Episode 82: Totalitarian Slide-Rulers
Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2016
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David and Tamler take a break from their main jobs as TV critics to talk about a masterpiece in political philosophy: "Two Concepts of Liberty" by Isaiah Berlin. While they both celebrate the style and substance of this classic essay, in a startling twist Tamler praises conceptual analysis and David expresses a few misgivings about his Kantianism. What is the elusive idea of positive liberty, and how can its pursuit lead to totalitarian rule? When is it more important to buy boots than read Russian poetry? And why is David still so depressed by pluralism? Plus, coddling in Wisconsin? And another famous set of social psych studies is accused of biting the dust.
Links
- In Wisconsin, Efforts to End Taunting at Games Lead to Claims of Coddling By Mike McPhate [nytimes.com]
- Take my Breath Away by Berlin [youtube.com]
- Cortex Podcast Episode #20 [relay.fm]
- Amy Cuddy "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are" TED Talk [ted.com]
- "The Power of the Power Pose: Amy Cuddy's Famous Finding is the Latest Example of Scientific Overreach" By Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung [slate.com]
- Berlin, I. (1958) “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In Isaiah Berlin (1969) Four Essays on Liberty.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. [verybadwizards.com] - Positive and Negative Liberty [plato.stanford.edu]
- Freedom: Block Distractions
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist, Dave Pizarro, |
| 0:06.3 | having an informal discussion about issues and science and ethics. |
| 0:09.7 | Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm out of allow to say, and knowing |
| 0:14.4 | my dad some very inappropriate jokes. |
| 0:17.3 | If you want to question my morals, do it later. |
| 0:21.1 | There aren't any questions. |
| 0:51.1 | Good man. |
| 1:16.6 | Welcome to very bad wizards. |
| 1:17.9 | I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. |
| 1:20.4 | David, it's our first recording session of the new year. |
| 1:23.7 | What are your new year's resolutions for this podcast? |
| 1:27.7 | You know, I almost predictably have just enough hipster in me to hate new year's resolutions. |
| 1:35.0 | Really? |
| 1:36.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:37.0 | But maybe I just hate any goal of self-improvement because I'm so arrogant as to think of myself |
| 1:42.3 | as... |
| 1:43.3 | I've already reached the pinnacle. |
| 1:45.7 | I've reached the pinnacle. |
| 1:46.9 | I've allowed only reason to guide my actions. |
| 1:52.2 | So my goal for this podcast would be to course you into learning how to reason like I do |
| 1:59.3 | so that we might achieve mutual goals that are beneficial. |
| 2:04.6 | That's a coded way of introducing our topic, which this is part of a new series that we're |
... |
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