Very Bad Wizards

by Very Bad Wizards Apr 25, 2023 · Edited

Episode 259: Losing Time ("Tár" with Paul Bloom)

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?

by Very Bad Wizards Mar 28, 2023 · Edited

Episode 257: Aural Fixation

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

by Very Bad Wizards Mar 14, 2023 · Edited

Episode 256: The Right to Punish?

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

by Very Bad Wizards Feb 14, 2023 · Edited

Episode 254: Nobody's Parfit

Tamler’s earlier self committed to doing an episode on Parfit, and David holds his current self to that promise, which shows how unconvinced David was by Parfit’s skepticism about personal

by Very Bad Wizards Jan 31, 2023 · Edited

Episode 253: Tarkovsky's Starchild

It’s the episode that Tamler has been waiting for – a long deep dive into Andrei Tarkovsky’s mysterious masterpiece "Stalker." A writer and professor are led by their guide (Stalker) into a

by Very Bad Wizards Nov 22, 2022 · Edited

Episode 249: Phlegm and Carelessness (Hume's "The Sceptic")

David and Tamler gild and stain David Hume’s essay “The Sceptic†with their sentiments. If nothing is inherently valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, then what do

by Very Bad Wizards Dec 6, 2022 · Edited

Episode 250: Metaphors All the Way Down

We often think of metaphors as poetic flourishes, a nice way to punctuate your ideas and make them more relatable. But what if metaphors aren’t simply tools of language but part of thought

by Very Bad Wizards Dec 20, 2022 · Edited

Episode 251: First Order, Then Chaos

David and Tamler wind their way through another Borges story - "The Immortal"- about a Roman soldier who seeks the secret of immortality and, much to his horror, finds it. Plus some thoughts on the

by Very Bad Wizards Feb 28, 2023 · Edited

Episode 255: Beloved Child of the House (Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi")

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

by Very Bad Wizards Jan 10, 2023 · Edited

Episode 252: Yes We Sene-can

David and Tamler dive into Seneca’s “On the Happy Life” and stoicism, the topic selected by our beloved patreon supporters. Why is stoicism so popular today? What does Seneca actually think

by Very Bad Wizards Oct 10, 2023 · Edited

Episode 269: Death Hilarious (Blood Meridian, Pt. 2)

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

by Very Bad Wizards Sep 12, 2023 · Edited

Episode 268: Blood Meridian, Part 1

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

by Very Bad Wizards Jul 18, 2023 · Edited

[BONUS] Overton Windows Episode 1: Israel and Palestine

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

by Very Bad Wizards Jul 11, 2023 · Edited

Episode 264: The Rule You Follow (The Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men")

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

by Very Bad Wizards Jun 13, 2023 · Edited

Episode 262: Supposing Truth is a Woman (Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil")

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

by Very Bad Wizards May 30, 2023 · Edited

Episode 261: Death of the Author

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

by Very Bad Wizards Aug 22, 2023 · Edited

Episode 267: The Thickness of Reality

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.”

by Very Bad Wizards May 9, 2023 · Edited

Episode 260: The Scream That Never Found a Voice (Murakami's "Sleep")

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

by Very Bad Wizards Jun 27, 2023 · Edited

Episode 263: Free Yoel

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

by Very Bad Wizards Aug 8, 2023 · Edited

Episode 266: I Want to Half-Believe

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