Episode 340: The Sublime Folly of Hope

Podcast: Very Bad Wizards · Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Opublikowano: 2026-09-08

Why do baseball players have so many superstitious rituals compared to athletes in other sports? How does this relate to the magic rituals of the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia? We dive into Bronisław Malinowski's classic 1925 paper "Magic, Science, and Religion" along with George Gmelch's "Baseball Magic," two articles that explore the role of religion and superstition as a response to the absence of control. And speaking of losing control, we do a conceptual analysis of "crashing out" in the opening segment- analytic philosophy at its finest. Malinowski, B. (1925). Magic, science and religion. In J. Needham (Ed.), Science...