Episode 80: The Coddling of the Wizard Mind (with Vlad Chituc and Christina Hoff Sommers)
Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2015
⏱️ 101 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's our last episode on campus protests and political correctness for a while, we promise! But it's a fun one. David and Tamler welcome two guests on the opposite side of the debate spectrum. Recent Yale Alum, cognitive scientist, freelance writer, (and writer of novel-length emails) Vlad Chituc joins both of us to defend the Yale protests, provide some context, and explain why the good people at FIRE are hypocritical about free expression. In the middle segment, Tamler talks with his notorious stepmother and "factual feminist" Christina Hoff Sommers (author of "Who Stole Feminism?" and "The War Against Boys"). They argue over whether the new political correctness poses a serious threat to campus climate, whether it is even "new," and over whether one is obligated to smoke weed on Joe Rogan's podcast. Plus, Tamler gets all huffy about the panic over terrorism, and we read some email responses to VBW Episode 78 ("Wizards Uprising"). Oh, and we have a recording a date set for the Mr. Robot episode!
Links
Vlad Chituc [vladchituc.com]
Christina Hoff Sommers [aei.org]
"Fear in the Air, Americans Look Over Their Shoulders" [nytimes.com]
The Coddling of the American Mind [theatlantic.com]
Who Stole Feminism by Christina H. Sommers [amazon.com affiliate link]
The War Against Boys by Christina H. Sommers [amazon.com affiliate link]
"CDS Appropriates Asian Dishes, Students Say" [oberlinreview.org] (ht/@brittanyepage)
Special Guests: Christina Hoff Sommers and Vlad Chituc.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist, Dave Pizarro, |
| 0:06.1 | having an informal discussion about issues and science and ethics. |
| 0:09.5 | Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm out of allow to say, |
| 0:13.8 | and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes. |
| 0:17.2 | So, I give him a salute, and he gives me one of those half-headless salutes, you know, down low, very cool. |
| 0:23.4 | Right. You know? Here's what you forget. |
| 0:26.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:26.8 | He doesn't say, hi, Hitler. |
| 0:29.0 | Isn't that funny? |
| 0:59.0 | You're a very bad man. |
| 1:06.0 | I'm a very good man. |
| 1:15.0 | Just a very bad wizard. |
| 1:18.0 | Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. |
| 1:23.0 | We have Josh, no joining us today. |
| 1:26.0 | Josh, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about Yale a little bit more about Yale. |
| 1:31.0 | Yerry, what do you think of the protests that have been going on at your campus? |
| 1:36.0 | Well, friends, first I want to say it's so great to be on your podcast. |
| 1:39.0 | Always great to have you. |
| 1:41.0 | To get a better sense of the campus climate, I think really instead of consulting our intuitions |
| 1:45.0 | from the armchair, what we need to do is go out and do experiments and surveys in the real world |
| 1:50.0 | using the methods of the kind of sciences. |
| 1:56.0 | Oh, this is a bucket list checked off for me. |
... |
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