Ep119 "Why do brains believe in the unbelievable?" with Bruce Hood
Why are brains superstitious? Would you wear a nice sweater that belonged to a murderer? What does this have to do with lucky socks, ghosts, our interpretation of coincidences, why kids often need the...
1 Sep 202536min
Ep118 "Why has the brain always been our hardest puzzle?" with Matthew Cobb
How have humans through the ages tried to crack the mysteries of the brain, and why are our theories always yoked to the most recent technologies? What does the history of brain science have to do wit...
25 Aug 202559min
Ep117 "What does brain science have to do with free speech? (with Greg Lukianoff)" (with Greg Lukianoff)
Most people claim to be in favor of free speech, but they often mean speech from their own side (and not whatever those crazy people on the other side want to say). But from the point of view of the b...
18 Aug 20251h
Ep116 " What is Color? Part 2: Why royals wear purple"
Are there new colors you could see? And why are they impossible to imagine before you've seen them? Can you lose your color vision? And what does any of this have to do with linguistic color terms, wh...
11 Aug 202537min
Ep115 "What is color? Part 1: Why hunters wear orange"
Why do birds and bees choose different flowers? Why do mammals' eyes seem to be optimized for moving around at night, and what does that have to do with hairless humans getting angry? What does any of...
4 Aug 202537min
Ep114 "Would you eat a self burger?"
Would you eat a burger grown from a human muscle cell? Would you rather use your own cell or someone else's? What does the future of lab-grown meat illuminate about neuroscience, our calculations of m...
28 Jul 202536min
Ep113 "What's special about inventors?" (with Pablos Holman)
Why do some people jump into entirely new categories of possibility? And what does this have to do with self-driving ships, solar panels in space, shooting mosquitoes with lasers, skateboarding tricks...
21 Jul 202557min
Ep112 "How is computer code like magic?" (with Sam Arbesman)
What is code, and can it be thought of like a magic spell? Are we building a world so complex that we will lose the ability to understand its operations -- and has that already happened? What does any...
14 Jul 202542min
