Very Bad Wizards

By Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture Philosophy Social Sciences

What's Very Bad Wizards about?

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.

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Episode 223: The Hopeless D...

10.19.2021

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, and Alma the chatty young nurse assigned to care for her at an island cottage. ...

Very Bad Wizards episodes:

10.19.2021 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, and Alma the chatty young nurse assigned to care for her at an island cottage. ...
10.05.2021 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 are choices so fundamental to our experience? What does Sartre mean when he says ...
09.21.2021 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 (personified by Allan Ginsberg’s demon-entity Moloch) that lead to human misery and values tossed out the window. Does ...
09.07.2021 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 change? Why does capitalism produce an alienated workforce? What role does philosophy ...
08.17.2021 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 (Tamler’s favorite genre), but Borges being Borges there are layers of doubt and fuzziness ...
08.03.2021 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 videotapes of the exterior of their house, forcing them to confront their past and present. Can we run from ...
07.20.2021 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 Revolutions.” David thinks Kuhn is a great sociologist of science but recoils at the relativistic tenor ...
07.06.2021 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: we’re sorry. We recognize we’ve let so many ...
06.22.2021 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 much that our normal decision-making models break down. Tamler is fully on board and hopeful ...
06.08.2021 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 Nichols, and Rachana Kamtekar) on “false-positive emotions.” When agents commit accidental harms, we typically tell them they ...
05.25.2021 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 post-apocalyptic world of the video-game SOMA. You play Simon Jarrett, a man who goes ...
05.11.2021 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 official’s face and winds up in the barber’s loaf of bread. A ...
04.20.2021 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 it means to truly live in Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece about a bureaucrat ...
04.06.2021 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 academia (overblown?), Substack incentives, and lots more. Plus David and Tamler argue about the ...
03.23.2021 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 psychology today. Also discussed: Richard Dawkins trolling philosophy, the ghost in Tamler’s kitchen, and why William James’ ...
03.09.2021 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 Erik Hoel that offers a theory of dreams and connects it to storytelling, the ...
02.23.2021 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 "The Shining" is really about. When do interpretations become conspiracy theories? Why does Ascher ...
02.09.2021 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 proof of God, heaven, hell, and angels? Would that answer ...
01.26.2021 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 morning? (If you still wear pants these ...
01.12.2021 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 race, class, identity, and carrying around your sister’s underwear. But first David and Tamler share some ...
12.22.2020 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 arguments? Is Plato cheating when characters contradict themselves by making dumb concessions, or ...
12.08.2020 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.” What is this creature or substance that has color only by analogy, ...
11.24.2020 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 require meticulous organization and utter secrecy at the highest levels of power? Are some conspiracies ...
11.03.2020 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. Then we relitigate our bitter debate (from episode 45) over gender, toys, and ...
10.20.2020 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 spacetime? Does a Dali painting nailed to the wall backwards have intrinsic value (see ...
10.06.2020 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 supporters. When we think of mental disorders as “diseases,” are we making a category mistake? Are ...
09.22.2020 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 and distressing new film “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.” Why does ...
09.08.2020 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 thought would be a funny opening segment idea turns into a semi-serious ...
08.25.2020 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 of a rock-fight, Ivan Karamazov makes a devastating moral case against God, and the Grand Inquisitor convicts ...
08.11.2020 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 talk about religion, immortality, comedy, Freud, and why the secret ingredient ...
07.21.2020 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 to want? Are they free to will what ...
07.07.2020 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 interpretation. What would it mean for the same text to be written by two different ...
06.23.2020 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 appropriate anway? We talk about two excellent articles by the ...
06.09.2020 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 masterpiece of late capitalism: the University of Oregon's brand guidelines. Sponsored By:The Great Courses Plus: Never ...
05.26.2020 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 its Discontents.” If society has made so much progress, why are human beings perpetually dissatisfied? Can religion ...
05.12.2020 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. Morality is a misunderstanding. Kant is a sneaky Christian. And ...
04.21.2020 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 more excited for? If you walked in on your partner with one ...
04.07.2020 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, it’s Peter freakin’ Singer - what more do we need to say? Plus, the explosive ‘one or ...
03.24.2020 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 time on our hands these days, we thought it might be ...
03.17.2020 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 and David talk about their Top 5 Deadwood characters. If you've seen the show, let us know ...
03.10.2020 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 and horrific history of eugenics, is it wrong to raise the topic even if ...
02.25.2020 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 inaction have consequences? Can you understand the cat but not the math? ...
02.11.2020 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 thousand Twitter wars. Psychologists make verbal claims about the world, then conduct studies to test these ...
01.28.2020 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 to be liked or admired. This episode is a perfect example, Tamler ...
01.14.2020 Episode 180: Chekhov's Schrödinger's Dagger (Kurosawa's "Rashomon") Eleventh Century Japan. A samurai and his wife are walking through the forest and come across a bandit. The bandit attacks the samurai and has sex with/rapes his wife. A woodcutter finds the samurai, stabbed to death. Who killed the ...
12.24.2019 Episode 179: Talking Shit David and Tamler wrap up the decade with an episode on trash-talking that morphs into a debate over the value of experimental inquiry. Participants in a lab put more effort into a slider task after they’re insulted by a confederate. ...
12.10.2019 Episode 178: Borges' Obsession-Obsession ("The Zahir") David and Tamler happen across Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Zahir” and now they can’t stop thinking about it. What is the ‘Zahir’ – this object that can take many forms and that consumes the people who find it? What does ...
11.26.2019 Episode 177: Pure Linguistic Chauvinism Tamler learns something new about menstruation. David weighs in on the democratic debates and the impeachment hearings. Then we map the various social and political factions onto the factions in our respective fields. Who are establishment neoliberals of philosophy, and ...
11.12.2019 Episode 176: Split-Brains and the (Dis)Unity of Consciousness David and Tamler discuss famous 'split brain' experiments pioneered by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. What happens when you cut off the main line of communication between the left and right hemispheres of our brain? Why under certain conditions do ...
10.29.2019 Episode 175: At Least We Didn’t Talk About Zombies (Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?”) We try (with varying success) to wrap our heads around Thomas Nagel’s classic article “What is it Like to be a Bat?" Does science have the tools to give us a theory of consciousness or is that project doomed from ...

Older episodes

Very Bad Wizards

What's Very Bad Wizards about?

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Very Bad Wizards episodes:

Episode 223: The Hopeless Dream of Being (Bergman's "Persona")

Episode 222: Choosing Sartre for All Mankind

Episode 221: Granite Cocks vs Robot Overlords

Episode 220: On Your Marx

Episode 219: Multiplied by Mirrors

Episode 218: ...But You Can't Hide (Michael Haneke's "Caché")

Episode 217: Dropping Paradigms (Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions")

Episode 216: Oral Judgments

Episode 215: Touch My Pink Monkey

Episode 214: You Shouldn't Feel Bad (Except You Should)

Episode 213: What Is It Like To Be a Robot Fish Man? (with Ted Chiang)

Episode 212: Follow Your Nose (with Yoel Inbar)

Episode 211: To Live and Die in Kurosawa's "Ikiru"

Episode 210: The Priming of the American Mind (with Jesse Singal)

Episode 209: Basic Instincts (with Paul Bloom)

Episode 208: Dream Theater

Episode 207: Sometimes a Paper Tray is Just a Paper Tray

Episode 206: Angel Chasing (Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God")

Episode 205: Making Your Nervous System Your Ally (William James on "Habit")

Episode 204: Happy Freedom Day! (with Lauren Anderson)

Episode 203: Gorgias, Tell Me Something I Don't Know (with Agnes Callard)

Episode 202: Not as It Ought to Be (H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space")

Episode 201: Very Bad Lizard People

Episode 200: Our 200th Episode Spectactular

Episode 199: When Philosophy Goes Sideways

Episode 198: Is Mental Illness a Myth? (Thomas Szasz's "The Myth of Mental Illness")

Episode 197: The Long Slow Death That Is Life

Episode 196: The Loneliest Paper in Philosophy

Episode 195: Jesus on Trial (Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov")

Episode 194: God Has No Mother (with Chris Matheson)

Episode 193: Free Wanting (Frankfurt's "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person")

Episode 192: Postmodern Wet Dreams (Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote")

Episode 191: All the Rage

Episode 190: We Pod. We Pod-Cast. We Podcast. (Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit”)

Episode 189: The Anality of Evil (Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents")

Episode 188: Conceptual Mummies (Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols")

Episode 187: More Zither

Episode 186: The One with Peter Singer

Episode 185: The Devil's Playground

Bonus Episode: Top 5 Deadwood Characters

Episode 184: Tainted Glove

Episode 183: Accept the Mystery (with Paul Bloom)

Episode 182: The Paper That Launched a Thousand Twitter Wars (With Yoel Inbar)

Episode 181: The Fraudulence Paradox (David Foster Wallace's "Good Old Neon")

Episode 180: Chekhov's Schrödinger's Dagger (Kurosawa's "Rashomon")

Episode 179: Talking Shit

Episode 178: Borges' Obsession-Obsession ("The Zahir")

Episode 177: Pure Linguistic Chauvinism

Episode 176: Split-Brains and the (Dis)Unity of Consciousness

Episode 175: At Least We Didn’t Talk About Zombies (Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?”)

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