Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
8 Listeners
All episodes
Best episodes
Top 10 Very Bad Wizards Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Very Bad Wizards episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Very Bad Wizards for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Very Bad Wizards episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
08/30/12 • 70 min
Dave and Tamler start out talking about the new wave of skepticism about free will and moral responsibility in the popular press from people like Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne.
Neuroscience figures heavily in their arguments, but Dave and Tamler agree that neuroscientific data adds little of substance to the case other than telling us what we already know: human beings are natural biological entities. Dave also accuses Tamler of being a hipster philosopher for abandoning a view once it got popular.
Next, we talk about what kind freedom we need to have in order to deserve blame and punishment. Do we need to create ourselves out of the swamps of nothingness? Dave comes out as a Star Trek nerd and asks whether we're all, in the end, like Data the android. They also wonder whether a belief in free will is all that's keeping us from having sex with our dogs.
Finally, Dave grills Tamler about his new book on the differences in attitudes about free will and moral responsibility across cultures. After seeing how long they've been carrying on, they then agree to talk about all the stuff they left out in the next episode.
LinksCoyne, J. “Why You Don’t Really Have Free Will.”
Sam Harris. “Free Will.”
Eddy Nahmias. "Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?"
Galen Strawson "Luck Swallows Everything."
2 Listeners
Episode 298: Pass the Peace Pipe
Very Bad Wizards
12/10/24 • 80 min
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.
1 Listener
08/25/20 • 115 min
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 Jesus Christ of heresy against the church. (Note: this segment is the second of an upcoming five episode VBW miniseries on The Brothers Karamazov – more info on that to come very soon!) Plus one of us has a milestone birthday...
[Special note from Peez: Stick around after the closing music to hear VBWs most frequent guests Paul Bloom and Yoel Inbar talk to David about Tamler behind his back.]
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 Great Courses Plus: Never stop learning. Pursue your passion. Quench your curiosity. Embark on an educational endeavor. Watch thousands of streaming videos on hundreds of subjects. Promo Code: wizards
Links:
- The Brothers Karamazov - Wikipedia
- The Grand Inquisitor - Wikipedia
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) [amazon.com affiliate link] — This is the edition we used for this episode (and our upcoming 5-part series).
1 Listener
Episode 209: Basic Instincts (with Paul Bloom)
Very Bad Wizards
03/23/21 • 96 min
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’ 130 year-old writings make psychologists sad about the present state of their field. PLUS - do you wish you were closer to your non-romantic partners? Well, strap on your gloves, grab a washcloth, it’s time for exactly 15 minutes of orgasmic meditation.
Note: we had to use backup audio for Tamler and Paul in the second segment. The sound quality isn't as good as normal, sorry about that.
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
Links:
- Partner intimate touch is associated with increased interpersonal closeness, especially in non-romantic partners — Partner intimate touch is associated with increased interpersonal closeness, especially in non-romantic partners Nicole Prause , Greg J. Siegle, James Coan
- Circle of Willis (hosted by Jim Coan)
- Paul Bloom | Department of Psychology
- Richard Dawkins on Twitter: "Science is not a social construct. Science’s truths were true before there were societies; will still be true after all philosophers are dead; were true before any philosophers were born; were true before there were any minds, even trilobite or dinosaur minds, to notice them." / Twitter
- James, W. (1890) The Principles of Psychology, Chapter 24 (Instinct) [yorku.ca]
1 Listener
06/13/23 • 88 min
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
1 Listener
Episode 276: Attention Please
Very Bad Wizards
01/16/24 • 87 min
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]
1 Listener
10/28/13 • 74 min
Special guest Will Wilkinson joins the podcast to talk about whether fiction makes us better people, and to discuss his recent Daily Beast article that trashed Dave's profession and livelihood. Also, Dave and Tamler try to make sense of Ancient Greek justice in a myth about incest, adultery, daughter-killing, husband-killing, matricide, cannibalism, and trash talking to disembodied heads.
Links- Agamemnon [wikipedia.org]
- Will Wilkinson [wikipedia.org]
- The Will Wilkinson article that hurt David's feelings [thedailybeast.com]
- Hurt Feelings by Flight of the Concords [youtube.com]
- Does great literature make us better? by Gregory Currie [nytimes.com]
- Reading literature makes us smarter and nicer by Annie Murphy Paul [time.com]
- Want to learn how to think? Read fiction by Tom Jacobs [psmag.com]
- In Pursuit of Happiness Research [pdf] by Will Wilkinson
Special Guest: Will Wilkinson.
1 Listener
Episode 35: Douchebags and Desert
Very Bad Wizards
11/11/13 • 61 min
Dave and Tamler talk about the influence of character judgments on attributions of blame. What is the function of the blame--to assign responsibility or to judge a person's character? Is it fair that we blame douchebags more than good people who commit exactly the same act, or is it yet another cognitive bias that should be avoided? Plus we delve into the Richie Incognito hazing story (maybe a little early since the story has developed) and Tamler tries to figure out how to teach the Gospels to students who know roughly 100 times as much about them than he does.
Links- "The Miami Dolphins and Everything that Will Never Make Sense." by Andrew Sharp. (grantland.com)
- Interview with Richie Incognito (youtube.com)
- Gospel of Matthew [wikipedia.org]
- Synoptic Gospels [wikipedia.org]
- Pizarro, D.A. & Tannenbaum, D. (2011). Bringing character back: How the motivation to evaluate character influences judgments of moral blame. In M. Mikulincer & Shaver, P. (Eds) The Social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil. APA Press.
- A recent chapter on character and moral psychology that David wrote (with Roy Baumeister) just to be able to talk about comics and porn : Superhero Comics as Moral Pornography. In R. Rosenberg (Ed.) Our Superheroes, Ourselves. Oxford University Press.
- Tannenbaum, D., Uhlmann, E. L., & Diermeier, D. (2011). Moral signals, public outrage, and immaterial harms. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(6), 1249-1254.
1 Listener
02/28/23 • 103 min
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 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
Links:
- Why a Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled - The New York Times
- Kevin Roose’s Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot: Full Transcript - The New York Times
- From Bing to Sydney – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke [amazon.com affiliate link]
- Piranesi (novel) - Wikipedia
- The meditative empathy of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi - Vox — Carla Baricz’s reading of Piranesi through the Romantics, at Ploughshares
- Piranesi’s Disenchanted World
- Susanna Clarke’s Fantasy World of Interiors | The New Yorker
1 Listener
Episode 275: The Ineffable Center (Borges' "The Aleph")
Very Bad Wizards
12/26/23 • 94 min
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]
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.
Show more best episodes
Show more best episodes
FAQ
How many episodes does Very Bad Wizards have?
Very Bad Wizards currently has 314 episodes available.
What topics does Very Bad Wizards cover?
The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts and Philosophy.
What is the most popular episode on Very Bad Wizards?
The episode title 'Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1)' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Very Bad Wizards?
The average episode length on Very Bad Wizards is 90 minutes.
How often are episodes of Very Bad Wizards released?
Episodes of Very Bad Wizards are typically released every 14 days, 1 hour.
When was the first episode of Very Bad Wizards?
The first episode of Very Bad Wizards was released on Aug 30, 2012.
Show more FAQ
Show more FAQ