Episode 264: The Rule You Follow (The Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men")
Very Bad Wizards11 Heinä 2023

Episode 264: The Rule You Follow (The Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men")

David and Tamler dive into the Coen brothers' bleak and beautiful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel "No Country for Old Men." What's the underlying philosophy that animates Anton Chigurh? Does he have a code of any kind, or is he just a ghostly symbol of human brutality and a pitiless indifferent universe? Does he represent a new kind of evil or is Sheriff Bell just getting old? What elements, if any, in the film are more dream than reality?

And speaking of moral decline, a new Nature study claims that we have the illusory belief that people are getting worse - but can they really establish that it's an illusion?

Mastroianni, A. M., & Gilbert, D. T. (2023). The illusion of moral decline. Nature, 1-8.

Mastroianni blog post about the illusion of moral decline

No Country for Old Men (movie) [wikipedia.org]

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Episode 260: The Scream That Never Found a Voice (Murakami's "Sleep")

Episode 260: The Scream That Never Found a Voice (Murakami's "Sleep")

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 terri...

9 Touko 20231h 29min

Episode 259: Losing Time ("Tár" with Paul Bloom)

Episode 259: Losing Time ("Tár" with Paul Bloom)

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? Professional disapp...

25 Huhti 20231h 56min

Episode 258: Mystic Peeza

Episode 258: Mystic Peeza

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 a s...

11 Huhti 20231h 33min

Episode 257: Aural Fixation

Episode 257: Aural Fixation

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 day...

28 Maalis 20231h 39min

Episode 256: The Right to Punish?

Episode 256: The Right to Punish?

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 Murphy's 1...

14 Maalis 20231h 36min

Episode 255: Beloved Child of the House (Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi")

Episode 255: Beloved Child of the House (Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi")

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 conve...

28 Helmi 20231h 43min

Episode 254: Nobody's Parfit

Episode 254: Nobody's Parfit

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 identity. O...

14 Helmi 20231h 19min

Episode 253: Tarkovsky's Starchild

Episode 253: Tarkovsky's Starchild

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 cordoned o...

31 Tammi 20232h 8min

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