38 | Alan Lightman on Transcendence, Science, and a Naturalist's Sense of Meaning

The connectome is the wiring diagram of a brain, a big matrix that tells us what neurons talk to what other neurons. Understanding it is an important step to understanding how brains work, but a long ...

27 Apr 1h 14min

Peter Singer has been an influential philosopher for a number of decades. He was a significant early voice in animal rights, has been a leading thinker of utilitarianism, and helped inspire the effect...

20 Apr 1h 15min

We are more familiar with ourselves than with anything else in the universe, but we generally don't come very close to really understanding what our "self" is. That's not too surprising, as selves are...

13 Apr 1h 21min

Welcome to the April 2026 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 Patre...

5 Apr 3h 46min

There is something special about gravity. After decades of effort, there is still no convergence on the right way to reconcile Einstein's theory of general relativity with the framework of quantum mec...

30 Mar 1h 25min

"Lamarkism" is a term often attached to a seemingly discredited idea in evolutionary biology: that one organism could acquire characteristics (e.g., becoming stronger through exercise) that would then...

23 Mar 1h 15min

In the 18th century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham suggested the Panopticon as a model of a prison where inmates could be constantly observed by just a single prison guard. Although his original idea was...

16 Mar 1h 8min

Intelligence is a many splendored thing, especially when it comes to comparisons between species. Chimpanzees are better than humans at some numerical tasks, but less good at understanding what number...

9 Mar 1h 28min