Very Bad Wizards

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...

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 mat...

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 metap...

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). Valu...

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 ho...

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 favorit...

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, a...

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 disa...

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...

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 c...

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 re...

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 craftsme...

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 justificatio...

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...

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...

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 sto...

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 philosophe...

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 t...

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...