Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJoseph E. Davis, "Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Episode 91
Everyday suffering—those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone’s lives—is something that humans have grapp…
5 years, 7 months ago
Sue Stuart-Smith, "The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature (Scribner, 2020)
Episode 113
Sue Stuart-Smith, who is a distinguished psychiatrist and avid gardener, offers an inspiring and consoling work about the healing effects of gardenin…
5 years, 7 months ago
Nick Chater, "The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain" (Yale UP, 2019)
Episode 4
Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental “su…
5 years, 7 months ago
Katherine Kinzler, "How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do - And What It Says About You" (HMH, 2020)
Episode 25
We gravitate toward people like us; it's human nature. Race, class, and gender shape our social identities, and thus who we perceive as "like us" or …
5 years, 7 months ago
Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, "NeuroScience Fiction" (Benbella Books, 2020)
Episode 3
In NeuroScience Fiction (Benbella Books, 2020), Rodrigo Quian Quiroga shows how the outlandish premises of many seminal science fiction movies are be…
5 years, 7 months ago
Roger Kennedy, "The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations" (Phoenix House, 2020)
Episode 18
Today I discussed why music so powerful in eliciting emotions with Roger Kennedy, the author of The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations (Phoe…
5 years, 7 months ago
Paul Offit, "Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far" (HarperCollins, 2020)
Episode 17
Why Do Unnecessary and Often Counter-Productive Medical Interventions Happen So Often?
Today I talked to Paul Offit about his book Overkill: When Mod…
5 years, 7 months ago
Lisa Bortolotti, "The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Episode 226
There is something intuitive about the idea that when we believe, we ought to follow our evidence. This entails that beliefs that are the products of…
5 years, 7 months ago
Mel Schwartz, "The Possibility Principle: How Quantum Physics Can Improve the Way You Think, Live, and Love" (Sounds True, 2017)
Episode 112
How would you like to experience your life? It’s an intriguing question, and yet we’ve been conditioned to believe our life visions and goals are oft…
5 years, 7 months ago
György Buzsáki, "The Brain from Inside Out" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Episode 1
In The Brain from Inside Out (Oxford University Press, 2019), György Buzsáki contrasts what he terms the ‘outside-in’ and ‘inside-out’ perspectives o…
5 years, 7 months ago