Episode 321: The Journey Begins (Plus Blind Ranking Philosophers)

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David and Tamler begin their long journey home to Homer's Odyssey, the tale of king Odysseus' 10 year journey home after the Trojan war (maybe the greatest story ever told). We dive into the first two books, which focus on Odysseus' 20-year-old son Telemachus, the swarm of suitors who have descended on Odysseus' house during his long absence in the hopes of marrying his clever and beautiful wife Penelope, and the goddess Athena, whose plan to get Odysseus home to Ithaca is finally set into motion. (Much more to come on this monumental work for our beloved Patreon supporters).

Plus for all you Homer haters, David makes Tamler blind rank a list of (pre-1950) philosophers.

The Odyssey [wikipedia.org]

The Odyssey (transl. by Emily Wilson) [amazon.org affiliate link]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Vizarro, 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, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.
0:17.8	Mr. You may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.
0:26.6	The maiden boss has spoken.
0:32.6	Play no attention to that man behind the curtain.
0:44.3	Who are you? Who are you?
0:46.3	I'm a very bad man.
0:48.3	I'm a very good man.
0:50.3	Good man.
0:57.5	They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have.
1:01.0	May no attention tonight, man.
1:06.0	Anybody can have a brain?
1:10.1	You're a very bad man.
1:12.2	I'm a very good man. Just a very bad man. I'm a very good man.
1:14.8	Just a very bad wizard.
1:16.9	Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.
1:19.2	I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.
1:37.1	Dave, your boy, Larry Summers, is the latest very public casualty in the Epstein email leaks when it was revealed that Summers emailed him in 2019 to get advice on how to have sex with one of his younger mentees.
1:44.6	Congress just passed a resolution to release the Epstein files. I do need to ask you, I mean, for the good of the show,
1:46.7	is your name going to be in there?
1:50.6	I think, though, the mistake that Larry Summers made was not getting out ahead of this.
1:52.5	And on that note,
	...

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