Very Bad Wizards
Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
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.
Episode 341: Psychology Ranked (With Paul Bloom)
David and Tamler welcome Paul Bloom back to the show for a definitive ranking of classic psychology experiments. Will the shocking results of the Milgram studies earn him a posthumous 'S' ranking? How far will Zimbardo fall? Is the Stroop effect a super effect? Did you see the Gorilla in these notes? Which is more plausible: that we have Paul Bloom as a guest, or we have Paul Bloom and a guest and it's a banger? Note: no dogs or baby monkeys were harmed in the making of this episode. Final Tier List Rankings (episode spoilers!) List of Studies Ranked (all links are to pages on wikipedia.org) Milgram Shock Studies Tversky and Kahneman Linda Problem Loftus Car Crash/False Memory Ekman Basic Emotions Studies Good Samaritan Study Invisible Gorilla Study Shepard Figure Rotation Harlow's Monkeys Seligman Learned Helplessness Asch Conformity Stroop Effect Dunning-Kruger Effect Visual Cliff Experiment Zimbardo Prison Experiment False Belief Task Bem ESP Study Marshmallow Test Bargh Elderly Walking Prime 
Sep 22
1 hr 37 min
The Lotus Eaters Episode 8: Home and Homelessness [unlocked]
In this episode, Tamler and David discuss The Odyssey Books 15 & 16, in which father and son (and father figure and son) are reunited, and in which the Odysseus and Telemachus start planning their revenge against the suitors.
Sep 17
1 hr 2 min
The Lotus Eaters Episode 7: Lying Odysseus [unlocked]
Tamler and David discuss Books 13 & 14 of The Odyssey. Odysseus finally makes it to Ithaca and meets up with Athena, gets a disguise, and has a chat with his most loyal slave Eumaeus.
Sep 10
55 min
Episode 340: The Sublime Folly of Hope
Why do baseball players have so many superstitious rituals compared to athletes in other sports? How does this relate to the magic rituals of the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia? We dive into Bronisław Malinowski's classic 1925 paper "Magic, Science, and Religion" along with George Gmelch's "Baseball Magic," two articles that explore the role of religion and superstition as a response to the absence of control. And speaking of losing control, we do a conceptual analysis of "crashing out" in the opening segment- analytic philosophy at its finest. Malinowski, B. (1925). Magic, science and religion. In J. Needham (Ed.), Science, religion and reality (pp. 19–84). The Macmillan Company. [link to our Amazon S3 so everyone can find it easily] Gmelch, G. (2012). Baseball magic. In J. Spradley, D. W. McCurdy, & R. Shandy (Eds.), Conformity and conflict: Readings in cultural anthropology (14th ed., pp. 266–274). Pearson. (Original work published 1971).     
Sep 8
1 hr 15 min
The Lotus Eaters Episode 6: Psyches [unlocked]
David and Tamler discuss The Odyssey's iconic books 11 & 12, in which our hero visits the ghosts of the dead, hears the call of the sirens, and survives a no-win situation.
Sep 3
58 min
The Lotus Eaters Episode 5: Circe, Cyclops, and Psychedelics (Oh My!) [unlocked]
Tamler and David discuss the action-packed books 9 & 10 of The Odyssey, in which Odysseus makes some questionable choices, the crew encounters cannibal giants, and Circe casts her porcine spells. 
Aug 27
54 min
Episode 339: Is Analytic Philosophy Truthmaxxing?
Since well before the big bang, people have been bitching about Tamler's chosen field. We talk about Bernard Williams' (qualified) defense of analytic philosophy in his essay "On Hating and Despising Philosophy." We also dig into Lily Hu's review of a recent book by Christoph Schuringa, an ideological and historical critique of the philosophical tendency to think they engage in an unbiased perspective-free search for truth. Plus - is it unethical for philosophers and other academics to make money on Substack?     Is it unethical for academics to monetize Substack? by Walter Veit [substack.com]  On Hating and Despising Philosophy by Bernard Williams [lb.co.uk] Review of A Social History of Analytic Philosophy: How Politics Has Shaped an Apolitical Philosophy by Lily Hu  [academic.oup.com]
Aug 25
1 hr 21 min
The Lotus Eaters Episode 4: I Am Odysseus [unlocked]
Tamler and David discuss books 7 & 8 of The Odyssey--while at Alcinous' palace in Phaeacia, Odysseus listens to poetry, plays some games, cries some more, and finally starts to regain his identity.
Aug 20
45 min
The Lotus Eaters Episode 3: The Halfway House to Humanity [unlocked]
Tamler and David discuss books 5 & 6 of The Odyssey, where we follow Odysseus as he finally leaves Calypso's Island and returns to the realm of the human. We also finally pick a name for the podcast. But only after recording this episode (as will be obvious from the first few minutes).
Aug 13
41 min
The Lotus Eaters Episode 2: Intangible as Wind [unlocked]
Welcome to The Lotus Eaters! This is part 2 of our 12 part series on Homer's Odyssey that will be released every Thursday. The series was supported by our Patreon community, but we are now making it available to everyone who would like to listen to our discussions to accompany their reading of The Odyssey. We hope you enjoy! Episode Notes:  Tamler and David finish up the Telemachy (the saga of Odysseus' son, Telemachus) in their discussion of books 3 & 4 of The Odyssey. (Oh yeah, we get an appearance from THAT Helen of Troy).
Aug 6
54 min
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