Ep85 rebroadcast - "What is a Thought?"
Brains bear thoughts like a peach tree bears peaches. Even for meditators it's almost impossible to stop the firehose of words and images and ideas. But what in the world is a thought, physically? How...
23 Kesä 202536min
Ep109 "Are you one mind or many drives?" with Jordan Peterson
Is your brain a one-person show or an ensemble cast of rivaling neural networks? How do we manage the conflict between different drives, and what does this have to do with literature, deities, maturat...
16 Kesä 202542min
Ep108 "Can brains increase their happiness?" (with Bruce Hood)
Is it possible to become happier? How much of your happiness has to do with genetics, social connection, comparison to other people, your balance of optimism vs pessimism, and whether it would be usef...
9 Kesä 202539min
Ep107 "Why do brains love stories?" (with Joshua Landy)
How do brains slip so easily from the real world into made up worlds? What do authors of great literature have in common with stage magicians and comedians? What does any of this have to do with cogni...
2 Kesä 202549min
Ep106 "What happens when brains watch movies?" (with Jeffrey Zacks)
Why do movies work so well? What does film reveal about the way the brain processes reality? What does any of this have to do with omniscience, simulation, jumping around in time, or why dogs don’t do...
26 Touko 202548min
Ep105 "What if AI is not actually intelligent?" (with Alison Gopnik)
Is AI an intelligent agent, or is there a different way we should be thinking about it? Is it more like a piece of cultural technology? What in the world is a piece of cultural technology -- and how w...
19 Touko 20251h 10min
Ep104 "What is your internal world really like?" (with Russell Hurlburt)
If you had to give a detailed description of what flits through your mind, how good would you be at it? Might you be surprised at how many of your thoughts don't involve language? Are your thoughts ch...
12 Touko 202542min
Ep103 "Could you ever know what it’s like to be someone else?" (Part 2)
What would it take to get inside someone else's head, and could new brain technologies ever help us get there? Will there be dream celebrities, in which uploads go viral? What does consciousness feel ...
5 Touko 202539min
