CRISPR and the Genetic Astronaut
In 1960, scientists Nathan Kline and Manfred Clynes envisioned a spacefaring cyborg, technologically augmented to endure the rigors of space travel. The subsequent six decades of space exploration lar...
27 Kesä 20171h 7min
Extended Cognition: Brain, Fingers, Web and Krang
It’s easy to think yourself a mere brain within a human body -- a cognitive machine making sense out of all the incoming sense data from outside world. But what if other parts of the body and even obj...
22 Kesä 20171h 10min
Name Thy Demons: The Roots of Human Violence
Is human civilization growing less violent? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker argued the point in his 2011 book 'The Better Angels of Our Nature,' in which he also defined the 'five inner demons' that...
20 Kesä 20171h 20min
AI, Machine Learning and Human Creativity
Just as manufacturing automation cuts into human jobs, the prospect of creative artificial intelligence raises the specter of robot writers, robot artists and robot musicians who never sleep and alway...
15 Kesä 20171h 17min
Science Communication Breakdown
Science enabled humans to ascend out of the darkness and tackle life’s problems with systematic, self-correcting rigidity. Yet, when faced with scientific consensus on climate change and other issues,...
14 Kesä 201754min
There But For Science: Blood Navigation
Imagine a world in which sailing ships navigate by the yelps of tormented dogs and nuclear submarines whisper to each other via the screams of rabbits and their murdered young? In both of these cases,...
9 Kesä 20171h 16min
The Tower of Babel
An ancient people build a tower to touch the heavens. A vengeful god disrupts the project through the splintering of human language. Everyone’s left to pick up the pieces. The Tower of Babel myth reso...
6 Kesä 20171h 22min
Neurosecurity: Dawn of the Brain Hackers
While hackers and malware can certainly cause a great deal of damage and misery, these dangers can’t hurt us physically, right? In this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, Robert and Joe a...
1 Kesä 20171h 16min
