Ep176 "Where Does Your Mind End and AI Begin?" with Steven Johnson

When a machine can remember your intellectual life and propose the next connection, is it still a tool or has it become part of the mind doing the thinking? In other words, who gets credit when AI supplies the crucial connection for an idea? Join Eagleman with Steven Johnson, historian of innovatio…

Re-Release " What is Color? Part 2: Why royals wear purple"

This week we reach into the archive for one of the most popular episodes of Inner Cosmos. 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, why the mi…

Re-Release "What is color? Part 1: Why hunters wear orange"

This week we reach into the archive for one of the most popular episodes of Inner Cosmos. 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 of this ha…

Ep175 Who Are You When Your Brain Changes? with Robert Kolker

Is your personality written into the circuitry of your brain? With brain disease, can someone lose who they are without realizing it? What happens when the person changing is the only one who can't see it? What does it mean to love someone whose personality has become unrecognizable? If you carried…

Ep174 "Can Evolution Teach AI?" with Athena Aktipis

How do you get trillions of cells to collaborate as the single organism that we call you? Does that kind of cooperation create opportunities for hijacking -- for example, is cancer a form of "cellular cheating"? Can we take the lessons learned from biology and apply them to understanding politics? …

Re-Release "Why Do Brains Dream"

This week we reach into the archive for one of the most popular episodes of Inner Cosmos. 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 …

Ep173 "Why Do We Have Emotions?" with Robert Kurzban

What's a feeling for? What is jealousy measuring and motivating? Why do both awe and grief slow us down? What happens when ancient emotions meet dating apps and like buttons? Does the intensity of a feeling decide which part of you takes control? Can understanding an emotion loosen its grip? Today …

Ep172 "Can You Quantify Yourself to Improve Health?" with Michael Snyder

Can your smartwatch detect subtle changes before you feel them? Might a continuous glucose monitor pick up on things you didn’t know about yourself? Could a drop of blood map your future health? Why does your personal baseline matter more than a population average? Could AI decode the massive signa…

Ep171 "Why Do Some Urges Feel Irresistible?" with Paige Gordon

Why do two people facing the same choice feel different urges? How much effort hides behind resisting a cookie? Why can the brain keep wanting something long after pleasure fades? Can a molecule crank down the volume of your internal radio? Does a biological understanding of behavior reduce respons…

Ep 170 "Will Mars Create a New Species of Human?" with Scott Solomon

What happens when we start birthing babies on Mars? Might a Martian human become unable to survive on Earth because of differences in microbes and gravity? How much of your body is shaped by the details of this planet? Will radiation accelerate human evolution on Mars? Could living on Mars eventual…