Very Bad Wizards

• Episode 305: Emile Is the Name of the Goat (with Paul Bloom)

  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 mate choice thresholds. Personality and Individual Differences, 238, 113086. Very Bad Wizards Episode 236: Your Outie is Skilled at Lovemaking (with Paul Bloom) Paul's Substack Newsletter "Small Potatoes"

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• Episode 304: The Planes Don't Land

  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 metaphor suggest that whole paradigms might be systematically misguided? Or is he just admonishing social scientists to maintain their integrity and use more rigorous methods? As you might imagine, a fight almost breaks out in this one.  Moore, H. J. (2025). Being Exalted: An A Priori Argument for the Trinity. Sophia, 1-23. [link.springer.com] Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman [caltech.edu] Interrogating the “cargo cult science” metaphor by Andrew Gelman and Megan Higgs [columbia.edu]

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• Episode 303: Measure This

  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). Value capture. J. Ethics & Soc. Phil., 27, 469.

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• Episode 302: Metaphysical Edging

  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 how does it really stack up against good old American AI? The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher [amazon.com affiliate link]

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• Episode 301: Believing is Seeing?

  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 favorite artist David Lynch. Firestone, C., & Scholl, B. J. (2016).  Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and brain sciences, 39, e229. Cognitive Penetration and the Epistemology of Perception by Nico Silins  Bruner, J. S., & Goodman, C. C. (1947). Value and need as organizing factors in perception. The journal of abnormal and social psychology, 42(1), 33. Fodor, Jerry A. "Precis of the modularity of mind." Behavioral and brain sciences 8.1 (1985): 1-5.

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