logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2023
2h 8m

Episode 253: Tarkovsky's Starchild

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
About this episode

It's the episode that Tamler has been waiting for – a long deep dive into Andrei Tarkovsky's mysterious masterpiece "Stalker." A writer and professor are led by their guide (Stalker) into a cordoned off "zone" that may have been visited by a meteorite (or aliens) a couple of decades earlier. Their destination – a room in the zone that according to legend grants people their deepest desire, the one that has made them suffer the most. We gush over Tarkovsky's filmmaking, his use of sound and music, and the richness of the questions this movie raises about meaning, art, delusion, desire, science, and faith.

Plus, does having a small penis make you want to buy a sports car? Pre-crisis social psychology is back!

Sponsored By:

Support Very Bad Wizards

Links:

Up next
Nov 11
Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")
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 Squ ... Show More
1h 29m
Oct 28
Episode 319: The Shadow of the Object (Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia")
David and Tamler transfer their libidinal energy to Freud's 1917 article "Mourning and Melancholia," in which he tries to understand what's going on with depression, attempts to distinguish it from normal grief, and arrives at some ideas that laid the groundwork for his later the ... Show More
1h 35m
Oct 14
Episode 318: A PTA Meeting
David and Tamler share some brief thoughts about Paul Thomas Anderson's latest masterpiece One Battle After Another before going deep on his most underrated movie Inherent Vice. We explore the many connections between the two movies - Pynchon adaptations, shadowy forces, snitches ... Show More
1h 48m
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2021
#91: The Fog Machine of War (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)
<p>In this 91st in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.<br/><br/>In this episode, we discuss co-morbidities that are associated with bad outcomes from Covid (e.g ... Show More
1h 31m
Apr 2022
EP20: Becoming the Captain of Your Own Life
<p><b>Intrinsic Motivation &amp; Becoming the Captain of Your Own Life</b></p><p> <a href='https://thedreamworldpodcast.com/?p=2109'>The Dream World Podcast <b>Book Club:  </b></a><a href='https://www.davidredwards.com/about-newyouwhoknew'>“New You! Who Knew?”<b> David Edwards</b ... Show More
32m 54s
May 2023
#209 — A Good Life
Sam Harris speaks with Scott Barry Kaufman about human well-being. They discuss intelligence and creativity, wisdom and transcendence, the history of humanistic psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the connection between well-being and ethics, self-esteem, psychedelics and me ... Show More
45m 20s
May 2022
Bigger Than the Pope: Jennings Brown on Teal Swan & The Fellowship of Friends (Part 1)
<p>[Content Warning: This episode contains references to suicide, mental illness, and sexual assault. Listener discretion advised.] Youtube spiritual guru Teal Swan says she saves lives. Others say she’s dangerously death-obsessed. We say she’s serving strong “9 Perfect Strangers ... Show More
1h 4m
Aug 2021
#94: Is it Later Than We Think? (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)
<p>In this 94th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.<br/><br/>In this episode, we discuss adulthood. Beginning with an excerpt from the Adulthood chapter of o ... Show More
1h 28m
Feb 2023
Episode 34. Dissociative Identity Disorder - Secret Lives
The idea of split personality is fertile ground for stories of great imagination—while regrettably also inspiring and perpetuating numerous misunderstandings that continue to cling to the kind of personality organization that we will take up in this episode. *there is a small cul ... Show More
40m 50s
Oct 2021
#101: When Doctors Were Scientists (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)
<p>In this 101st in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.<br/><br/>Beginning with a discussion of Room 101 from Orwell’s 1984, we then share excerpts from Ross Do ... Show More
1h 43m