Ep10 rebroadcast "Why is it so hard to spot a counterfeit bill?"
What do charlatans have to understand about human perception? Why are you so bad at recognizing a real penny among fakes? What did Eagleman have to do with the redesign of the Euro, and why did he cam...
23 Dec 202436min
Ep85 "What is a Thought?"
Brains bear thoughts like a peach tree bears peaches. Even for meditators it's almost impossible to stop the firehose of words and images and ideas. But what in the world is a thought, physically? How...
16 Dec 202436min
Ep84 "Why do brains love music?"
How can we understand music's effect on human brains? Is music universal or does it rely on your experiences? How is music similar to a language? Can music be leveraged to help anxiety, dementia, or P...
9 Dec 202446min
Ep83 "Why Do Your 30 Trillion Cells Feel Like a Self?" Part 2
Does our sense of self emerge from our brain's skill at lumping things into unchanging categories? What can we learn watching a caterpillar brain transition to a butterfly brain? Can we think of a mem...
2 Dec 20241h 1min
Ep82 "Why Do Your 30 Trillion Cells Feel Like a Self?" Part 1
Every cell in your body changes, so why do you have a sense of continuity of the self – as though you're the same person you were a month ago? What does this have to do with the watercraft of the Gree...
25 Nov 202429min
Ep 81 "How close are we to longevity?"
Two certainties are death and taxes; a third is that people will work hard to avoid them both. But why is it so difficult to extend our lifespan? We know how to do it in worms and mice; why is it tric...
18 Nov 202452min
Ep51 rebroadcast "Why do brains dream?"
Why do brains dream, and why are dreams so bizarre? Why doesn't your clock work in your dreams? And even though you spend much of your working day looking at your cell phone and computer – why do they...
11 Nov 202452min
Ep48 rebroadcast "Why do brains become depressed?"
What is depression? Why are brains able to slip into it? Is depression detectable in animals? Do animals have options beyond fight or flight? And what does any of this have to do with measuring depres...
4 Nov 202454min
