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Ep119 "Why do brains believe in the unbelievable?" with Bruce Hood
Episode 119
Why are brains superstitious? Would you wear a nice sweater that belonged to a murderer? What does this have to do with lucky socks, ghosts, our interpretation of coincidences, why kids often need th…
Published on 2 months, 1 week ago
Ep118 "Why has the brain always been our hardest puzzle?" with Matthew Cobb
Episode 118
How have humans through the ages tried to crack the mysteries of the brain, and why are our theories always yoked to the most recent technologies? What does the history of brain science have to do wi…
Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago
Ep117 "What does brain science have to do with free speech? (with Greg Lukianoff)" (with Greg Lukianoff)
Episode 117
Most people claim to be in favor of free speech, but they often mean speech from their own side (and not whatever those crazy people on the other side want to say). But from the point of view of the …
Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago
Ep116 " What is Color? Part 2: Why royals wear purple"
Episode 116
Are there new colors you could see? And why are they impossible to imagine before you've seen them? Can you lose your color vision? And what does any of this have to do with linguistic color terms, w…
Published on 2 months, 4 weeks ago
Ep115 "What is color? Part 1: Why hunters wear orange"
Episode 115
Why do birds and bees choose different flowers? Why do mammals' eyes seem to be optimized for moving around at night, and what does that have to do with hairless humans getting angry? What does any o…
Published on 3 months ago
Ep114 "Would you eat a self burger?"
Episode 114
Would you eat a burger grown from a human muscle cell? Would you rather use your own cell or someone else's? What does the future of lab-grown meat illuminate about neuroscience, our calculations of …
Published on 3 months, 1 week ago
Ep113 "What's special about inventors?" (with Pablos Holman)
Episode 113
Why do some people jump into entirely new categories of possibility? And what does this have to do with self-driving ships, solar panels in space, shooting mosquitoes with lasers, skateboarding trick…
Published on 3 months, 2 weeks ago
Ep112 "How is computer code like magic?" (with Sam Arbesman)
Episode 112
What is code, and can it be thought of like a magic spell? Are we building a world so complex that we will lose the ability to understand its operations -- and has that already happened? What does an…
Published on 3 months, 3 weeks ago
Ep111 "Might we be surrounded with undetected minds?" (with Michael Levin)
Episode 111
What is intelligence? If we look hard, can we find it in unexpected places: not just in brains but in all kinds of structures? How should we recognize it? And what does any of this have to do with a …
Published on 4 months ago
Ep110 "Is consciousness related to quantum physics?" (with Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff)
Episode 110
Can we explain consciousness as emerging from classical neuroscience, or do we require deeper principles? Could quantum physics have something to do with it? Is it possible that consciousness predate…
Published on 4 months, 1 week ago