Episode 180: Chekhov's Schrödinger's Dagger (Kurosawa's "Rashomon")
Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2020
⏱️ 116 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eleventh Century Japan. A samurai and his wife are walking through the forest and come across a bandit. The bandit attacks the samurai and has sex with/rapes his wife. A woodcutter finds the samurai, stabbed to death. Who killed the samurai and with what? What role did his wife play in his death? Kurosawa gives us four perspectives, told in flashbacks within flashbacks. Who's telling the truth? Is anyone? Can we ever know what really happened? A simple story on the surface becomes a meditation on epistemological despair.
Plus, your lizard brain is out to get you and you only have 90 seconds to stop it!
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Links:
- When Your Lizard Brain Burns You Out And Short-Circuits Your Career
- Triune brain - Wikipedia
- Cesario, J., Johnson, D. J., & Eisthen, H. (2019). Your Brain Is Not an Onion with a Tiny Reptile Inside.
- David talks Watchmen on the Pretty Much Pop Podcast
- Tamler Sommers Talks Honor on Stoa Podcast
- Rashomon - Wikipedia
- Rashomon (1950) | The Criterion Collection
- Rashomon | The Current | The Criterion Collection
- Rashomon Analysis - Rashomon's Problem with Truth | Topic
- Every Frame A Painting: The Bad Sleep Well (1960) - The Geometry of a Scene - YouTube
- Akira Kurosawa - Composing Movement
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Very Bad Wizards is made possible by our sponsors prolific at prolific.co |
| 0:06.9 | connecting researchers with participants around the world and by GiveWell.org, the gold standard |
| 0:12.1 | for charitable giving. |
| 0:13.6 | Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, |
| 0:19.6 | having an informal discussion about issues and signs and ethics. |
| 0:23.0 | Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing |
| 0:27.6 | my dad some very inappropriate jokes. |
| 1:27.6 | I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. |
| 1:30.2 | Dave, this is our first episode of 2020. |
| 1:34.0 | I'll ask you the same question I always ask you in our first episodes of the year. |
| 1:38.6 | What's your New Year's resolution? |
| 1:44.8 | God. |
| 1:46.2 | You know, this year, I always say that I think years, |
| 1:49.6 | relatives, or stupid, and they don't work. |
| 1:51.6 | And that's true. |
| 1:52.6 | That's true. |
| 1:53.1 | But this year I found myself kind of wanting one. |
| 1:55.4 | I want to participate. |
| 1:56.7 | I wanted to be part of this big cultural event. |
| 2:00.8 | So I thought, and I thought, and I can't for the life of me. |
| 2:07.3 | I don't need improvement. |
| 2:08.8 | I'm like at the end of the day. |
... |
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