Episode 198: Is Mental Illness a Myth? (Thomas Szasz's "The Myth of Mental Illness")

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 two...

25 Marras 20251h 29min

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 also ...

11 Marras 20251h 29min

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 from no...

28 Loka 20251h 35min

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 co...

14 Loka 20251h 48min

What is the psychology of shame? Is the experience of shame a human universal? How can we investigate the nature of shame across cultures? David and Tamler dive into Richard Shweder's "Towards a Deep ...

30 Syys 20251h 23min

David and Tamler go big game hunting and explore their first Hemingway short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." We dig into his characteristic themes of courage, cowardice, shifting pow...

16 Syys 20251h 33min

David and Tamler tackle the topic chosen by our beloved Patreon supporters in the first VBW madness tournament – Schopenhauer. We discuss his essays "On the Sufferings of the World" and "The Vanity of...

2 Syys 20251h 30min

David and Tamler go long on McDonagh's 2008 masterpiece "In Bruges." We talk about the terrific performances and all the weighty themes - sin, guilt, redemption, honor, language, and very inappropriat...

12 Elo 20251h 58min