225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency
Human beings have developed wondrous capacities to take in information about the world, mull it over, think about a suite of future implications, and decide on a course of action based on those delibe...
30 Jan 20231h 22min
224 | Edward Tufte on Data, Design, and Truth
So you have some information — how are you going to share it with and present it to the rest of the world? There has been a long history of organizing and displaying information without putting too mu...
23 Jan 20231h 16min
223 | Tania Lombrozo on What Explanations Are
There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations concerning what happens, and when what we experience differs from those expectations, we want to know th...
16 Jan 20231h 10min
222 | Andrew Strominger on Quantum Gravity and the Real World
Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports quantum mechanics, and supports general relativity — but it's only inspiration, not detailed guidance. S...
9 Jan 20231h 24min
221 | Adam Bulley on How Mental Time Travel Makes Us Human
One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that ...
2 Jan 20231h 20min
Holiday Message 2022: Thinking Really Slowly
Welcome to that beloved Mindscape annual tradition, the Holiday Message. An opportunity for a quicker and less-well-thought-out solo episode to round off another year. Ironically, this year the theme ...
19 Des 202247min
220 | Lara Buchak on Risk and Rationality
Life is rich with moments of uncertainty, where we're not exactly sure what's going to happen next. We often find ourselves in situations where we have to choose between different kinds of uncertainty...
12 Des 20221h 16min
AMA | December 2022
Welcome to the December 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...
5 Des 20223h 15min
