Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler return to one of their favorites, Frans Kafka, this time on his beautiful and dist...
Episode 319: The Shadow of the Object (Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia")
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler transfer their libidinal energy to Freud's 1917 article "Mourning and Melancholia,"...
Episode 318: A PTA Meeting
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler share some brief thoughts about Paul Thomas Anderson's latest masterpiece One Battl...
Episode 317: For Shame
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is the psychology of shame? Is the experience of shame a human universal? How can we investiga...
Episode 316: A Four-Letter Man (Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber")
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler go big game hunting and explore their first Hemingway short story "The Short Happy ...
Episode 315: Ceaseless Striving (Schopenhauer's Pessimism)
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler tackle the topic chosen by our beloved Patreon supporters in the first VBW madness ...
Episode 314: The In-Betweeny Place
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler go long on McDonagh's 2008 masterpiece "In Bruges." We talk about the terrific perf...
Episode 313: The Spontaneous Eruption of Now
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the metaphysics of past and future via the Borges e...
Episode 312: MechaSkeptic
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler return to David Hume's somewhat slippery brand of skepticism, this time focusing C...
Episode 311: The Way to Dusty Death (Shakespeare's "Macbeth")
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler screw their courage to the sticking place and talk about their first Shakespeare pl...
Episode 310: Bayes, Brains, and Buddhists
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the predictive processing theory of the mind and bra...
Episode 309: Dissolving Into the One
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler heed the call to journey into the realm of Joseph Campbell. What are the unifying e...
Bonus Episode: Va Va Boom (Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly")
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We kick off our Bonus "Noir Summer" series with Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly" (1956). While the ...
Episode 308: The Gray Man who Dreamed (Borges' "Shakespeare's Memory")
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler return to their happy place and talk about two pieces by JL Borges – the story "...
Episode 307: What's in the BOX?
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler talk about two famous puzzles that for different reasons have bedeviled the rationa...
Episode 306: What to Expect When You're Expecting (David Lynch's "Eraserhead" with Barry Lam)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler welcome Barry Lam back to the show. In the first segment we violate one of our own ...
Episode 305: Emile Is the Name of the Goat (with Paul Bloom)
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
VBW favorite Paul Bloom joins us to break down the Severance season finale and season 2 in general. ...
Episode 304: The Planes Don't Land
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What has four thumbs and can effortlessly glide from the a priori to the a posteriori in a single ep...
Episode 303: Measure This
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows Tamler hates numbers but he's not the only one who worries about them. We talk about ...
Episode 302: Metaphysical Edging
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What makes something weird? What makes something eerie? David and Tamler wander into Mark Fisher's T...
Episode 301: Believing is Seeing?
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's Back 2 Basics: Psychology edition! Do coins look bigger to poor people? Do hills look steeper t...
Episode 300: If We Only Had A Brain
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler celebrate their 300th episode with a deep dive into the movie that inspired the pod...
Episode 299: Oh the Humility!
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler wrap up the new year talking about intellectual virtues and Rachel Fraser's excelle...
Episode 298: Pass the Peace Pipe
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we punish people? How did our punishment practices evolve and what is their primary function?...
Episode 297: No Pleasure in Meanness (Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find")
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler face off with the Misfit in Flannery O'Connor's classic short story "A Good Man is ...
Episode 296: The Other CRT
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler share a few brief thoughts on the election and then raise some questions about Tuck...
Episode 295: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler hop into their Scooby Van and drive into Tobe Hooper's mad and macabre horror class...
Episode 294: The Scandal of Philosophy (Hume's Problem of Induction)
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
CD Broad called induction "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." As a matter of habit...
Episode 293: Who Is the Dreamer? (Borges' "The Circular Ruins")
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler crawl up a riverbank, kiss the mud, and dream a discussion of Borges' "The Circula...
Episode 292: Boundary Issues
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler lead off with a breakdown of the new commercial for "friend (not imaginary)" a new...
Episode 291: Shoe Shining
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Cornell philosopher David Shoemaker joins us for a long winding journey up to the Overlook Hotel, a ...
Episode 290: Blinded by the Light (Plato's Cave Pt. 2)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler continue their discussion of Plato's allegory of the cave. We talk about the connec...
Episode 289: Shadows on the Wall (Plato's Cave Pt. 1)
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the years we've referred repeatedly to Plato's cave, Platonic forms, and phrases like "copies o...
Episode 288: The Despised Foot (The Denial of Death Pt. 2)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler conclude their discussion of Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death. We talk about Be...
Episode 287: Gods With Anuses (The Denial of Death Pt. 1)
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David faces his greatest fear as he and Tamler dive into Ernest Becker's 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner...
Episode 286: Laugh and the World Laughs With You
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler dive into the mysteries at the heart of Park Chan-wook's deeply disturbing masterp...
Episode 285: On Culture and Agriculture
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's an old-school episode as David and Tamler dive into some intriguing research on the origins of...
Episode 284: Reel Choices
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler choose an episode topic that will define the identity and meaning of the Very Bad ...
Episode 283: When Elephants Podcast
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler talk about Caitrin Keiper's wonderful sprawling essay on elephant life and society ...
Episode 282: Fearful Symmetry (Borges' "Death and the Compass")
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Rabbi is found dead in a hotel room, stabbed in the chest. The room is filled with Kabbalah texts...
Episode 281: Choose Your Fighter
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We dig into the biggest rivalry in Tamler's profession, analytic vs. continental philosophy. Are an...
Episode 280: Mad Masque (with Phil Ford and J.F. Martel)
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Phil Ford and J.F. Martel from the great "Weird Studies" podcast join us for a whirling discussion o...
Episode 279: The Greenhouses We Burned Along the Way (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 2)
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler conclude their discussion of Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" – we talk about the hunge...
Episode 278: Schrödinger's Everything (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 1)
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler fall under the spell of Lee Chang-dong's 2018 masterpiece Burning, a movie where n...
Episode 277: The Merits of Buggery (Nagel's "Sexual Perversion")
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler play the old hits – Thomas Nagel and sex robots. In the main segment we talk abou...
Episode 276: Attention Please
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on Wil...
Episode 275: The Ineffable Center (Borges' "The Aleph")
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An episode interesting from every point of view, we train our eyes on Jorge Luis Borges' "The Aleph....
Episode 274: Can I Get a Kidney Voucher? (with Vlad Chituc)
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
RETURNING guest Vlad Chituc joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about donating his kidney to a st...
Episode 273: Ah. Ah. (Miyazaki's "Spirited Away")
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler board the train for Hayao Miyazaki's mystical dreamy coming of age masterpiece Spir...
Episode 272: Neigh Means Yay
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The morality of zoophilia has received shockingly little attention in contemporary ethical discours...
Episode 271: Concept-Con 2023
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's the first annual "Concept-Con" – a not at all cringe episode where David and Tamler apply the...
Episode 270: Take Me to the River (Blood Meridian, Pt. 3)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler conclude their three-part discussion of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. We talk a...
Episode 269: Death Hilarious (Blood Meridian, Pt. 2)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In part 2 of our journey into Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Tamler and David talk about the kid...
Episode 268: Blood Meridian, Part 1
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In part one of our two-part episode on Cormac McCarthy's blood-soaked phantasmagorical 1985 masterpi...
Episode 267: The Thickness of Reality
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler return to the work of old favorite William James and argue about the 6th lecture (i...
Episode 266: I Want to Half-Believe
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last December, with Argentina minutes away from a World Cup championship, friend of the show Yoel te...
Episode 265: Kekulé (Oh Yeah!)
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Summer of Cormac McCarthy continues – this time we dive into his one piece of non-fiction, th...
[BONUS] Overton Windows Episode 1: Israel and Palestine
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A new mini-series with Tamler Sommers and Robert Wright on the range of politically acceptable disc...
Episode 264: The Rule You Follow (The Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men")
11 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler dive into the Coen brothers' bleak and beautiful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 20...
Episode 263: Free Yoel
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A VBW exclusive report! For years David and Tamler have been a little dismissive of fears about canc...
Episode 262: Supposing Truth is a Woman (Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil")
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler dive into the first two parts of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil which contain som...
Episode 261: Death of the Author
30 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What's the meaning of a work of art? Does the text mean just what the author intends it to mean? Doe...
Episode 260: The Scream That Never Found a Voice (Murakami's "Sleep")
09 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler take the first excursion into the work of Haruki Murakami and talk about his short ...
Episode 259: Losing Time ("Tár" with Paul Bloom)
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The great Paul Bloom returns to the show to explore the many mysteries of Todd Field's 2022 film "Tá...
Episode 258: Mystic Peeza
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler talk about William James' chapter on mysticism from his book "Varieties of Religiou...
Episode 257: Aural Fixation
28 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler deliver a PODCAST episode, one of many that comes from the INTERNET, that you'll pr...
Episode 256: The Right to Punish?
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Here's an episode with something for both of us – a healthy serving of Kantian rationalism for Dav...
Episode 255: Beloved Child of the House (Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi")
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler get lost in the world of Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi," a hauntingly beautiful and th...
Episode 254: Nobody's Parfit
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tamler's earlier self committed to doing an episode on Parfit, and David holds his current self to t...
Episode 253: Tarkovsky's Starchild
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's the episode that Tamler has been waiting for – a long deep dive into Andrei Tarkovsky's myste...
Episode 252: Yes We Sene-can
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler dive into Seneca's "On the Happy Life" and stoicism, the topic selected by our belo...
Episode 251: First Order, Then Chaos
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler wind their way through another Borges story - "The Immortal"- about a Roman soldier...
Episode 250: Metaphors All the Way Down
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of metaphors as poetic flourishes, a nice way to punctuate your ideas and make them m...
Episode 249: Phlegm and Carelessness (Hume's "The Sceptic")
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler gild and stain David Hume’s essay “The Sceptic†with their sentime...
Episode 248: Checkmate, Grasshopper
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast we examine a recent argument for the view that chess is not, in fact, a game. We dis...
Episode 247: Open the Pod, Dave (with Sam Harris)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We welcome Sam Harris back to the show for a deep dive into Stanley Kubrick's confounding 1968 maste...
Episode 246: Existential Poker-Face (David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram")
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We dive into David Foster Wallace's sprawling 1993 essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Ficti...
Episode 245: Pragmatically Speaking
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler take their first real look at pragmatism via Richard Rorty's "Solidarity or Objecti...
Episode 244: Thanks for the Memories? (Borges' "Funes the Memorious)
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler return to Borges land to get lost in the infinite, this time with his legendary and...
Episode 243: Finding My Religion
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler continue their discussion of Leo Tolstoy's 'Confession.' When we left him last time...
Bonus Episode: The Ambulators (A "Deadwood" Podcast)
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We have a sneak peek for our listeners--the first episode our new Patreon bonus series on David Milc...
Episode 242: Losing My Religion
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler find themselves unable to attach rational meaning to a single act in their entire l...
Episode 241: Very Bad Orgies (Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut")
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler mask up and wander through the audio and visual orgy of Stanley Kubrick's final mas...
Episode 240: Evil
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler descend into the dark pits of Hell to look Satan in the eyes and discover the natur...
Episode 239: Lose Yourself
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler lose themselves in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's (pr. 'chick sent me high') classic pap...
Episode 238: I Am Not Ivan Ilyich...Am I?
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ivan Ilyich is a man. All men are mortal. So Ivan Ilyich is mortal. Sure absolutely, that's true for...
Episode 237: Glitches Ain't Shit
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler explore the many variations of simulation theory, the view that our universe is jus...
Episode 236: Your Outie Is Skilled at Lovemaking (With Paul Bloom)
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We welcome Paul Bloom to talk about the first season of "Severance," the new mind-bending and mind-s...
Episode 235: Animated Objects
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Panpsychism didn't give us river spirits or mischievous sootballs, so this time we go straight to th...
Episode 234: Like A Dog (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 2)
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler conclude their discussion of "The Trial," Franz Kafka's darkly comic vision of an o...
Episode 233: Keeping It Surreal (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 1)
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler wander through the bewildering dream-like world of Franz Kafka's "The Trial." In pa...
Episode 232: Mind Over Matter
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's the topic voted on by our beloved Patreon patrons, panpsychism! David and Tamler delve into the...
Episode 231: Ideal Critics (Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste")
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us think that art is subjective, but at the same time it seems like some artistic judgments ...
Episode 230: Be Happy (Lars von Trier's "Melancholia")
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler sink deeper and deeper into Melancholia, Lars von Trier's harrowing and stunningly ...
Episode 229: Skin Deep?
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We think racism is wrong but what about "lookism" – a bias that favors attractive people over unat...
Episode 228: Forever Jung
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler confront their shadows and dive into Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscio...
Episode 227: A Terrible Master (David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water").
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler dive into David Foster Wallace's celebrated and surprisingly earnest Kenyon College...
Episode 226: Unraveling Time Traveling (with Barry Lam and Christina Hoff Sommers)
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
First, it's the return of the annual drunken Thanksgiving segment! Tamler and based wicked stepmom C...
Episode 225: Forbidden Modules
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
David and Tamler talk about the often rancorous debate among cognitive scientists and evolutionary p...
Episode 224: Hurts So Good (With Paul Bloom)
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
VBW favorite Paul Bloom joins us to talk about the pleasures of suffering, flow states, Sisyphus, me...