Podcast Episodes

Episode 319: The Shadow of the Object (Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia")

Episode 319

David and Tamler transfer their libidinal energy to Freud's 1917 article "Mourning and Melancholia," in which he tries to understand what's going on …

10 months, 3 weeks ago

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Episode 318: A PTA Meeting

Episode 318

David and Tamler share some brief thoughts about Paul Thomas Anderson's latest masterpiece One Battle After Another before going deep on his most und…

11 months, 1 week ago

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Episode 317: For Shame

Episode 317

What is the psychology of shame? Is the experience of shame a human universal? How can we investigate the nature of shame across cultures? David and …

11 months, 3 weeks ago

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Episode 316: A Four-Letter Man (Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber")

Episode 316

David and Tamler go big game hunting and explore their first Hemingway short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." We dig into his charac…

1 year ago

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Episode 315: Ceaseless Striving (Schopenhauer's Pessimism)

Episode 315

David and Tamler tackle the topic chosen by our beloved Patreon supporters in the first VBW madness tournament – Schopenhauer. We discuss his essays …

1 year ago

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Episode 314: The In-Betweeny Place

Episode 314

David and Tamler go long on McDonagh's 2008 masterpiece "In Bruges." We talk about the terrific performances and all the weighty themes - sin, guilt,…

1 year, 1 month ago

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Episode 313: The Spontaneous Eruption of Now

Episode 313

David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the metaphysics of past and future via the Borges essay(s) "A New Refutation of Time." What does it m…

1 year, 1 month ago

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Episode 312: MechaSkeptic

Episode 312

David and Tamler return to David Hume's somewhat slippery brand of skepticism, this time focusing Chapter 12 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understa…

1 year, 2 months ago

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Episode 311: The Way to Dusty Death (Shakespeare's "Macbeth")

Episode 311

David and Tamler screw their courage to the sticking place and talk about their first Shakespeare play – The Tragedy of Macbeth. Plus we select 16 to…

1 year, 2 months ago

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Episode 310: Bayes, Brains, and Buddhists

Episode 310

David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the predictive processing theory of the mind and brain function and talk about a paper that applies t…

1 year, 3 months ago

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