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.
Last refreshed: ⓘ
Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
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? The Chinese Room (Searle) [wikipedia.org] Descartes' Evil Demon (Descartes) [wikipedia.org] The Expe...
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 reads the story in English and in Spanish.) Plus Richard Dawkins has a memorable encounter of his own, ...
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 Corner" (Cinema Edition), in which we list our top 3 movies where we just don't understand all the l...
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 philosophical facts. Philosophical Studies , 183 (2), 551-581. [springer.com] The Overcoat by Nikola...
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 psychology be more like this? Plus a new Chalmers (not that one) paper argues that monogamy is impermissible. ...
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, Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio Del Toro at the very top of their games. Plus, we select 16 ...
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 case study of a sexsomniac who masturbates (and more) in his sleep. Support Eliza's film project [se...
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 dropped. Plus, Dave reveals he's in the Epstein files, but do we buy his explanation? Have you a...
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 sacred in the historical past? Plus, do you believe in conspiracy theories? A new study says you should...
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 why in god's living fuck do they always end up spewing nonsense about the "underlying psychological...
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 before Socrates' own trial, the famous Euthyphro dilemma, the seemingly little progress that's made in defi...
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 talk about how vividly James captures certain features of consciousness, like trying to recall a forgo...
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 Penelope, and the goddess Athena, whose plan to get Odysseus home to Ithaca is finally set into moti...
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 Artist (full text) [kafka-online.info]...
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 rank blindly. Finally, in between segments we make an announcement about the topic of our next bonus...
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 threaten relationships and resistance to power. [Note: some spoilers to OBAA in the opening segment but...
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. Plus, bloody hell are the Brits starting queues at pubs? Bollocks! Queueing in pubs disgraces Britain b...
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 discussion of an urgent issue: The Cracker Barrel logo. Cracker Barrel Redesign Controversy [apnews.c...
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. Arthur Schopenhauer [plato.stanford.edu] Arther Schopenhauer [iep.utm.edu] The Essays of Schopenhauer:...
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]...
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 Wizards. Plus for centuries philosophers insisted that you couldn't measure qualia, but then scientists ...
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 creativity when used from the start [edtechinnovationhub.com] Your brain on ChatGPT [arxiv.org] People ...
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.
The hosts first examine a skeptical take on whether some individuals truly lack an inner monologue, prompting psychologist David Pizarro to reflect on his own subjective experience. They then explore the complex predictive processing theory of brain function, which posits the mind primarily minimizes prediction errors. This framework is used to analyze how various meditation techniques—focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual practice—might relate to altering the brain's predictive models and lead to fundamental Buddhist insights.
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 fascism at Yale flee the country to form in a center of resistance at…The University of Toronto. We're Exp...
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.
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 memories? How does all this connect to our sense of self? Plus cancel culture comes to Cornell, but do...
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 is the one boxer? Plus since we're basically a TV recap podcast now, some thoughts on White Lotus S...
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] Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion by Barry Lam [amazon.com affiliate link] Eraserhe...
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, narcissism, and perfectionism in mate choice thresholds. Personality and Individual Differences, 238...
