Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1)

Episode 5: Revenge, Pt. 2: The Revenge: Dave and Tamler continue their discussion about their favorite topic. They talk about the evolutionary origins of retributive behavior, cross-cultural differences in revenge norms, and the proportionate punishment for someone who gives your wife a foot massage. They also play a clip from an interview they conducted in Nosara with local attorney Andres Gonzalez about the Costa Rican treatment of the criminals they call ‘pobrecitos.’ by Very Bad Wizards

65 min listen

Episode 2: The "Dangerous Truth" about Free Will (Free Will and Morality, Pt. 2): Tamler and David discuss whether giving up our belief in free will makes us more likely to abandon our moral standards. by Very Bad Wizards

74 min listen

Episode 10: Religion, Meaning, and Morality: Does life have meaning if there is no God? Why should I be a good person if there's no reward or punishment waiting for me in the afterlife? Why does religion seem to make people happier and healthier? Dave and Tamler heroically try to answer these questions without being stoned. by Very Bad Wizards

59 min listen

Episode 7: Psychopaths and Utilitarians Pt. 2 (Now with more poo poo): Tamler and David continue their discussion of utilitarian psychopaths (and psychopathic utilitarians), then broaden the discussion to include disgust and empathy. In the end, they resolve all questions about the proper role of emotions in moral judgment. by Very Bad Wizards

67 min listen

Episode 35: Douchebags and Desert: Dave and Tamler talk about the influence of character judgments on attributions of blame. What is the function of the blame--to assign responsibility or to judge a person's character? Is it fair that we blame douchebags more than good people who commit exactly the same act, or is it yet another cognitive bias that should be avoided? by Very Bad Wizards

61 min listen

Episode 25: Burning Armchairs (with Joshua Knobe): Josh Knobe, the Michael Corleone of experimental philosophy, joins us to talk about taking philosophy into the lab and the streets. We discuss how people moralize everyday concepts like intention, causation, and innateness. Dave wonders if X-phi people are just doing social psychology, and Tamler tries his best to get Josh mad with his critique of Josh's experimental work on free will. by Very Bad Wizards

58 min listen

Episode 28: Moral Persuasion: Dave and Tamler try their best to do a show without guests--we talk about moral persuasion, motivated reasoning, and whether it's legitimate to use emotionally charged rhetoric in a philosophical argument. Plus, we describe how students proceed through the "Stages-of-Singer," and Tamler finally defends himself against Dave's slanderous accusation of hypocrisy about animal welfare. by Very Bad Wizards

69 min listen

Episode 12: Justice for #!$@ ?: Dave and Tamler square off the role of the victim in criminal punishment and find little to agree about. Tamler defends the restorative justice approach, while Dave expresses skepticism about its value and worries it might even be damaging. by Very Bad Wizards

73 min listen

Episode 26: Evolution and Sexual Perversion (with Jesse Bering): Psychologist and author Jesse Bering joins us to talk about evolutionary psychology and his forthcoming book "Perv." In the relatively uncontroversial part of the episode, we ask if homophobia is an adaptation and if women have evolved rape defenses. After that, sex with animals, sex with bookshelves, foot fetishes, amputee fetishes, falling down the stairs fetishes... I don't know, just listen. by Very Bad Wizards

82 min listen

Episode 3: "We believe in nothing!" (Cultural diversity, relativism, and moral truth): Tamler and Dave discuss recent work in philosophy and psychology about the differences in moral values and practices across cultures. by Very Bad Wizards

62 min listen

Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1): Dave and Tamler talk about the new wave of skepticism about free will and moral responsibility in the popular press from people like Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne, and argue that neuroscientific data adds little of substance to the case other than telling us what we already know: human beings are natural biological entities. Dave comes out as a Star Trek nerd and asks whether we're all, in the end, like Data the android. They also wonder whether a belief in free will is all that's keeping us from having sex with our dogs. Finally, Dave grills Tamler about his new book on the differences in attitudes about free will and moral responsibility across cultures. by Very Bad Wizards

71 min listen

Episode 16: Race, Reparations, and American (In)Justice (with Damani McDole): For those who thought our most uncomfortable topics were behind us, on this episode we are joined by David's childhood friend Damani McDole to discuss several potentially offensive topics surrounding race and justice in America, such as slavery, reparations, affirmative action, and the use of the n-word. by Very Bad Wizards

60 min listen

Episode 4: Revenge, Pt. 1: Dave allows Tamler to rant about Sam Harris’s straw man attacks on moral relativism before launching into discussion about revenge, justice, "True Grit," and Michael Dukakis. Though they differ on many issues, Tamler and Dave agree that it’s hard to satirize a guy with shiny boots. by Very Bad Wizards

52 min listen

Episode 9: Social Psychology, Situationism, and Moral Character: After discussing some listener feedback about the movie Swingers, Tamler and David talk about two classic experiments in social psychology: the Milgram Experiments and the Zimbardo Prison experiment. They discuss the power of the situation, its influence on recent philosophy, and whether there is room to believe in moral character and virtue. Also, Tamler admits to his former struggles with hard core street drugs, and Dave ponders which prison gang would be most accepting if he had to serve hard time. by Very Bad Wizards

69 min listen

Episode 24: The Perils of Empathy (with Paul Bloom): Paul Bloom joins us in the second segment for a lively discussion about the value of  empathy as a guide our moral decisions. And in our first scoop, we talk about Paul's new book "Just Babies: The Origin of Good and Evil,"racist babies, and how 80s sitcoms changed the world. by Very Bad Wizards

83 min listen

Episode 13: Beanballs, Blood Feuds, and Collective Moral Responsibility (With Fiery Cushman): Our classiest episode yet (OK, that's not saying much, but still...)--Psychologist Fiery Cushman joins us for a discussion about collective punishment and collective responsibility. We use Fiery's recent paper on the practice of "beaning" in baseball (punishing one player for a teammate's offense by throwing a 95 MPH fastball at the player's head) to illustrate the phenomenon. by Very Bad Wizards

60 min listen

Episode 11: It is Morally Wrong to Kill Morgan Freeman (with Yoel Inbar): Social psychologist Yoel Inbar joins Tamler and David to discuss Clint Eastwood's masterpiece of the Western genre: "Unforgiven." The discussion includes the nature of revenge, the requirements of justice, the rules of nicknaming, and who or what was being referred to as "unforgiven" in the movie's title. by Very Bad Wizards

76 min listen

Episode 36: An Irresponsible Meta-Book Review of Joshua Greene's "Moral Tribes": Our most irresponsible episode ever! Dave and Tamler talk about two reviews of a book they haven't read--Joshua Greene's "Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them"--and feel only a little shame. by Very Bad Wizards

55 min listen

Episode 21: Grad School: Dave and Tamler shrug off inside baseball concerns and argue whether to go to grad school, what to do when you get there, and share horror stories about the job market. by Very Bad Wizards

93 min listen

Episode 8: Dishonesty, Character, and Dan Ariely: In a very special episode of Very Bad Wizards, Dan Ariely joins David to chat about cheating, character, and the importance of moral rules. Tamler and David sandwich the chat with a discussion about the US Presidential election, the irony of moral psychologists making people do bad things, and end with a full-blown argument about what it means to say that something is morally wrong. by Very Bad Wizards

71 min listen

Episode 6: Trolleys, Utilitarians, and Psychopaths (Part 1): Tamler contemplates ending it all because he can't get 'Call Me Maybe' out of his head, and Dave doesn't try to talk him out of it. This is followed by a discussion about drones, psychopaths, Canadians, Elle Fanning, horrible moral dilemmas, and the biggest rivalry in Ethics: utilitarians vs. Kantians. by Very Bad Wizards

62 min listen

Episode 15: The Burning Bridges Episode (Pt. 1): You don't need to be a psychologist or a philosopher to enjoy a good, old-fashioned bitch-fest. In the first of a two-part episode (no single compact disc, 8-track, or LP could hold all our complaints), Tamler and David list two of the things that bug them about their respective fields. We take issue with bad writing, brain worship, meaningless questions, and psychologists' obsession with the number two. Enjoy and try not to hold it against us. by Very Bad Wizards

54 min listen

Episode 22: An Enquiry Concerning Slurs and Offensiveness: In what might very well be the last episode before we're pulled off the air, Tamler outlines his data-free "theory" of what makes something offensive. What makes a joke about race, ethnicity, gender, disability funny sometimes, and deeply hurtful at other times? by Very Bad Wizards

64 min listen

Episode 19: The Burning Bridges Episode (Pt. 2): Re-recording a not-so-tragically lost episode (it kinda sucked), Dave and Tamler talk about the things they hate most about philosophy and psychology. by Very Bad Wizards

63 min listen

Episode 14: Bonus Episode on Snitches, Tattletales, and Whistleblowers: In a break from tradition, we recorded a 25-minute episode on the morality of tattletaling, snitching, ratting, and whistleblowing. We discuss why these people seem especially despicable (except for maybe "Bubbles" from "The Wire" and the guy from "The Insider"), and David gets Tamler to agree that he'd never turn him into the police. by Very Bad Wizards

27 min listen

Episode 27: You, Your Self, and Your Brain (With Eddy Nahmias): Our streak of very special guests continues! Philosopher Eddy Nahmias joins the podcast to us why people mistakenly think they're not morally responsible, and how his new study casts doubt on Sam Harris's view on free will. Eddy also describes his new project (with Toni Adleberg and Morgan Thompson) on why women leave philosophy. by Very Bad Wizards

82 min listen

Episode 30: The Greatest Books Ever Written: Dave and Tamler celebrate their one year anniversary and 30th episode with one of their least cynical episodes yet. They talk about 5 philosophy/psychology(-ish) books that influenced and inspired them throughout the years. by Very Bad Wizards

72 min listen

Episode 33: Monkeys, Smurfs, and Human Conformity (With Laurie Santos): Special guest Laurie Santos (Psychology, Yale) joins us to talk about what animal cognition can tell us about human nature. Why are other primates better at resisting the misleading influence of others than humans? Is conformity a byproduct of our sophisticated cultural learning capacities? Are we more like Chimpanzees or Bonobos? Why does Dave spend so much time writing Smurf fan fiction? by Very Bad Wizards

57 min listen

Episode 34: Does Reading Harry Potter Make You Moral? (with Will Wilkinson): Special guest Will Wilkinson joins the podcast to talk about whether fiction makes us better people, and to discuss his recent Daily Beast article that trashed Dave's profession and livelihood. by Very Bad Wizards

74 min listen

Episode 23: Straw Dogs (with Yoel Inbar): Dave, Tamler, and special guest Yoel Inbar break down Sam Peckinpah's brilliant (at least according  to one of us) 1971 film Straw Dogs. by Very Bad Wizards

76 min listen

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Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1)

Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1)

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