Ep147 "Can we engineer human thought?" with Tom Griffiths
Can the mind be captured with math? Modern AI seems to have burst out of the gate recently, but is it actually the latest chapter in a 300-year project to turn thought into something we can model? Why...
30 Mars 50min
Ep146 "Who Counts as Human in Your Mind?" with Lasana Harris
When do you view another person like an object? This is what neuroscientists mean when they talk about de-humanization: your brain doesn't crank up its social circuitry to understand the other person ...
23 Mars 1h 7min
Ep145 Why do we compulsively click on ragebait? with Angele Christin
Do algorithms shape our lives? What did clickbait look like before the internet? Why do journalists start writing differently when metrics are introduced? What does any of this have to do with cooking...
16 Mars 1h 10min
Ep144 "How do things last?" Part 2: Millennia with Alexander Rose
What is a 10,000 year clock? What is the Y10k bug? What allows some organizations to last a millennium? What do ancient ceramics have to do with ball bearings in satellites? What does any of this have...
9 Mars 55min
Ep143 "How do things last?" Part 1: neurons to civilizations
What makes things last, and what do very different lasting things have in common? Why might a space alien not be able to understand music? Why do windows in medieval cathedrals look thicker at the bot...
2 Mars 44min
Ep142 "Do breakthroughs require rule-breakers?" with Eric Weinstein
Why do revolutionary ideas so often come from outsiders? Do good scientists sometimes crowd out great ones? Do we still have room for scientific cowboys? And what is the relationship between national ...
23 Feb 1h 32min
Ep141 "What do brains and weather systems have in common?" with Nicole Rust
Does brain science need a new grand plan? Is the brain less like an assembly line and more like a weather system? What does this mean for what counts as explanatory, and how might AI help us in the ne...
16 Feb 36min
Ep140 "How does your brain decide what’s true?" with Sam Harris
Why do we believe what we believe? Why is changing our opinions so difficult, and why does a challenged belief so often feel like a personal attack? What if beliefs didn’t evolve to be true, but to be...
9 Feb 1h 20min
