeffrie Murphy’s 1971 paper “Marxism and Retribution.” For Murphy, utilitarianism is non-starter as a theory of punishment because it can’t justify the right of the state to inflict suffering on criminals. Retributivism respects the autonomy of individuals so it can justify punishment in principle – but not in practice,

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01:43:52

Episode 255: Beloved Child of the House (Susanna...

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/02/28

David and Tamler get lost in the world of Susanna Clarke’s "Piranesi," a hauntingly beautiful and thrilling novel with echoes of Borges, Plato, C.S. Lewis, and even Parfit. The first part of our conversation is spoiler-free so you can listen to that section if you haven’t read it yet. (But seriously read this book! We both read it in a few days.) Plus, watch out ladies - Sydney the Bing chatbot is coming to steal your man. Sponsored By: BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online

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01:19:50

Episode 254: Nobody's Parfit

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/02/14

Tamler’s earlier self committed to doing an episode on Parfit, and David holds his current self to that promise, which shows how unconvinced David was by Parfit’s skepticism about personal identity. Or something like that. We argue about the value of Parfit’s sci-fi thought experiments and the implications of believing there’s no clear sense of “me.” Plus, we talk about a recent article on aphantasia – the inability to conjure images in your mind – and the question that pops into everyone’s head

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02:08:15

Episode 253: Tarkovsky's Starchild

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/01/31

It’s the episode that Tamler has been waiting for – a long deep dive into Andrei Tarkovsky’s mysterious masterpiece "Stalker." A writer and professor are led by their guide (Stalker) into a cordoned off “zone” that may have been visited by a meteorite (or aliens) a couple of decades earlier. Their destination – a room in the zone that according to legend grants people their deepest desire, the one that has made them suffer the most. We gush over Tarkovsky’s filmmaking, his use of sound and music,

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01:34:10

Episode 252: Yes We Sene-can

Very Bad Wizards ·

2023/01/10

David and Tamler dive into Seneca’s “On the Happy Life” and stoicism, the topic selected by our beloved patreon supporters. Why is stoicism so popular today? What does Seneca actually think about Epicureanism? Can Seneca's philosophy be reconciled with his life as a wealthy Roman aristocrat? Are stoics too cold and detached or is that an unfair caricature? And why can’t David and Tamler fully embrace this undeniably wise approach to life? Plus the return of… GUILTY CONFESSIONS and some favorite

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01:34:09

Episode 251: First Order, Then Chaos

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/12/20

David and Tamler wind their way through another Borges story - "The Immortal"- about a Roman soldier who seeks the secret of immortality and, much to his horror, finds it. Plus some thoughts on the utterly shameless ChatGPT. Sponsored By: BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW :

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01:30:42

Episode 250: Metaphors All the Way Down

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/12/06

We often think of metaphors as poetic flourishes, a nice way to punctuate your ideas and make them more relatable. But what if metaphors arenâ€™t simply tools of language but part of thought itself? David and Tamler â€œdive intoâ€ George Lakoffâ€™s theory of metaphors and â€œexploreâ€ the implications of his view that metaphors shape and constrain the ways we conceptualize our experience of the world. Plus if weâ€™re really living in cancel culture, we might as well do some cancelling. Say goodbye

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01:25:02

Episode 249: Phlegm and Carelessness (Hume's "The...

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/11/22

David and Tamler gild and stain David Humeâ€™s essay â€œThe Scepticâ€ with their sentiments. If nothing is inherently valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, then what do philosophers have to offer when it comes to happiness? If reason is powerless, does it all come down to our emotions and â€œhumoursâ€? Or does the study of philosophy and liberal arts naturally lead to a fulfilling and virtuous life? Plus we look at a new non-traditional social psych paper on how we always imagine that things

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01:23:12

Episode 248: Checkmate, Grasshopper

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/11/01

In this podcast we examine a recent argument for the view that chess is not, in fact, a game. We discuss the Grasshopper’s claim that all games must have a prelusory goal, as well as Skepticus’ objection to the giant Grasshopper concerning chess. We then turn to a broader analysis of the Suitsian account of games. Does the existence of illusory checkmates offer Grasshopper an avenue for replying to Skepticus? Should we bite the bullet and agree that chess is not a game? What is a lusory attitude? Is

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02:34:31

Episode 247: Open the Pod, Dave (with Sam Harris)

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/10/18

We welcome Sam Harris back to the show for a deep dive into Stanley Kubrick’s confounding 1968 masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey." How long is the Dawn of Man? What does the second monolith do exactly? Why are the humans so banal and expressionless? What are HAL’S motivations? Has he planned his mutiny from the start, or does the Council’s deception make him manlfunction? Or something else? Who is the Council anyway? Was HAL meant to go through the stargate? What is the final leap forward in

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01:46:20

Episode 246: Existential Poker-Face (David Foster...

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/10/04

We dive into David Foster Wallace’s sprawling 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” How do TV and new forms of media keep their hold on us when we know at some level that they’re reinforcing our loneliness and passivity? That’s easy, Wallace says, post-modern cool. Flatter me, let me think we’re all in the joke together, give me “an ironic permission-slip to do what I do best whenever I feel confused and guilty: assume, inside, a sort of fetal position, a pose of passive

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01:31:46

Episode 245: Pragmatically Speaking

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/09/20

David and Tamler take their first real look at pragmatism via Richard Rorty’s “Solidarity or Objectivity.” Can we discover facts about the world as it “really is,” independent of our own culturally influenced methods of inquiry? If not, does that make us relativists? Is David right about pragamatism being an ass-backward approach to scientific truth, or is he just a pragmatist who’s not ready to admit that to himself? Plus, does "The Little Mermaid" have to be white? What about Clark Kent? And we

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01:51:10

Episode 244: Thanks for the Memories? (Borges' "Funes...

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/09/06

David and Tamler return to Borges land to get lost in the infinite, this time with his legendary and tragic character Funes the memorious. What would it be like to have perfect memory, to have full access to every perceived detail no matter how trivial? Would life be infinitely richer, with present experience and memory merging into a perfect Heraclitan flow? Or is William James correct to say that one condition of remembering is to forget, and that “if we remembered everything, we should on most

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01:32:49

Episode 243: Finding My Religion

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/08/16

David and Tamler continue their discussion of Leo Tolstoy’s 'Confession.' When we left him last time, the famous author had bottomed out just years after writing two of the greatest novels ever written. Our eventual death, Tolstoy thought, strips life of all meaning and purpose – all answers to the question “so what?”. How does he emerge from this state of suicidal depression? What role does faith or “irrational knowledge” play in his account? What’s the meaning of the cryptic dream at the

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01:30:19

Bonus Episode: The Ambulators (A "Deadwood" Podcast)

Very Bad Wizards ·

2022/08/09

We have a sneak peek for our listeners--the first episode our new Patreon bonus series on David Milch's brilliant (but short-lived) series "Deadwood." In this inaugural edition of "The Ambulators" (we promise the name makes sense), Tamler and David discuss the pilot episode "Deadwood." Support Very Bad Wizards

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