Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchReach-Around Knowledge and Bottom Performers (The Dunning-Kruger Effect)
Episode 161
The less we know, the more we know it. David and Tamler talk about the notorious Dunning-Kruger effect, which makes us overconfident in beliefs on to…
7 years, 3 months ago
Everything is Meaningless: The Book of Ecclesiastes
Episode 160
David and Tamler dive into the book of Ecclesiastes, an absurdist classic that is somehow also a book of the Bible. Is everything meaningless, vain, …
7 years, 4 months ago
You Have the Right to Go to Prison
Episode 159
Poor and black defendants have more legal rights than ever, but that didn't stop mass incarceration. Why is that? We talk about a paper by Paul Butle…
7 years, 4 months ago
False Dichotomies and Oral Reciprocity
Episode 158
David and Tamler talk about the invasion of dual process theories in psychology. Why do we love theories that divide complex phenomena into just two …
7 years, 5 months ago
Notes From Underground (Pt. 2)
Episode 157
David and Tamler continue their discussion of Dostoevsky's funny, sad, philosophical novella Notes From Underground. We focus on part 2 this time - t…
7 years, 5 months ago
Notes From Underground (Pt. 1)
Episode 156
We're sick men. We're spiteful men. We're unpleasant men. We think our livers are diseased (especially Tamler's). So we talk about Dostoevsky's wild,…
7 years, 6 months ago
Alfred Hitchcock's Money Shot
Episode 155
David and Tamler dive deep into Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 hallucinatory classic, Vertigo. Why does this movie seem to gain stature among critics and ac…
7 years, 6 months ago
Metaphysical Vertigo (Borges's "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius")
Episode 154
In the famous words of the idealist philosopher George Berkeley, "To exist is to be perceived." Our ideas and perceptions are the fundamental objects…
7 years, 7 months ago
Progress in Psychology: A Reply to BootyBootyFartFart
Episode 153
David dies for science's sins and addresses the failed replication of one of his studies (conducted with three former VBW guests) by the Many Labs Pr…
7 years, 7 months ago
Ruthlessness, Public and Private
Episode 152
Tamler and David continue their Nagel-gazing by discussing another essay from Mortal Questions: "Ruthlessness in Public Life." Why do we treat the im…
7 years, 8 months ago