Episode 86: Guns, Shame, and the Meaning of Punishment

David and Tamler return to the work of old favorite William James and argue about the 6th lecture (inspired by the French philosopher Henri Bergson) of his 1909 book "A Pluralistic Universe." James at...

22 Aug 20231h 12min

Last December, with Argentina minutes away from a World Cup championship, friend of the show Yoel texted David "congratulations." David was furious, and soon after (with less than 2 minutes left in ex...

8 Aug 20231h 22min

The Summer of Cormac McCarthy continues – this time we dive into his one piece of non-fiction, the short essay "The Kekulé Problem." How does our unconscious mind solve problems that conscious deliber...

25 Juli 20231h 20min

A new mini-series with Tamler Sommers and Robert Wright on the range of politically acceptable discourse for a given topic and how this "Overton window" changes over time. This episode is available f...

18 Juli 20231h 8min

David and Tamler dive into the Coen brothers' bleak and beautiful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel "No Country for Old Men." What's the underlying philosophy that animates Anton Chigurh? Doe...

11 Juli 20232h 10min

A VBW exclusive report! For years David and Tamler have been a little dismissive of fears about cancel culture in academia but now the SJWs have come for one of our own! We welcome back Yoel Inbar to ...

27 Juni 20231h 35min

David and Tamler dive into the first two parts of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil which contain some of Nietzsche's best drive-bys on philosophers like Plato, Descartes, the Stoics, Kant, and Hegel a...

13 Juni 20231h 28min

What's the meaning of a work of art? Does the text mean just what the author intends it to mean? Does it matter what Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark thinks about the end of 2001? Or is the artist's interp...

30 Maj 20231h 22min