Tara Smith on Coronavirus, Pandemics, and What We Can Do

Those of us living in democracies tend to take the idea for granted. We forget what an audacious, radical idea it is to put government power into the hands of literally all of the citizens of a countr...

7 Joulu 20201h 25min

Aristotle conceived of the world in terms of teleological "final causes"; Darwin, or so the story goes, erased purpose and meaning from the world, replacing them with a bloodless scientific algorithm....

30 Marras 20201h 15min

Time! It doesn't stop, psychological effects of being under lockdown notwithstanding. How we experience time depends on our situation, but time itself just marches forward. Unless, of course, it's pos...

23 Marras 20202h 41min

As you have likely heard me mention before, I have an account on Patreon, where people can sign up to donate a dollar or two per episode of Mindscape. In return they get two tangible (if minor) benefi...

20 Marras 20203h 12min

Emotions are at the same time utterly central to who we are — where would we be without them? — and also seemingly peripheral to the "real" work our brains do, understanding the world and acting withi...

16 Marras 20201h 17min

Imagine you were locked in a sealed room, with no way to access the outside world but a few screens showing a view of what's outside. Seems scary and limited, but that's essentially the situation that...

9 Marras 20201h 17min

This episode is published on November 2, 2020, the day before an historic election in the United States. An election that comes amidst growing worries about the future of democratic governance, as wel...

2 Marras 20201h 21min

Erwin Schrödinger's famous book What Is Life? highlighted the connections between physics, and thermodynamics in particular, and the nature of living beings. But the exact connections between living o...

26 Loka 20201h 28min