Episode 181: The Fraudulence Paradox (David Foster Wallace's "Good Old Neon")
Our whole lives we've been frauds. We're not exaggerating. Pretty much all we've ever done is try to create a certain impression of us in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. This episode is a...
28 Jan 20202h 9min
Episode 180: Chekhov's Schrödinger's Dagger (Kurosawa's "Rashomon")
Eleventh Century Japan. A samurai and his wife are walking through the forest and come across a bandit. The bandit attacks the samurai and has sex with/rapes his wife. A woodcutter finds the samurai, ...
14 Jan 20201h 56min
Episode 179: Talking Shit
David and Tamler wrap up the decade with an episode on trash-talking that morphs into a debate over the value of experimental inquiry. Participants in a lab put more effort into a slider task after th...
24 Dec 20192h 3min
Episode 178: Borges' Obsession-Obsession ("The Zahir")
David and Tamler happen across Jorge Luis Borges' "The Zahir" and now they can't stop thinking about it. What is the 'Zahir' – this object that can take many forms and that consumes the people who fin...
10 Dec 20191h 40min
Episode 177: Pure Linguistic Chauvinism
Tamler learns something new about menstruation. David weighs in on the democratic debates and the impeachment hearings. Then we map the various social and political factions onto the factions in our r...
26 Nov 20192h 4min
Episode 176: Split-Brains and the (Dis)Unity of Consciousness
David and Tamler discuss famous 'split brain' experiments pioneered by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. What happens when you cut off the main line of communication between the left and right hemis...
12 Nov 20191h 48min
Episode 175: At Least We Didn't Talk About Zombies (Nagel's "What is it Like to be a Bat?")
We try (with varying success) to wrap our heads around Thomas Nagel's classic article "What is it Like to be a Bat?" Does science have the tools to give us a theory of consciousness or is that project...
29 Okt 20191h 42min
Episode 174: More Chiang for Your Buck ("Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" Pt. 2)
Is character destiny, or can fluky decisions or tiny shifts in weather patterns fundamentally change who we are? Does the existence or non-existence of alternate universes have any bearing on freedom ...
15 Okt 20191h 46min
