Very Bad Wizards · Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Episode 324: Irruption of the Sacred

January 13, 2026·1 hr 7 min·2 clips

Eliade calls sacred space a “hierophany,” an eruption that makes a territory “qualitatively different.”

1. Very Bad Wizards pairs Richard Stevens’s swearing study in the American Psychologist with Mircea Eliade’s 1961 book The Sacred and the Profane, moving from curse words and “state disinhibition” to sacred space and time. 2. Tamler Summers and Dave Pizarro are the hosts, and their roles matter because Tamler pushes the philosophy-and-religion material while Dave dissects the psychology paper and its claims about strength, flow, and mediation. 3. The episode’s core contrast is between one paper’s claim that saying a curse word increases physical performance and Eliade’s claim that sacred places become real through a “hierophany.” 4. Dave describes the swearing experiment as a chair-lift test run online, with participants told to say a curse word or neutral word at the same volume while researchers watched them on camera. 5. The hosts focus on the paper’s proposed mechanism, where “state disinhibition” is defined as behavior becoming less controlled, and they object to using three-item scales for “flow,” “self-confidence,” and “humor.” 6. They also discuss a second experiment using bystander-apathy vignettes, with participants rating how quickly and how much they would help someone in need, which Dave says does not clearly track disinhibition. 7. Tamler argues that the interesting finding is simple—cursing may help strength—but the paper weakens itself by adding a large theory layer with “psychophysiological” and “autonomic arousal” language. 8. The Eliade discussion centers on his claim that sacred space is an “eruption of the sacred” that detaches a territory from the surrounding milieu and gives it direction, structure, and reality. 9. They compare Eliade’s sacred-profane distinction with Plato, Buddhism, temples in Japan, and “holy places” such as a birthplace or a first-love location that survive in an otherwise desacralized life. 10. People interested in religion, psychology methods, and academic argumentation.

As heard by us

A loose philosophical conversation about how modern life still leaves some places and moments feeling sacred.

The episode opens on a bleak New Year note, with political outrage and social-media fatigue turned into jokes that keep the mood a little off-kilter.

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Why you'd press play

You want philosophy, science, and ethics to tumble together in an informal conversation.

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