Ep 81 "How close are we to longevity?"

Two certainties are death and taxes; a third is that people will work hard to avoid them both. But why is it so difficult to extend our lifespan? We know how to do it in worms and mice; why is it tricky in humans? Why do so few companies study longevity? What does the near future hold? What would i…

Ep51 rebroadcast "Why do brains dream?"

Why do brains dream, and why are dreams so bizarre? Why doesn't your clock work in your dreams? And even though you spend much of your working day looking at your cell phone and computer – why do they almost never make appearances in your dream content? Is dream content the same across cultures and…

Ep48 rebroadcast "Why do brains become depressed?"

What is depression? Why are brains able to slip into it? Is depression detectable in animals? Do animals have options beyond fight or flight? And what does any of this have to do with measuring depression medications in city water supplies, reward pathways in the brain, the prevalence of tuberculos…

Ep31 rebroadcast "Why do we see #TheDress differently?"

Why can you hear some sounds two different ways, depending on which word you’re looking at? Why do electrical outlets sometimes look like a face? How can you have rich visual experience with your eyes closed? Are some crosswalk buttons fake? Why are some pictures interpretable only once you’ve been…

Ep1 rebroadcast "Does time really slow down when you're in fear for your life?"

When he was a child, Eagleman fell off a roof and time seemed to run in slow motion. When he became a neuroscientist, he grew curious about the experience and collected hundreds of similar stories from others. But is it true that your brain can actually see in slow motion, like Neo in the Matrix? A…

Ep80 "What's it like to never forget?"

What would it be like to have a vastly better memory than you do now?  What if you could remember what you were wearing on any day a dozen years ago? Or who you were with, what the conversation was, and whether it rained? Would it be a blessing or a curse? And if you’re forgetting a lot of your lif…

Ep79 "Does everyone have different mind's eyes, mind's ears, and mind's tongues?"

When you imagine something -- like the sun peeking over a mountain during an early morning rainstorm -- do you see it with rich visual detail, or instead with very little internal picture? In an earlier episode we tackled the spectrum of visual imagination, from hyperphantasia to aphantasia -- and …

Ep78 "Does your brain have one model of the world or thousands?"

Why do you see a unified image when you open your eyes, even though each part of your visual cortex has access to only a small part of the world?  What is special about the wrinkled outer layer of the brain, and what does that have to do with the way that you explore and come to understand the worl…

Ep77 "What is Life?"

How do you define what things are living and dead? You might look at a sprinting cheetah and say it's clearly alive, whereas a chunk of rock is not -- but where do we draw the line? What might we expect extraterrestrials to look like, and would we even have the capacity to recognize them? And what …

Ep76 "How do you decide?" (Part 2)

Do brains time travel? What is a prediction error? What does any of this have to do with the 2008 crash of the economy, how we keep internal price tags, or a rational approach to drug addiction in society? Join Eagleman to learn how your 3-pound universe spends its whole existence nailing down choi…