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 cogniti...
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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Episode 300: If We Only Had A Brain
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, and the ways the podcast has changed since episode 1. The Wizard of Oz (1939)[wikipedia.org] Roger Ebert's review of The Wizard of Oz [rogerebert.com] The Wizard of Oz as allegory for atheism [forgetfulfilmcritic.com] Technicolor [wikipedia.org] A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain by Tamler Sommers [amazon.com affiliate link] Break Music [soundcloud.com]
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Episode 299: Oh the Humility!
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 disagrees with us is a stupid idiot. Plus in the second segment we present THE AMBIES (..the ambies), the final episode of "The Ambulators," our episode by episode breakdown of David Milch’s Deadwood. It’s a clip-filled awards ceremony to celebrate what might be the great TV series of all time. Highlights include Best Quote, Best Scene, Best Character (other than Al), Best Slur, Best Antisemitic slur, and lots more. "Why intellectual humility isn't always a virtue" by Rachel Fraser [aeon.co] Deadwood (TV Series) [wikipedia.org]
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Episode 298: Pass the Peace Pipe
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 that its main function is reconciliation, restoring cooperative relationships, and preventing further violence. Get ready for runaway pigs, peace pipes, wife stealing, banana stealing, black magic, leopard-skin chiefs, and David maybe finally coming around to restorative justice. Plus we choose from a long list of fantastic topic suggestions from our beloved Patreon supporters and narrow down to six finalists for the listener selected episode. Fitouchi, L., & Singh, M. (2023). Punitive justice serves to restore reciprocal cooperation in three small-scale societies. Evolution and Human Behavior, 44(5), 502-514. Third-party punishment [wikipedia.org]
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, and who have a marked inability to distinguish sacred from profane. Each podcast includes discussions of moral philosophy, recent work on moral psychology and neuroscience, and the overlap between the two.
Colombia