PANTHEON
ExploreBuild My Library
© 2026 Pantheon — an atlas of the ideas that shaped how we think.
podcast2013–present

Very Bad Wizards

Disciplines:
philosophy & ideas

Summary

A moral philosopher and a moral psychologist argue about ethics, science, rationality, and culture—irreverent, erudite, genuinely funny, and substantively rigorous.

Core Contribution

Bridges moral philosophy and empirical psychology in real time; models productive disagreement; introduces experimental philosophy and moral psychology to broad audiences.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • free will
  • moral responsibility
  • experimental philosophy
  • moral psychology
  • disgust and morality

Historical Influences

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind Joshua Knobe's experimental philosophy Nietzsche's moral genealogy David Hume's sentimentalism

Intellectual Lineage

No conceptual lineage found.

Allied Works

A Very Bad WizardSommers's True to Ourselves: A Defense of Robust Moral Relativism

Contemporaries & Peers

The Partially Examined Life Rationally Speaking Moral Maze

Minds Influenced

Moral psychology podcast genreAcademic-entertainment hybrid formatDiscourse on free will and moral responsibility

Intellectual Posterity

Widely credited with making moral psychology accessible; Haidt, Knobe, and many other academics have appeared; a model of how experts can be entertaining without being superficial.

Discussing

Very Bad Wizards

Ask anything about Very Bad Wizards — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

Sign in to start a conversation.