Very Bad Wizards

Latest Episodes:

[BONUS] Overton Windows Episode 1: Israel and Palestine Jul 18, 2023

Show notes

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

Episode 264: The Rule You Follow (The Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men") Jul 11, 2023

Show notes

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]

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Episode 261: Death of the Author May 30, 2023

Show notes

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]

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Episode 260: The Scream That Never Found a Voice (Murakami's "Sleep") May 09, 2023

Show notes

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?

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Episode 259: Losing Time ("Tár" with Paul Bloom) Apr 25, 2023

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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.

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Episode 258: Mystic Peeza Apr 11, 2023

Show notes

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.'

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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

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Episode 257: Aural Fixation Mar 28, 2023

Show notes

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.

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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

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Episode 256: The Right to Punish? Mar 14, 2023

Show notes

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.

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