Episodes

March 12, 2024
280
01:39:37114.23 MB

Episode 280: Mad Masque (with Phil Ford and J.F. Martel)

Phil Ford and J.F. Martel from the great "Weird Studies" podcast join us for a whirling discussion of Edgar Allan Poe’s mesmerizing tale of decadence and disease “The Masque of the Red Death." We also talk about weird fiction more generally, why it’s so ...

February 27, 2024
279
01:09:5880.28 MB

Episode 279: The Greenhouses We Burned Along the Way (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 2)

David and Tamler conclude their discussion of Lee Chang-dong’s "Burning" – we talk about the hunger dance at twilight, Ben’s greenhouse burning habit, Shin Hae-mi’s mysterious disappearance, Lee Jong-su’s clumsy and doomed quest to find out what really h...

February 13, 2024
278
01:32:17105.83 MB

Episode 278: Schrödinger's Everything (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 1)

David and Tamler fall under the spell of Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 masterpiece Burning , a movie where nothing is what it seems, or maybe it is. An alienated young man meets what seems like his dream girl from his small town, but she’s about to leave for Afr...

January 30, 202401:35:32109.55 MB

Episode 277: The Merits of Buggery (Nagel's "Sexual Perversion")

David and Tamler play the old hits – Thomas Nagel and sex robots. In the main segment we talk about Nagel’s essay “Sexual Perversion”, a surprising essay on many fronts (Sartre, erotic fiction, conceptual analysis, much more). What’s the nature of sexual...

January 16, 2024
276
01:27:24100.24 MB

Episode 276: Attention Please

David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on William James. Today we talk about his account of ‘Attention’ from his 1890 volume  The Principles of Psychology – another remarkably prescient chapter that ...

December 26, 2023
275
01:34:16108.1 MB

Episode 275: The Ineffable Center (Borges' "The Aleph")

An episode interesting from every point of view, we train our eyes on Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Aleph.” The first segment wins the kudos of the learned, the academician, the Hellenist, as we talk about the favorite things we saw this year. The second segme...

December 13, 2023
274
01:35:02109.41 MB

Episode 274: Can I Get a Kidney Voucher? (with Vlad Chituc)

RETURNING guest Vlad Chituc joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about donating his kidney to a stranger, the effective altruism movement, and his sexuality. Was EA’s turn to ‘long-termist’ goals like preventing evil AI inevitable? Have they strayed to...

November 29, 2023
273
01:57:51135.09 MB

Episode 273: Ah. Ah. (Miyazaki's "Spirited Away")

David and Tamler board the train for Hayao Miyazaki’s mystical dreamy coming of age masterpiece Spirited Away . This is a true VBW deep dive. Plus a study by our secret crush suggests we may not be optimizing the value of our conversations. Mastroianni, ...

November 15, 202301:24:3897.08 MB

Episode 272: Neigh Means Yay

The morality of zoophilia has received shockingly little attention in contemporary ethical discourse
until now. David and Tamler break down the paper “Zoophilia is Morally Permissible” from the latest issue of  The Journal of Controversial Ideas . We exp...