Very Bad Wizards

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 Cult Science." Does Feynman's metaphor suggest that whole paradigms might be systematically misguided? Or is he just admonishing social scientists to maintain their integrity and use more rigorous methods? As you might imagine, a fight almost breaks out in this one. Moore, H. J. (2025). Being Exalted: An A Priori Argument for the Trinity. Sophia, 1-23. [link.springer.com] Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman [caltech.edu] Interrogating the "cargo cult science" metaphor by Andrew Gelman and Megan Higgs [columbia.edu]

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: smug. Nguyen, C. T. (2024). Value capture. J. Ethics & Soc. Phil., 27, 469.

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 Silicon Valley shitting themselves but how does it really stack up against good old American AI? The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher [amazon.com affiliate link]

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 on the passing of Tamler's favorite artist David Lynch. Firestone, C., & Scholl, B. J. (2016). Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for "top-down" effects. Behavioral and brain sciences, 39, e229. Cognitive Penetration and the Epistemology of Perception by Nico Silins Bruner, J. S., & Goodman, C. C. (1947). Value and need as organizing factors in perception. The journal of abnormal and social psychology, 42(1), 33. Fodor, Jerry A. "Precis of the modularity of mind." Behavioral and brain sciences 8.1 (1985): 1-5.

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 from last year, excited for in 2025, and the ways the podcast has changed since episode 1. The Wizard of Oz (1939)[wikipedia.org] Roger Ebert's review of The Wizard of Oz [rogerebert.com] The Wizard of Oz as allegory for atheism [forgetfulfilmcritic.com] Technicolor [wikipedia.org] A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain by Tamler Sommers [amazon.com affiliate link] Break Music [soundcloud.com]

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 these questions and anyone who disagrees with us is a stupid idiot. Plus in the second segment we present THE AMBIES (..the ambies), the final episode of "The Ambulators," our episode by episode breakdown of David Milch's Deadwood. It's a clip-filled awards ceremony to celebrate what might be the great TV series of all time. Highlights include Best Quote, Best Scene, Best Character (other than Al), Best Slur, Best Antisemitic slur, and lots more. "Why intellectual humility isn't always a virtue" by Rachel Fraser [aeon.co] Deadwood (TV Series) [wikipedia.org]

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 of norm enforcement arguing instead that its main function is reconciliation, restoring cooperative relationships, and preventing further violence. Get ready for runaway pigs, peace pipes, wife stealing, banana stealing, black magic, leopard-skin chiefs, and David maybe finally coming around to restorative justice. Plus we choose from a long list of fantastic topic suggestions from our beloved Patreon supporters and narrow down to six finalists for the listener selected episode. Fitouchi, L., & Singh, M. (2023). Punitive justice serves to restore reciprocal cooperation in three small-scale societies. Evolution and Human Behavior, 44(5), 502-514. Third-party punishment [wikipedia.org]

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 of safety attire on perceptions of cyclist dehumanisation. Transportation research part F: traffic psychology and behaviour, 95, 494-509. "A Good Man is Hard to Find (short story)" [wikipedia.org] A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor [amazon.com affiliate link] (note: you can google for a .pdf of the story and you'll find some links floating around!)

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 differences in people's ability to employ reflection (system 2) to override their initial intuition (system 1), this three-item measure has mushroomed into its own industry with researchers linking CRT scores to job performance, religious belief, conspiracy theorizing and more. But what psychological attribute is this test supposed to measure exactly, and how can we determine its validity? And has the dual process system 1/system 2 framework outlived its usefulness? Tucker Carlson was totally mauled by a demon and not scratched by his dogs [youtube.com] Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 25-42. Blacksmith, N., Yang, Y., Ruark, G., & Behrend, T. (2018, July). A Validity Analysis of the Cognitive Reflection Test Using an Item-Response-Tree Model. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2018, No. 1, p. 18090). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management. Erceg, N., Galić, Z., & Ružojčić, M. (2020). A reflection on cognitive reflection–testing convergent/divergent validity of two measures of cognitive reflection. Judgment and Decision making, 15(5), 741-755. Meyer, A., & Frederick, S. (2023). The formation and revision of intuitions. Cognition, 240, 105380.

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 the Sawyers – a family of craftsmen and artists, committed to sustainability and fine dining – actually the victims here? Plus we take and fail a test to see if we can identify fake Republicans and Democrats. Hart, M., & Nazarian, N. (2024) Season's mis-greetings: why timing matters in global academia. Nature. Both Democrats and Republicans can pass the Ideological Turing Test [experimental-history.com] The Ideological Turing Test [ituringtest.com] The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [wikipedia.org]

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 the world, and inductive justifications are circular, they beg the question. David and Tamler dive into the notorious problem of induction and some (failed?) attempts to offer a resolution. Plus, an article about toddlers and small children who seem to remember their past lives – what should we make of these reports? And is "remembering a past life" and "being possessed by the ghost of that person" a distinction without a difference? The Children Who Remember Past Lives [washington post.com] Ian Stevenson - criticisms [wikipedia.org] The Problem of Induction [plato.stanford.edu] Salmon, W. C. (1978). Unfinished business: The problem of induction. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 33(1), 1-19.

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 American endorses Kamala Harris – is that a big deal? We look at a study purporting to show that Nature's Biden endorsement eroded trust in science among Trump supporters. Political endorsement by Nature and trust in scientific expertise during COVID-19 [nature.com] The Circular Ruins by Jorge Luis Borges [wikipedia.org]

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 punctuated by David's new theory of the rise of the autism. (TLDL the nerds are having sex). Friend Reveal Trailer [youtube.com] Kroupin, I., Davis, H. E., & Henrich, J. (2024). Beyond Newton: Why assumptions of universality are critical to cognitive science, and how to finally move past them. Psychological Review. [harvard.edu]

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 too? How does he get out of the storage closet? Is Shelly Duval's performance actually brilliant? What the fuck is up with Bill? Should the Overlook have included a land acknowledgment? And lots more. Come listen to us, forever and ever and ever…. David Shoemaker's website [sites.google.com] Wisecracks by David Shoemaker [amazon.com afilliate link] Review of Wisecracks by Kieran Setiya [atlantic.com] The Shining [wikipedia.org]

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 at the start? And if only philosophers can embark on this journey, why does everyone think of them as useless and corrupt? Plus we look at some research that attempts to provide empirical support for 'terror management theory' which makes us yearn for the unfalsifiability of Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death. Links Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T., & Jahrig, J. (2007). Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(5), 789. [researchgate.net] Many Labs 4: Failure to replicate Mortality Salience Effect With and Without Original Author Involvement [ucpress.edu] Neoplatonism [wikipedia.org] Neoplatonism and Gnosticism [wikipedia.org] Plato's Unwritten Doctrines [wikipedia.org]

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 his most famous dialogue? How does the form of the good relate to the other forms? What are the mystical elements of the cave metaphor? (Note: this is part one of a two-part discussion). Plus, if we could go back in time and give one piece of professional advice to a younger version of ourselves, what would that be? Plato's allegory of the cave (this has a couple of useful illustrations) [wikipedia.org] Republic (Hackett Classics) translated by G.M.A. Grube [amazon.com affiliate link] (you can get full text PDF files of Plato's Republic for free all over the internet, but this is the version we're using) Let us know where we should hold our 300th episode listener meet-up [surveymonkey.com]

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 have a political gabfest about Biden, the infamous debate, Kamala Harris, and more… The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker [amazon.com affiliate link] The Denial of Death [wikipedia.org] Let us know where we should hold our 300th episode listener meet-up [surveymonkey.com]

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 focuses on Part One of Becker's book, and we'll conclude the discussion in the next episode. Plus are gun owners really dissatisfied with their penis size? We look at the numbers. Hill, T. D., Zeng, L., Burdette, A. M., Dowd-Arrow, B., Bartkowski, J. P., & Ellison, C. G. (2024). Size matters? Penis dissatisfaction and gun ownership in America. American journal of men's health, 18(3), 15579883241255830. The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker [amazon.com affiliate link] The Denial of Death [wikipedia.org] Let us know where we should hold our 300th episode listener meet-up [surveymonkey.com]

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? And is he asking the right questions? (SPOILER HEAVY EPISODE! See this movie before you listen! Available on Netflix in the US.) Plus, how familiar are you with words the words azimuth and espadrille? Turns out that the answer may depend on your gender. Brysbaert, M., Mandera, P., McCormick, S. F., & Keuleers, E. (2019). Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas. Behavior research methods, 51, 467-479. Oldboy (2003 film) [wikipedia.org]

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. Plus, we have some questions about a new study on censorship and self-censorship among social psychologists. Links: Clark CJ, Fjeldmark M, Lu L, Baumeister RF, Ceci S, Frey K, Miller G, Reilly W, Tice D, von Hippel W, Williams WM, Winegard BM, Tetlock PE. (2024) Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology Professors. Perspectives on Psychological Science [pubmed] A fascinating theory about the cultural influence of rice farming now has evidence of causality by Eric Dolan [psypost.org] Talhelm, T., & Dong, X. (2024). People quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat. Nature Communications, 15(1), 1782.[nature.com] Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Shimin, C., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture. Science, 344(6184), 603-608. [science.org]

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 the biggest surprise of all, Tamler has some nice things to say about it.

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 and other complex non-human animals? And lots more. Plus, a new segment "there should be a German word for this" - we come up with new German words for common phenomena or experiences. And a big announcement in the promo segment about the podcast going forward. Please consider supporting a long-time listener's attempt to get their family out of Gaza.[gofundme.com] Links: Do Elephants Have Souls? by Caitrin Keiper [thenewatlantis.com]

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, and deerstalker hats to unravel another Borges mystery: "Death and the Compass." Plus a new study on why men make errors about whether women are flirting with them, the latest in our series on studies that employ erotic fiction. Links: A Dress Is Not a Yes: Towards an Indirect Mouse-Tracking Measure of Men's Overreliance on Global Cues in the Context of Sexual Flirting Pinpointing the psychological factors linked to men's misjudgments of women's sexual interest Death and the Compass by Jorge Luis Borges [wikipedia.org]

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 Levy that goes beyond the stereotypes and tries to describe and explain the differences between the two schools. Plus, The University of Austin (sic) is back in the news and we have a report from someone who attended one of their Forbidden Courses. This should be so easy but the article has us deeply conflicted about what to make fun of. [Important update: Trixie is on a 5 day streak of no accidents and is a perfect little sweet girl.] Links: An American Education: Notes from UATX by Noah Rawlings Levy, N. (2003). Analytic and continental philosophy: Explaining the differences. Metaphilosophy, 34(3), 284-304.

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 segment talk about Aella's data-driven, chart and graph filled birthday orgy. Is she the sex symbol for our times? Links: My Birthday Gangbang by Aella [substack.com] Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" [wikipedia.org] Weird Studies podcast with J.F. Martel and Phil Ford 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 Factor: Chef-prepared, dietitian-approved meals, ready to eat. Sign up today and get restaurant-quality meals made by real chefs delivered to your door. Visit factormeals.com/vbw50 and use code VBW50 to get 50% off your order.

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.

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 she disappears. What happened? What's real and what's a pantomime? Adapted from a Murakami short story that's adapted from a Faulkner short story, this movie warrants a true VBW deep dive, so we had to do it in two parts. This is part 1. Plus another segment of our pet peeves. "Updating my priors," "Fixed it for you," faculty governance, and more, these are the things that really grind our gears. Links: Burning (2018) [wikipedia.org] The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami (containing the short story "Barn Burning) [amazon.com affiliate link] Barn Burning by William Faulkner [wikipedia.org] 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 Factor: Chef-prepared, dietitian-approved meals, ready to eat. Sign up today and get restaurant-quality meals made by real chefs delivered to your door. Visit factormeals.com/vbw50 and use code VBW50 to get 50% off your order.

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 examines attitudes about sexual assault by probing for intuitions on assaulting sex robots. It gets more confusing from there. Links: Grigoreva, A. D., Rottman, J., & Tasimi, A. (2024). When does "no" mean no? Insights from sex robots. Cognition, 244, 105687. Nagel, T. (1969). Sexual perversion. The Journal of Philosophy, 5-17. 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 Green Chef: Get great recipes made from organic produce and premium proteins of the highest quality delivered to your door. Visit Greenchef.com/60vbw, and use code 60VBW to get 60% off, plus 20% off your next two months.

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 to things? Does attention help to shape or construct our reality? What is attention's connection to the will? Does James anticipate predictive coding theory? Plus we discuss the removal of the head of a renowned university for reasons that have nothing to do with the mission of higher learning. Episode Links Chancellor of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Fired [nbc.com] William James chapter on Attention from Principles of Psychology (1890) [yorku.ca]

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. Once again, we show our awareness that truly modern podcasting demands the balm of laughter, of scherzo. The finicky will want to excommunicate our discussion without benefit of clergy but the critic of more manly tastes will embrace this episode as he does his very life. "The Aleph" by Jorge Luis Borges [wikipedia.org] Version we read: Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Andrew Hurley) [amazon.com affiliate link] 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 Listening.com: Save time by listening to academic papers on the go. Very Bad Wizards listeners get 3 weeks free when signing up at listening.com/vbw Givewell.org: Make your charitable donations as effective as possible. If you've never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. Just go to givewell.org, pick PODCAST, and enter VERY BAD WIZARDS at checkout.

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 Climate Change argues that neuroscience can help the environment – can I interest you in some virtual trees? Doell, K. C., Berman, M. G., Bratman, G. N., Knutson, B., Kühn, S., Lamm, C., ... & Brosch, T. (2023). Leveraging neuroscience for climate change research. Nature Climate Change, 1-10. I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried. by Dylan Matthews [vox.com] How effective altruism went from a niche movement to a billion-dollar force by Dylan Matthews [vox.com] Stop the Robot Apocalypse by Amia Srinivasan [lrb.co.uk] 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 Listening.com: Save time by listening to academic papers on the go. Very Bad Wizards listeners get 3 weeks free when signing up at listening.com/vbw Givewell.org: Make your charitable donations as effective as possible. If you've never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. Just go to givewell.org, pick PODCAST, and enter VERY BAD WIZARDS at checkout.

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 Sciences, 118(10), e2011809118. Spirited Away [wikipedia.org] 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 Listening.com: Save time by listening to academic papers on the go. Very Bad Wizards listeners get 3 weeks free when signing up at listening.com/vbw Givewell.org: Make your charitable donations as effective as possible. If you've never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. Just go to givewell.org, pick PODCAST, and enter VERY BAD WIZARDS at checkout.

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 his best selling book) about the decline of civic engagement in American life. Bensto, Fira (Pseudonym) (2023) Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible, Journal of Controversial Ideas, Vol. 3, Issue 2. Putnam, R.D. (1995). Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. Journal of Democracy 6(1), 65-78. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1995.0002. Luhmann, M., Buecker, S., & Rüsberg, M. (2023). Loneliness across time and space. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2(1), 9-23. 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

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 Tamler's. It's an episode (we can't emphasize this enough) that is in no way cringe or corny. Plus some brief thoughts on Israel and Gaza. 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

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 meaning. Finally we offer Hollywood some suggestions for choosing the director and cast for the long sought-after film adaptation. Plus, we have nothing but praise for this study on measuring passive aggression. We really like it - I mean, we have a couple of issues with the methodology and the survey questions, but no, really, it's a great paper… for a journal like that… Lim, Y. O., & Suh, K. H. (2022). Development and validation of a measure of passive aggression traits: the Passive Aggression Scale (PAS). Behavioral Sciences, 12(8), 273. [mdpi.com] 21 Questions to Identify a Passive-Aggressive Person by Mark Travers [psychologytoday.com] Blood Meridian [wikipedia.com] 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

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 family of traveling magicians. Plus two studies on honesty tell you the best countries to lose your wallet and the U.S. states with a bunch of dirty Wordle cheaters. Wormley, A. S., & Cohen, A. B. (2023). CHEAT: Wordle Cheating Is Related to Religiosity and Cultural Tightness. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(3), 702-709. Cohn, A., Maréchal, M. A., Tannenbaum, D., & Zünd, C. L. (2019). Civic honesty around the globe. Science, 365(6448), 70-73. Blood Meridian [wikipidia.org] 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

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 – what to make of the judge? Plus a new meta-analysis refutes the common wisdom that "opposites attract." But did we ever really believe that anyway? Thanks to our beloved Patreon supporters for selecting this topic for the listener selected episode! https://phys.org/news/2023-08-evidence-opposites-dont.html Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of 22 traits and UK Biobank analysis of 133 traits | Nature Human Behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian 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

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 why does James trust pure perception (unmediated by concepts) as a true window into reality? Does he want us to return to the blooming buzzing confusion of our infancy? Is his mystical side superseding his pragmatism? Plus, a new study on generosity after receiving a $10,000 windfall leads to a discussion of what we can interpret from null results, and lots more. Dwyer, R. J., Brady, W. J., Anderson, C., & Dunn, E. W. (2023). Are People Generous When the Financial Stakes Are High?. Psychological Science, 09567976231184887. A Pluralistic Universe by William James (Lecture VI) 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 Rocket Money: Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions, and manage your expenses the easy way, by going to RocketMoney.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

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 believe in jinxes at all but his actions suggest otherwise. We talk about a paper on this phenomenon of "half-belief": when your behavior and your stated beliefs don't align. Plus Tamler and David take a survey and discover that they lead radically different inner lives. James Steele's Tweet Caspi, A., Shmuel, E., & Chajut, E. (2023). A quantitative examination of half-belief in superstition. Journal of Individual Differences. 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

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 a newcomer to the human brain? Plus we select the finalists for our listener selected episode – thanks to our beloved patrons for all their terrific suggestions! "The Kekulé Problem" by Cormac McCarthy Pinker & Bloom 1990 Dijksterhuis & Strick 2016 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 Rocket Money: Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions, and manage your expenses the easy way, by going to RocketMoney.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

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 Tamler's connections to Israel and Bob's experiences there 19:22 What does Zionism mean in practice? 27:35 The shifting Overton window around Israel/Palestine 45:35 The heavy-handed response to the BDS movement 57:13 What the Israel/Palestine discourse says about Overton windows 1:02:09 So where should the boundaries be set

David and Tamler dive into the Coen brothers' bleak and beautiful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel "No Country for Old Men." What's the underlying philosophy that animates Anton Chigurh? Does he have a code of any kind, or is he just a ghostly symbol of human brutality and a pitiless indifferent universe? Does he represent a new kind of evil or is Sheriff Bell just getting old? What elements, if any, in the film are more dream than reality? And speaking of moral decline, a new Nature study claims that we have the illusory belief that people are getting worse - but can they really establish that it's an illusion? Mastroianni, A. M., & Gilbert, D. T. (2023). The illusion of moral decline. Nature, 1-8. Mastroianni blog post about the illusion of moral decline No Country for Old Men (movie) [wikipedia.org] 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

A VBW exclusive report! For years David and Tamler have been a little dismissive of fears about cancel culture in academia but now the SJWs have come for one of our own! We welcome back Yoel Inbar to talk about his experience applying for a position at UCLA psychology only to have his candidacy pulled at the last minute because of remarks he made on his podcast (!) about diversity statements. What does this mean for freedom of expression in academia? Should we advise our students and younger faculty to watch what they say when it comes to politically charged topics? Are they really going to start combing through podcast episodes now – is nothing sacred? Plus another case of fraud in psychology comes to light courtesy of the Data Colada guys. Data Colada post about Gino fraud 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 Rocket Money: Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions, and manage your expenses the easy way, by going to RocketMoney.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

David and Tamler dive into the first two parts of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil which contain some of Nietzsche's best drive-bys on philosophers like Plato, Descartes, the Stoics, Kant, and Hegel along with beliefs in free will, hard determinism, Christianity, morality, conceptual analysis, objectivity, and the value of truth. We argue about Nietzsche's metaphilosophy and the implications of thinking that all philosophy amounts to a personal confession by the author. Plus – have David's prayers been answered? Does quantum theory entail that our consciousness outlives the death of our physical bodies? A blog post about a somewhat recent book says yes! 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 NordVPN: Keep your internet connection safe, and enjoy streaming services when you travel abroad with NordVPN! NordVPN is the best VPN if you're looking for peace of mind when you use public Wi-Fi, access personal and work accounts on the road, or want to keep your browsing history to yourself. Exclusive! Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/VBW Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Promo Code: VBW

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 [newyorker.com] Was I Wrong About The Irishman? by Thomas Flight [youtube.com] Authorial Intent [wikipedia.org] 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 NordVPN: Keep your internet connection safe, and enjoy streaming services when you travel abroad with NordVPN! NordVPN is the best VPN if you're looking for peace of mind when you use public Wi-Fi, access personal and work accounts on the road, or want to keep your browsing history to yourself. Exclusive! Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/VBW Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Promo Code: VBW

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? What does it tell us about her past, her sense of self, her alienation from friends, family, and her role? This is a banger of a story folks, check it out. Plus - if you had to say one word or sentence to distinguish yourself from an AI, what would you say? 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 Aura Frames: From phone to frame, enjoy all your memories with ease with Aura digital frames. Use code "VBW" at checkout for %30 off of their best-selling frames. Offer is good until May 14! (Just in time for Mother's Day shopping). Promo Code: VBW NordVPN: Keep your internet connection safe, and enjoy streaming services when you travel abroad with NordVPN! NordVPN is the best VPN if you're looking for peace of mind when you use public Wi-Fi, access personal and work accounts on the road, or want to keep your browsing history to yourself. Exclusive! Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/VBW Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Promo Code: VBW Support Very Bad Wizards Links: One word Turing test The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

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: 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 Support Very Bad Wizards Links: Paul Bloom on Twitter: "I agree with this decision-nobody should force profs to use trigger warnings. But I'm mildly pro-TW and have used them in the past. It's often basic decency to warn people--and this includes students--before exposing them to shocking material. https://t.co/ap8gxHgsp8" / Twitter Tár - Wikipedia

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 definitive theory of 'creepy.' 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 Support Very Bad Wizards Links: The Varieties of Religious Experience - Wikipedia The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James [Project Gutenberg Free e-book]

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 transforms his ideas into a new asset class of NFTs. 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 Support Very Bad Wizards Links: Best-Selling Author & Harvard Professor Steven Pinker Will Transform His Ideas into NFTs | Blockster I Asked an Algorithm to Optimize My Life. Here's What Happened | WIRED The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan Marshall McLuhan - Wikipedia Marshall McLuhan Interview from Playboy (1969)

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, at least not in a capitalist system. So it ends up offering a transcendental sanction of the status quo. We debate the merits of Murphy's attack on Rawls and social contract theory under capitalism, along with the Marxist analysis of the roots of criminal behavior. Plus – the headline says it all: Blame The Brain, Not Bolsonaro, For Brazil's Riots. 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 ReThinking with Adam Grant Support Very Bad Wizards Links: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Insurrections | Essay Murphy, J. G. (1973). Marxism and retribution. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 217-243. Psych (with Paul Bloom and David Pizarro)