Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler tackle the first half of the VBW Madness topic tournament winner, Stanislaw Lem's science fiction masterpiece, Solaris, about a mysterious ocean planet that resists all attempts to understand and communicate with it. We talk about the epistemological obstacles that obscure the meaning of the ocean's behavior, the "guests" that appear to the researchers drawn from their buried memories, Lem's critique of science and lots more.
Plus, there's an inexplicable dearth of research into male preferences for breasts or buttocks and their correlation with egalitarian and materialist values. But once again it's evolutionary psychology to the rescue.
Mehmetoglu, M. (2026). Buttocks or Breasts? Identifying Latent Subgroups in Male Preferences for Female Bodily Features. Evolutionary Psychology, 24(2), 14747049261452897. [pubmed.gov]
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (trans. by Bill Johnston) [amazon.com affiliate link]

The great Robert Wright returns to the podcast to talk about his new book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. We debate the magnitude of AI's potential impact, the natural selection analogy Bob presses in the book, and a whole lot more.
Plus, a new AI-powered collar can translate your pet's sounds and behavior into language with 95% accuracy! Still skeptical about the power of this new technology Tamler? 
AI Pet Translator [dexerto.com]
The God Test by Robert Wright [amazon.com affiliate link]

What are the legitimate ways to inquire about the nature of the universe? We have science, metaphysics, phenomenological inquiry, but what about mystical and meditative practices? David and Tamler talk about a paper that argues for allowing mystical insight into our broader search for insight into fundamental reality. Plus, since the dawn of time man has wondered why people act like simps – we look at a study that operationalizes simping behavior and offers a theory for how it evolves.  
Ho, D., Tan, K., Li, N. P., & Sim, L. (2026). The (Simp)le Truth About Excessive and Obsessive Romantic Behaviors in Men. Journal of personality, 10.1111/jopy.70082. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.70082
Albahari, M. (2019). The mystic and the metaphysician: Clarifying the role of meditation in the search for ultimate reality. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26(7-8), 12-36.

David and Tamler do another tier ranking--this time on philosophical thought experiments, so as not to further alienate our chemistry-adjacent listeners. We hit most of the big ones: Pascal's wager, Pascal's mugging, Mary the color scientist, the Ring of Gyges, Jarvis Thomson's violinist, the experience machine, the utility monster, and a lot more. Can you guess our grade for the trolley dilemma?
The Chinese Room (Searle) [wikipedia.org]
Descartes' Evil Demon (Descartes) [wikipedia.org]
The Experience Machine (Nozick) [wikipedia.org]
Mary the Color Scientist (F. Jackson) [wikipedia.org]
Pascal's Mugging (Yudkowsky/Bostrom) [wikipedia.org]
Pascal's Wager (Pascal) [wikipedia.org]
The Ring of Gyges (Plato) [wikipedia.org]
The Shallow Pond (Singer) [wikipedia.org]
The Ship of Theseus (Hobbes) [wikipedia.org]
The Trolley Problem (Philippa Foot/J.J. Thomson) [wikipedia.org]
The Utility Monster (Nozick) [wikipedia.org]
The Veil of Ignorance (Rawls)  [wikipedia.org]
The Violinist (J.J. Thomson) [wikipedia.org]

David and Tamler talk about Jorge Luis Borges' disorienting short story "The Other." A 70-year-old Borges sits on a bench by the Charles River and who should he encounter but himself as a 19-year-old, by the Rhône River in 1918 Geneva. Is this a dream? Who is dreaming it? What does the Heraclitean river metaphor reveal about this impossible meeting? (Stick around after the closing music, David reads the story in English and in Spanish.)
 
Plus Richard Dawkins has a memorable encounter of his own, but with his AI Claudia (née Claude). If you think AI isn't conscious then how do you explain Claudia's rapturous and penetrating insight into Dawkins' unpublished novel?
 
When Dawkins met Claude: Could this AI be conscious? (paywalled) [unherd.com]
Unpaywalled at archive.org 
The Other by Jorge Luis Borges [wikipedia.org]
The Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges trans. by Andrew Hurley [amazon.com affiliate link]