123 | Lisa Feldman Barrett on Emotions, Actions, and the Brain
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 Nov 20201h 17min
122 | David Eagleman on Tapping Into the Livewired Brain
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 Nov 20201h 17min
121 | Cornel West on What Democracy Is and Should Be
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 Nov 20201h 21min
120 | Jeremy England on Biology, Thermodynamics, and the Bible
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 Okt 20201h 28min
119 | Musa al-Gharbi on the Value of Intellectual Diversity
In the service of seeking truth, there would seem to be value in intellectual diversity, both in keeping ourselves honest and in the possibility of new ideas coming from unexpected quarters. That's tr...
19 Okt 20201h 16min
118 | Adam Riess on the Expansion of the Universe and a Crisis in Cosmology
Astronomers rocked the cosmological world with the 1998 discovery that the universe is accelerating. Well-deserved Nobel Prizes were awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and today's guest Adam R...
12 Okt 20201h 18min
117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution
Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and h...
5 Okt 20201h 20min
116 | Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration
How can, and should, we talk to each other, especially to people with whom we disagree? "Free speech" is rightfully entrenched as an important value in liberal democratic societies, but implementing i...
28 Sep 20201h 43min
