Very Bad Wizards

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 Okt 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 Okt 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 Sep 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 Sep 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 Sep 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 Aug 20251h 58min

David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the metaphysics of past and future via the Borges essay(s) "A New Refutation of Time." What does it mean to be a time skeptic or a time realist for that...

29 Jul 20251h 15min

David and Tamler return to David Hume's somewhat slippery brand of skepticism, this time focusing Chapter 12 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Plus speaking of things to be skeptical abou...

15 Jul 20251h 16min