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.
In part one of our two-part episode on Cormac McCarthyâs 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-c...
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 âA Pluralistic Universe.â James attacks the philosophical habit of elevating unchanging ...
Last December, with Argentina minutes away from a World Cup championship, friend of the show Yoel texted David âcongratulations.â David was furious, and soon after (with less than 2 minutes left in extra time) Franceâs Mbappe scored a game-tying goal to ...
The Summer of Cormac McCarthy continues â this time we dive into his one piece of non-fiction, the short essay âThe KekulĂ© Problem.â How does our unconscious mind solve problems that conscious deliberation canât crack? Why does it often work elliptically...
A new mini-series with Tamler Sommers and Robert Wright on the range of politically acceptable discourse for a given topic and how this âOverton windowâ changes over time. This episode is available for free for everyone, the remaining episodes will appea...
David and Tamler dive into the Coen brothersâ bleak and beautiful adaptation of Cormac McCarthyâs 2005 novel "No Country for Old Men." Whatâs the underlying philosophy that animates Anton Chigurh? Does he have a code of any kind, or is he just a ghostly ...