Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman
Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman
Neuroscientist and author David Eagleman discusses how our brain interprets the world and what that means for us. Through storytelling, research, interviews, and experiments, David Eagleman tackles wild questions that illuminate new facets of our lives and our realities.Social links:
Follow the podcast:
Ep152 "How do you survive your own thoughts?" with Jewel
What do you do when your own mind stops feeling safe? How does a person sing on stage while panicking inside? How do you catch your thoughts before they catch you? Join Eagleman with singer/songwriter Jewel to talk about mental health: the battles she’s lived, the wisdom she’s earned, and the lives…
1:05:50
Ep151 "Can One Be a Rational Optimist About the World?" with Matt Ridley
Why do we generally feel like the world is getting worse, when by almost all measures it’s getting better? How do ideas "have sex”, and why does that matter for innovation? Why do brains tend to systematically misread the future? What if optimism is a more rational stance than pessimism? If innovat…
57:13
Ep150 "Can We Engineer Dreams?" with Adam Haar Horowitz
Can you influence what you dream about tonight? Are you spending years of your life in a world you don’t recall? Can nightmares be manipulated as a therapy? Are dreams sometimes predictive of changes in your health before you become aware of them? Join Eagleman with Adam Haar Horowitz, a neuroscien…
1:07:55
Ep149 "What makes a brain grow up resilient?" with David Sussillo
How can a brain grow up in chaos but find its way to order? There are many ways to have a bad childhood, but why do some children break while others bend and keep going? How much of who you are is written in your genes & how much is sculpted by your environment? How many versions of you were possib…
51:22
Ep148 "How can we improve political dialog?" with Saul Perlmutter
How can we improve political dialogue, and what does this have to do with the discovery that the universe behaves differently than expected? Why do we cling to beliefs even when evidence pushes against them? What if the biggest problem facing humanity could be solved with practice? Join Eagleman to…
55:25
Ep147 "Can we engineer human thought?" with Tom Griffiths
Can the mind be captured with math? Modern AI seems to have burst out of the gate recently, but is it actually the latest chapter in a 300-year project to turn thought into something we can model? Why does current AI need petabytes of data, but a child can learn from just a few examples? Why does A…
50:21
Ep146 "Who Counts as Human in Your Mind?" with Lasana Harris
When do you view another person like an object? This is what neuroscientists mean when they talk about de-humanization: your brain doesn't crank up its social circuitry to understand the other person as having a mind like you do. Is dehumanization a cause of violence, or the fuel that keeps it burn…
1:07:33
Ep145 Why do we compulsively click on ragebait? with Angele Christin
Do algorithms shape our lives? What did clickbait look like before the internet? Why do journalists start writing differently when metrics are introduced? What does any of this have to do with cooking pasta in the bathtub, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, or Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the yea…
1:10:27
Ep144 "How do things last?" Part 2: Millennia with Alexander Rose
What is a 10,000 year clock? What is the Y10k bug? What allows some organizations to last a millennium? What do ancient ceramics have to do with ball bearings in satellites? What does any of this have to do with bristlecone pine trees, cymbals, or an extant hotel that launched in the sixth century?…
55:49
Ep143 "How do things last?" Part 1: neurons to civilizations
What makes things last, and what do very different lasting things have in common? Why might a space alien not be able to understand music? Why do windows in medieval cathedrals look thicker at the bottom, and what does this reveal about the world’s religions? What was the most important weapon in a…
44:22