Episode 300: If We Only Had A Brain
David and Tamler celebrate their 300th episode with a deep dive into the movie that inspired the podcast's title. Why is "The Wizard of Oz" the most influential American movie of all time? How does it...
14 Jan 20251h 48min
Episode 299: Oh the Humility!
David and Tamler wrap up the new year talking about intellectual virtues and Rachel Fraser's excellent essay "Against Humility." What is intellectual humility exactly and do we need it for knowledge a...
24 Dec 20242h 6min
Episode 298: Pass the Peace Pipe
Why do we punish people? How did our punishment practices evolve and what is their primary function? David and Tamler talk about a new paper that examines punitive justice in three small-scale societi...
10 Dec 20241h 20min
Episode 297: No Pleasure in Meanness (Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find")
David and Tamler face off with the Misfit in Flannery O'Connor's classic short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." We sort through the biblical allusions, dark comedy, nihilism, and the possibility of...
26 Nov 20241h 41min
Episode 296: The Other CRT
David and Tamler share a few brief thoughts on the election and then raise some questions about Tucker Carlson being attacked by a demon as he slept in the woods with his wife and four dogs (still don...
12 Nov 20241h 3min
Episode 295: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
David and Tamler hop into their Scooby Van and drive into Tobe Hooper's mad and macabre horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does this endlessly imitated movie still have the power to sca...
29 Okt 20241h 33min
Episode 294: The Scandal of Philosophy (Hume's Problem of Induction)
CD Broad called induction "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." As a matter of habit, we're all confident that the sun will rise tomorrow morning and that we can predict where the plan...
8 Okt 20241h 13min
Episode 293: Who Is the Dreamer? (Borges' "The Circular Ruins")
David and Tamler crawl up a riverbank, kiss the mud, and dream a discussion of Borges' "The Circular Ruins." We sort through various interpretations and allusions, the story as a metaphor for artistic...
24 Sep 20241h 25min
