Episode
Episode 329: Why We Suffer
- Podcast
- Very Bad Wizards
- Published
- Mar 31, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4812
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/very-bad-wizards-200269/episodes/episode-329-why-we-suffer/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/very-bad-wizards-200269/episode-329-why-we-suffer.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
David and Tamler return to the work of Richard Shweder and colleagues, focusing this time on his foundational paper "The "Big Three" of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the "Big Three" Explanations of Suffering. What are the various ways that people explain suffering and illness across cultures? What do we lose when we only emphasize biomedical explanations? Why can't social psychology be more like this? Plus a new Chalmers (not that one) paper argues that monogamy is impermissible. Hello ladies! Join at the right Patreon tier and vote on an episode topic! [patreon.com] Chalmers, H. (2019). Is monogamy morally permissible?. The Journal of Value Inquiry , 53 (2), 225-241. Harry Chalmers' Substack post on Monogamy Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The "big three" of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity) and the "big three" explanations of suffering. In A. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119–169). Routledge.