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 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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1:40:28
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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1:26:20
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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1:17:08
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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1:29:34
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]
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