Very Bad Wizards
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 326: The Most Important Episode of Your (Academic) Life
10 Feb 2026
Are you a college student or about to be one? Do you have friends or family in college? This is the most important episode of your life. David and Tamler do something a little different this
Episode 325: It Is Happening Again
27 Jan 2026
David and Tamler return to Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and Profane and discuss the chapter "Sacred Time and Myths." How does viewing time as circular give us a periodic window into the sacred? What
Episode 324: Irruption of the Sacred
13 Jan 2026
David and Tamler consecrate their podcast with a discussion of "The Sacred and the Profane" by Mircea Eliade. We focus on the first chapter on sacred spaces, where the divine breaks through (or
Episode 323: Debate Me 'Phro
23 Dec 2025
David and Tamler dive into Plato's Euthyphro, part of our intermittent Back 2 Basics series. A young cocksure priest, confident in his holiness, bumps into Socrates on his way to court to prosecute
Episode 322: A Theater of Simultaneous Possibilities (William James' "The Stream of Thought")
9 Dec 2025
David and Tamler return to William James' monumental "Principles of Psychology", this time wading through his famous chapter "The Stream of Thought." We talk about his rejection of empiricist
Episode 321: The Journey Begins (Plus Blind Ranking Philosophers)
25 Nov 2025
David and Tamler begin their long journey home to Homer's Odyssey, the tale of king Odysseus' 10 year journey home after the Trojan war (maybe the greatest story ever told). We dive into the first
Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")
11 Nov 2025
David and Tamler return to one of their favorites, Frans Kafka, this time on his beautiful and distressing short story "The Hunger Artist," a story that brims with metaphorical possibilities but
Episode 319: The Shadow of the Object (Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia")
28 Oct 2025
David and Tamler transfer their libidinal energy to Freud’s 1917 article “Mourning and Melancholia,” in which he tries to understand what's going on with depression, attempts to distinguish it
Episode 318: A PTA Meeting
14 Oct 2025
David and Tamler share some brief thoughts about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest masterpiece One Battle After Another before going deep on his most underrated movie Inherent Vice. We explore the many
Episode 260: The Scream That Never Found a Voice (Murakami's "Sleep")
9 May 2023
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
Episode 259: Losing Time ("Tár" with Paul Bloom)
25 Apr 2023
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?
Episode 258: Mystic Peeza
11 Apr 2023
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
Episode 257: Aural Fixation
28 Mar 2023
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
Episode 256: The Right to Punish?
14 Mar 2023
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
Episode 255: Beloved Child of the House (Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi")
28 Feb 2023
David and Tamler get lost in the world of Susanna Clarke’s "Piranesi," a hauntingly beautiful and thrilling novel with echoes of Borges, Plato, C.S. Lewis, and even Parfit. The first part of our
Episode 254: Nobody's Parfit
14 Feb 2023
Tamler’s earlier self committed to doing an episode on Parfit, and David holds his current self to that promise, which shows how unconvinced David was by Parfit’s skepticism about personal
Episode 253: Tarkovsky's Starchild
31 Jan 2023
It’s the episode that Tamler has been waiting for – a long deep dive into Andrei Tarkovsky’s mysterious masterpiece "Stalker." A writer and professor are led by their guide (Stalker) into a
Episode 252: Yes We Sene-can
10 Jan 2023
David and Tamler dive into Seneca’s “On the Happy Life” and stoicism, the topic selected by our beloved patreon supporters. Why is stoicism so popular today? What does Seneca actually think
Episode 251: First Order, Then Chaos
20 Dec 2022
David and Tamler wind their way through another Borges story - "The Immortal"- about a Roman soldier who seeks the secret of immortality and, much to his horror, finds it. Plus some thoughts on the
Episode 250: Metaphors All the Way Down
6 Dec 2022
We often think of metaphors as poetic flourishes, a nice way to punctuate your ideas and make them more relatable. But what if metaphors aren’t simply tools of language but part of thought
Episode 249: Phlegm and Carelessness (Hume's "The Sceptic")
22 Nov 2022
David and Tamler gild and stain David Hume’s essay “The Sceptic†with their sentiments. If nothing is inherently valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, then what do
Episode 248: Checkmate, Grasshopper
1 Nov 2022
In this podcast we examine a recent argument for the view that chess is not, in fact, a game. We discuss the Grasshopper’s claim that all games must have a prelusory goal, as well as Skepticus’
Episode 247: Open the Pod, Dave (with Sam Harris)
18 Oct 2022
We welcome Sam Harris back to the show for a deep dive into Stanley Kubrick’s confounding 1968 masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey." How long is the Dawn of Man? What does the second monolith do
Episode 246: Existential Poker-Face (David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram")
4 Oct 2022
We dive into David Foster Wallace’s sprawling 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” How do TV and new forms of media keep their hold on us when we know at some level that
Episode 245: Pragmatically Speaking
20 Sep 2022
David and Tamler take their first real look at pragmatism via Richard Rorty’s “Solidarity or Objectivity.” Can we discover facts about the world as it “really is,” independent of our own
Episode 244: Thanks for the Memories? (Borges' "Funes the Memorious)
6 Sep 2022
David and Tamler return to Borges land to get lost in the infinite, this time with his legendary and tragic character Funes the memorious. What would it be like to have perfect memory, to have full
Episode 243: Finding My Religion
16 Aug 2022
David and Tamler continue their discussion of Leo Tolstoy’s 'Confession.' When we left him last time, the famous author had bottomed out just years after writing two of the greatest novels ever
Bonus Episode: The Ambulators (A "Deadwood" Podcast)
9 Aug 2022
We have a sneak peek for our listeners--the first episode our new Patreon bonus series on David Milch's brilliant (but short-lived) series "Deadwood." In this inaugural edition of "The Ambulators"
Episode 242: Losing My Religion
2 Aug 2022
David and Tamler find themselves unable to attach rational meaning to a single act in their entire lives. Let’s say we publish more articles and books. What then? What about our kids? They’re
Episode 241: Very Bad Orgies (Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut")
19 Jul 2022
David and Tamler mask up and wander through the audio and visual orgy of Stanley Kubrick’s final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut. What is this movie really about? Dreams? Wealth and power? Marriage?
Episode 240: Evil
6 Jul 2022
David and Tamler descend into the dark pits of Hell to look Satan in the eyes and discover the nature of evil. OK…that’s not fully accurate, we just read and talk about a couple of philosophy
Episode 239: Lose Yourself
21 Jun 2022
David and Tamler lose themselves in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (pr. ‘chick sent me high’) classic paper on the concept of flow. We talk about the features of flow activities – loss of ego, the
Episode 238: I Am Not Ivan Ilyich...Am I?
7 Jun 2022
Ivan Ilyich is a man. All men are mortal. So Ivan Ilyich is mortal. Sure absolutely, that’s true for Ivan Ilyich and for all men. But we’re not Ivan Ilyich and we’re not ‘all men’- so what
Episode 237: Glitches Ain't Shit
24 May 2022
David and Tamler explore the many variations of simulation theory, the view that our universe is just a computer generated model created by an advanced civilization that has reached “technological
Episode 236: Your Outie Is Skilled at Lovemaking (With Paul Bloom)
3 May 2022
We welcome Paul Bloom to talk about the first season of "Severance," the new mind-bending and mind-splitting TV series on Apple TV+. What happens when you separate your home life from your work life?
Episode 235: Animated Objects
19 Apr 2022
Panpsychism didn't give us river spirits or mischievous sootballs, so this time we go straight to the source - a defense of animism, and in a top 10 analytic philosophy journal. Could a failed
Episode 234: Like A Dog (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 2)
5 Apr 2022
David and Tamler conclude their discussion of "The Trial," Franz Kafka's darkly comic vision of an opaque and impenetrable bureaucracy that comes for us all in the end. Plus we interrupt our
Episode 233: Keeping It Surreal (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 1)
22 Mar 2022
David and Tamler wander through the bewildering dream-like world of Franz Kafka’s "The Trial." In part one of a two-part discussion we discuss the circumstances of its publication, the various
Episode 232: Mind Over Matter
8 Mar 2022
It’s the topic voted on by our beloved Patreon patrons, panpsychism! David and Tamler delve into the resurgent debate over whether consciousness is the fundamental stuff that makes up the universe.
Episode 231: Ideal Critics (Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste")
22 Feb 2022
Many of us think that art is subjective, but at the same time it seems like some artistic judgments are better than others. Do you think Crash deserved to receive an award for Best Picture? Did you
Episode 230: Be Happy (Lars von Trier's "Melancholia")
8 Feb 2022
David and Tamler sink deeper and deeper into Melancholia, Lars von Trier’s harrowing and stunningly beautiful depiction of depression, anxiety, and a wedding reception that just won’t end. They
Episode 229: Skin Deep?
25 Jan 2022
We think racism is wrong but what about “lookism” – a bias that favors attractive people over unattractive ones? If it’s wrong to judge people by the color of their skin, what about judging
Episode 228: Forever Jung
11 Jan 2022
David and Tamler confront their shadows and dive into Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. What are the central differences between Jung and Freud? What did Jung mean by archetypes and
Episode 227: A Terrible Master (David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water").
21 Dec 2021
David and Tamler dive into David Foster Wallace’s celebrated and surprisingly earnest Kenyon College commencement speech “This is Water”. How can we escape the prison and prism of our
Episode 226: Unraveling Time Traveling (with Barry Lam and Christina Hoff Sommers)
7 Dec 2021
First, it’s the return of the annual drunken Thanksgiving segment! Tamler and based wicked stepmom Christina Hoff Sommers fight about JFK, systematic racism, corporations, and how to pronounce
Episode 225: Forbidden Modules
16 Nov 2021
David and Tamler talk about the often rancorous debate among cognitive scientists and evolutionary psychologists over whether the mind is modular -- composed of discrete systems responsible for
Episode 224: Hurts So Good (With Paul Bloom)
2 Nov 2021
VBW favorite Paul Bloom joins us to talk about the pleasures of suffering, flow states, Sisyphus, meaning, and dating questions. Check out his new book The Sweet Spot which comes out today! Plus what
Episode 223: The Hopeless Dream of Being (Bergman's "Persona")
19 Oct 2021
David and Tamler dive into Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona, a film about two (?) women, Elisabet, a famous stage actress who has stopped speaking, and Alma the chatty young nurse assigned
Episode 222: Choosing Sartre for All Mankind
5 Oct 2021
David and Tamler don black turtlenecks and light up a couple of Gauloises to talk about Jean Paul Sartre's classic essay “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Why are choices so fundamental to our
Episode 221: Granite Cocks vs Robot Overlords
21 Sep 2021
David and Tamler wind their way through the long-requested “Meditations on Moloch” by Scott Alexander, a comprehensive account of the coordination problems (personified by Allan Ginsberg’s