Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David and Tamler return to one of their favorites, Frans Kafka, this time on his beautiful and distressing short story "The Hunger Artist," a story that brims with metaphorical possibilities but also implores us to accept it on its own mysterious terms. Plus gooning.

The Goon Squad by Daniel Kolitz [harpers.org]

"Gooning" definition [urbandictionary.com]

A Hunger Artist [wikipedia.org]

A Hunger Artist (full text) [kafka-online.info]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Vizarro,
0:06.0	having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics.
0:09.4	Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say,
0:13.6	and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.
0:18.0	Are you going to bark all day, little doggy?
0:21.6	Or are you gonna bite?
0:23.6	The great boss has spoken.
0:30.6	Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
0:42.3	Who are you? Who are you?
0:43.3	A very bad man.
0:46.3	I'm a very good man.
0:48.3	Good man.
0:49.3	They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have
0:55.3	made no attention tonight man
0:58.8	anybody can have a brain
1:03.9	you're a very bad man
1:07.9	I'm a very good man
1:10.0	just a very bad wizard welcome to very bad wiz. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.
1:13.2	Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.
1:14.8	I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.
1:17.4	Dave, last night, which was Halloween, at a cemetery in Kurnersburg, Germany, a gravestone rumbled,
1:27.1	a skeletal hand reached out of the grave and the decomposed corpse of
	...

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