Episode 225: Forbidden Modules
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 vision...
16 Nov 20211h 42min
Episode 224: Hurts So Good (With Paul Bloom)
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 ...
2 Nov 20211h 42min
Episode 223: The Hopeless Dream of Being (Bergman's "Persona")
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 to...
19 Okt 20211h 28min
Episode 222: Choosing Sartre for All Mankind
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 experienc...
5 Okt 20211h 37min
Episode 221: Granite Cocks vs Robot Overlords
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 demon-entit...
21 Sep 20211h 50min
Episode 220: On Your Marx
In honor of Labor Day, David and Tamler dive into two works by Karl Marx - "The Communist Manifesto" and "Estranged Labor." What is Marx's theory of historical change? Why does capitalism produce an a...
7 Sep 20211h 50min
Episode 219: Multiplied by Mirrors
It's a Borges bonanza! David and Tamler dive into two stories: "Emma Zunz" and "Borges and I." The first seems like a straightforward daughter revenge story (Tamler's favorite genre), but Borges being...
17 Aug 20211h 45min
Episode 218: ...But You Can't Hide (Michael Haneke's "Caché")
David and Tamler go deep on Michael Haneke's unnerving psychological thriller Caché. An upper middle class French intellectual couple receives mysterious videotapes of the exterior of their house, for...
3 Aug 20211h 59min
