VBW favorite Paul Bloom joins us to break down the Severance season finale and season 2 in general. We all agree that it’s a much-needed return to form and debate some of the choices and questions the episode raises. Plus, an evolutionary account of the ‘ick’  and the adaptive trait of graceful ping-pong ball chasing.  <a href= "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886925000480?ssrnid=5022668&dgcid=SSRN_redirect_SD"> Collisson, B., Saunders, E., & Yin, C. (2025). The ick: Disgust sensitivity, narcissism, and perfectionism in mate choice thresholds. Personality and Individual Differences, 238, 113086.</a> <a href= "https://verybadwizards.com/episode/episode-236-your-outie-is-skilled-at-lovemaking-with-paul-bloom"> Very Bad Wizards Episode 236: Your Outie is Skilled at Lovemaking (with Paul Bloom)</a> Paul's Substack Newsletter <a href= "https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net">"Small Potatoes"</a>

Episode 306: What to Expect When You're Expecting (David Lynch's "Eraserhead" with Barry Lam)

Very Bad Wizards is a podcast featuring a philosopher (Tamler Sommers) and a psychologist (David Pizarro), who share a love for ethics, pop culture, and cognitive science, and who have a marked inability to distinguish sacred from profane. Each podcast includes discussions of moral philosophy, recent work on moral psychology and neuroscience, and the overlap between the two.