Very Bad Wizards – Details, episodes & analysis

Cornell philosopher David Shoemaker joins us for a long winding journey up to the Overlook Hotel, a DEEP dive on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. We tackle all the big questions - is the hotel truly haunted? What if anything does it symbolize? Why are there two Gradys and two sets of daughters?  How does the filmmaking – and the Steadicam in particular - amplify our sense of dread?  Does Jack shine too? How does he get out of the storage closet? Is Shelly Duval’s performance actually brilliant? What the fuck is up with Bill? Should the Overlook have included a land acknowledgment? And lots more. Come listen to us, forever and ever and ever….

David Shoemaker's website [sites.google.com]

Wisecracks by David Shoemaker [amazon.com afilliate link]

Review of Wisecracks by Kieran Setiya [atlantic.com]

The Shining [wikipedia.org]

David and Tamler continue their discussion of Plato’s allegory of the cave. We talk about the connections with mystical traditions including Gnosticism, Sufism, and Buddhist paths to awakening. We also dig deeper into what Socrates calls ‘dialectic’ – what allows this method to journey towards the first principle (the Form of the Good) and then double back to justify the initial assumptions made at the start? And if only philosophers can embark on this journey, why does everyone think of them as useless and corrupt? 

Plus we look at some research that attempts to provide empirical support for ‘terror management theory’ which makes us yearn for the unfalsifiability of Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death.

Links

Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T., & Jahrig, J. (2007). Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(5), 789. [researchgate.net]

Many Labs 4: Failure to replicate Mortality Salience Effect With and Without Original Author Involvement [ucpress.edu]

Neoplatonism [wikipedia.org]

Neoplatonism and Gnosticism [wikipedia.org]

Plato's Unwritten Doctrines [wikipedia.org]

We dig into the biggest rivalry in Tamler’s profession, analytic vs. continental philosophy. Are analytic philosophers truly the rigorous, precise, clear thinkers they take themselves to be? And is continental philosophy really just a bunch pretentious charlatans spouting French and German gibberish and writing obscure prose to mask the incoherence of their ideas? We look at a nice paper by Neil Levy that goes beyond the stereotypes and tries to describe and explain the differences between the two schools.

Plus, The University of Austin (sic) is back in the news and we have a report from someone who attended one of their Forbidden Courses. This should be so easy but the article has us deeply conflicted about what to make fun of.

[Important update: Trixie is on a 5 day streak of no accidents and is a perfect little sweet girl.]

Links:

An American Education: Notes from UATX by Noah Rawlings

Levy, N. (2003). Analytic and continental philosophy: Explaining the differences. Metaphilosophy, 34(3), 284-304.

David and Tamler want to go old school and discuss a classic Frankfurt paper on free will. But do they want to want that? Are they free to want what they want to want? Are they free to will what they want to will or to have the will they want?

And if that’s not Dr. Seuss enough for you, shouting “FUCK” increases pain tolerance but what about shouting “TWIZPIPE”?

Sponsored By:

• BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting Betterhelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

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Links:

• Repeating the “F” word can improve threshold for pain during an ice water challenge
• Frontiers | Swearing as a Response to Pain: Assessing Hypoalgesic Effects of Novel “Swear” Words | Psychology
• Very Bad Wizards has a new shirt! [CottonBureau.com]
• Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person by Harry Frankfurt

David and Tamler dive into “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” a very funny Borges story that also raises deep questions about authorship, reading, and interpretation. What would it mean for the same text to be written by two different authors more than three hundred years apart? Is this story the post-modernist manifesto that literary critics like Roland Barthes believed it to be? Or is the narrator in the story just a delusional sycophant, a victim of Menard’s practical joke – and the story by extension, a practical joke by Borges on the post-modernist movement to come?

Plus, My Little Pony fans finally confront their Nazi problem. 

Sponsored By:

• BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting Betterhelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

Support Very Bad Wizards

Links:

• 'My Little Pony' Fans Confront Their Nazi Problem - The Atlantic
• Very Bad Wizards has a new shirt! [CottonBureau.com]
• Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote - Wikipedia
• The Brothers Karmazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) — This is the edition we will be reading from in our upcoming miniseries.

A lotta anger out there right now, but does it do more harm than good? Is anger counterproductive, an obstacle to progress? And even when it is, can anger be appropriate anway? We talk about two excellent articles by the philosopher Amia Srinivasan criticizing anger's critics. Plus we express some counterproductive anger of our own at the IDWs response to the protests.  

Sponsored By:

• The Great Courses Plus: Never stop learning. Pursue your passion. Quench your curiosity. Embark on an educational endeavor. Watch thousands of streaming videos on hundreds of subjects. Promo Code: wizards

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Links:

• Would Politics Be Better Off Without Anger? | The Nation
• Welcome
• Srinivasan, A. (2018) The Aptness of Anger, Journal of Political Philosophy. Reprinted in the Philosopher’s Annual.

David and Tamler talk about police violence, the protests, and Harry Frankfurt's journal article turned bestseller ”On Bullshit." Plus we dive into a comic masterpiece of late capitalism: the University of Oregon's brand guidelines.

Sponsored By:

• The Great Courses Plus: Never stop learning. Pursue your passion. Quench your curiosity. Embark on an educational endeavor. Watch thousands of streaming videos on hundreds of subjects. Promo Code: wizards

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Links:

• Brand and Style | University Communications
• The Black Goat – A podcast about doing science
• Two Psychologists Four Beers Episode 46: Very Good Men (with Very Bad Wizards)
• Break Music: Seven Minutes by peez
• On Bullshit - Wikipedia
• Frankfurt, H. (2005) On Bullshit. Princeton University Press.

David and Tamler dive into Sigmund Freud’s world of unconscious drives, death instincts, and thwarted incestuous urges in his classic text “Civilization and its Discontents.” If society has made so much progress, why are human beings perpetually dissatisfied? Can religion help us or is it a big part of the problem? What’s really going on when you piss on a fire to put it out? Also: how seriously should we take Freud today given some of his wackier ideas? And is he a psychologist, a philosopher, or something else entirely?

Plus we select the finalists from a huge list of suggested topics for the Patreon listener-selected episode!

Sponsored By:

• BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting Betterhelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

Support Very Bad Wizards

Links:

• Anal retentiveness - Wikipedia
• Anal expulsiveness - Wikipedia
• Psychosexual development - Wikipedia
• Civilization and Its Discontents - Wikipedia

Socrates was ugly and tired of life, so he made a tyrant of reason. Philosophers are mummies who hate the body and the senses. Reason is a tricky old woman. Morality is a misunderstanding. Kant is a sneaky Christian. And don't even get Nietzsche started on "free will" or the "self" - just excuse for priests to punish people, a hangman's metaphysics. David and Tamler dive into Friedrich Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, a fascinating set of aphorisms brimming with passion, provocation, questions without answers.

Plus, a professor is sanctioned for sex talk with his students - fair or coddling foul?

Sponsored By:

• BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting Betterhelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

Support Very Bad Wizards

Links:

• George Mason University investigation faults professor for sexual talk with students in class and a hot tub, court records show - The Washington Post
• Nietzsche, F. "Twilight of the Idols" [amazon.com affiliate link] — This is the version we read, but there's a cheaper kindle version on Amazon if you search (at least on the US website).
• Twilight of the Idols - Wikipedia

With a global pandemic and a collapsing economy upon us, it's time to ask ourselves some tough questions. Sex robots or platonic love robots - what are you more excited for? If you walked in on your partner with one of them, which would make you more jealous? Are you male or female? Can evolutionary psychology explain sex-linked preferences for sensitive, empathetic Alexas? We then dive into the shadowy echo-filled streets of post-war Vienna - and talk about one of our favorite movies, a true noir classic: The Third Man.

Support Very Bad Wizards

Links:

• Frontiers | Friends, Lovers or Nothing: Men and Women Differ in Their Perceptions of Sex Robots and Platonic Love Robots | Psychology
• Break Music: Framed Your Eyes by peez
• The Third Man - Wikipedia
• Allied-occupied Austria - Wikipedia
• Dutch angle - Wikipedia