Week 2 of Mental Health Awareness month: Anxiety is close to everyone’s experience, either because you've had it or someone close to you has. Does your brain accidentally teach itself to stay anxious by looping on the same fears? Is anxiety helping you perform better, or does it make everything harder? Is it possible to unlearn worry the same way you learned it? Join Eagleman with Dr. Jud Brewer, who suffered with anxiety as a young man... and then became a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who st...
May 11, 2026•59 min•Ep. 153
What do you do when your own mind stops feeling safe? How does a person sing on stage while panicking inside? How do you catch your thoughts before they catch you? Join Eagleman with singer/songwriter Jewel to talk about mental health: the battles she’s lived, the wisdom she’s earned, and the lives she’s helping shape. This episode kicks off Mental Health Awareness month, when we’re reminded to look directly at what is typically hidden. A troubled mind with stormy weather can often remain dark; ...
May 04, 2026•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 152
Why do we generally feel like the world is getting worse, when by almost all measures it’s getting better? How do ideas "have sex”, and why does that matter for innovation? Why do brains tend to systematically misread the future? What if optimism is a more rational stance than pessimism? If innovation isn’t primarily about lone geniuses, what’s it really about? Join Eagleman with scientist and author Matt Ridley to explore what it means to be, in Ridley’s phrasing, a "rational optimist".
Apr 27, 2026•57 min•Ep. 151
Can you influence what you dream about tonight? Are you spending years of your life in a world you don’t recall? Can nightmares be manipulated as a therapy? Are dreams sometimes predictive of changes in your health before you become aware of them? Join Eagleman with Adam Haar Horowitz, a neuroscientist and dream engineer who spends his working days trying to help people during their night time.
Apr 20, 2026•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 150
How can a brain grow up in chaos but find its way to order? There are many ways to have a bad childhood, but why do some children break while others bend and keep going? How much of who you are is written in your genes & how much is sculpted by your environment? How many versions of you were possible & why did this one win out? Join Eagleman today with David Sussillo, who was abandoned as a child but grew up to become a neuroscientist & technologist. We’ll explore what his trajectory...
Apr 13, 2026•51 min
How can we improve political dialogue, and what does this have to do with the discovery that the universe behaves differently than expected? Why do we cling to beliefs even when evidence pushes against them? What if the biggest problem facing humanity could be solved with practice? Join Eagleman today with Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel-prize winning astrophysicist, but instead of the cosmos we talk about the inner cosmos: why polarization happens and how we might address it with a different kind of t...
Apr 06, 2026•55 min•Ep. 148
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 does current AI need petabytes of data, but a child can learn from just a few examples? Why does AI have 'jagged' intelligence – meaning it looks brilliant in one moment and then does something that seems nonsensical? In physics we have various laws (gravity, motion, etc), and today we’re joined by...
Mar 30, 2026•50 min•Ep. 147
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 as having a mind like you do. Is dehumanization a cause of violence, or the fuel that keeps it burning? Do people who view themselves as highly empathetic dehumanize more than others? And on the flip side, why do we sometimes think chatbots or robots are people with interior minds? Will kids raised ...
Mar 23, 2026•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 146
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 pasta in the bathtub, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, or Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year? Join Eagleman with sociologist Angele Cristin to learn how algorithms invisibly sculpt our behavior.
Mar 16, 2026•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 145
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 to do with bristlecone pine trees, cymbals, or an extant hotel that launched in the sixth century? Join today for thinking about ourselves on a 10,000 year timescale with guest Alexander Rose.
Mar 09, 2026•56 min
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 bottom, and what does this reveal about the world’s religions? What was the most important weapon in ancient history, and how did it disappear? Join today for the story of persistence, from sharks to schizophrenia to Roman concrete to DNA.
Mar 02, 2026•44 min•Ep. 143
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 security and modern science? Are scientists participants in a larger game they barely see? What if the most important ideas are the ones you’re not allowed to hear about? From Crick and Watson to nuclear bombs and AI, today we’ll cover it all with physicist, mathematician, and iconoclast Eric Weinst...
Feb 23, 2026•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 142
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 near future? What does any of this have to do with how the drug Ritalin got its name? Today we’ll speak with neuroscientist Nicole Rust, author of Elusive Cures .
Feb 16, 2026•37 min•Ep. 141
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 socially useful? Today we speak with Sam Harris about the topic of our beliefs: how we see the world and what we take to be true about it.
Feb 09, 2026•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 140
Is intelligence a property of individual brains, or is it something that emerges from many brains trying to align with one another? How can we build AI agents to improve our understanding of the world and to mediate between rivaling humans? For this and much more, we speak today with Danielle Perszyk, a cognitive scientist who leads the human-computer interaction team at Amazon’s AGI Lab.
Feb 02, 2026•58 min•Ep. 139
What if your confidence in your political beliefs does not correlate with their accuracy? Why does a pundit's outrage often feel so convincing and nuance so unsatisfying? Are conspiracy theories a predictable feature of human brains? Is there any way to stop ourselves from mistaking our feelings for conclusions? How can we come to be clearer thinkers? Today we speak with political commentator Kaizen Asiedu about how we arrive at our hot takes on the world.
Jan 26, 2026•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 138
Medications are among the most important advancements of science, but their social consequences are often complex. What if some of our most common diseases are design flaws of modern life? Does it matter if we're fixing a root cause rather than just circumventing it? If a pill can quiet hunger, pain, or anxiety, is that "cheating"? Today we talk about the fascinating world of prescription drugs with science journalist Thomas Goetz.
Jan 19, 2026•47 min•Ep. 137
What does it mean for your life to matter? We all talk a lot about happiness, pleasure, and meaning... but what if the real engine underneath it all is the need to feel we count? Is it possible that depression, extremism, and ambition all stem from the same psychological source? When is political polarization less about beliefs and more about threatened significance? Join Eagleman with philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein, author of "The Mattering Instinct".
Jan 12, 2026•42 min•Ep. 136
What exactly is hypnosis? We’ve all heard of circus-like versions, but is there a real element to hypnosis that psychiatrists and neuroscientists are able to leverage? Can attention and expectation change what we feel (such as pain or anxiety)? What do suggestible states reveal about the brain’s pathways? How does hypnosis compare to meditation, flow states, or psychedelic drugs? Today we speak with David Spiegel, Stanford psychiatrist and one of the world’s experts in hypnosis.
Jan 05, 2026•55 min•Ep. 135
Happy Holidays- New Episodes starting Jan. 5th 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 Greek demigod Theseus, or the End-of-History illusion, or why you go through so much trouble to make things comfortable for your future self, even though you don't know that person? And if there really were an afterlife, what age would your deity make every...
Dec 29, 2025•29 min•Ep. 82
Happy Holidays- New episodes starting Jan. 5th Why did lions look so strange in medieval European art? What does this have to do with Native American folklore, eyewitness memory of a car accident, or what a person remembers 3 years after witnessing the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center? And what does any of this have to do with flashbulb memories, misinformation, and the telephone game that you played as a child? Join Eagleman for part 1 of an astonishing journey into what we believe about o...
Dec 22, 2025•34 min•Ep. 70
Why will you make different moral decisions in similar circumstances? Why do some people make different choices than you? What happens when ancient moral instincts collide with modern problems such as pandemics, AI alignment, and political tribalism? Could a simple online game reduce polarization? Could you contribute to charities more effectively if you understood how your moral brain decides? Join Eagleman this week with guest Joshua Greene as we open the hood of human morality.
Dec 15, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 134
Why do people sometimes buy into ideas that seem obviously false from the outside, as with conspiracy theories? Is this kind of misbelief a universal feature of human brains? Does it offer clarity and belonging when reality feels chaotic and threatening? What would it take for you (under the right emotional conditions) to begin believing something that your past self would find unbelievable? Today we’ll speak with behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who has thought a lot about misbelief: for him it...
Dec 08, 2025•47 min•Ep. 133
If AI can do everything from writing novels to designing proteins, what remains that only humans can do? What's the human advantage in a world where machines can outperform us at almost any measurable task? What does any of this have to do with Stephen King’s nightmares, Tom Cruise’s stunts, the first shoeshine caught on camera, the shortage of air conditioner repairmen, and why hyper-capable AI might actually increase the demand for unexpected jobs? Today we speak with author and technologist A...
Dec 01, 2025•51 min•Ep. 132
How do societies work their way out of polarization? And what does the answer have to do with broken trucks, the Apollo program, the movie 'Watchmen', Iroquois Native Americans, a new idea for social media algorithms, moral taste buds, and how we can take advantage of the common threads that bond us -- coming to see each other again as fellow travelers improvising their way through the same noisy world?
Nov 24, 2025•49 min•Ep. 131
What do propaganda posters have in common across nation and time, and how is that related to the medial prefrontal cortex? What is behind repeating cycles of societal polarization? What does any of this have to do with the American Civil War, hippies vs soldiers, border ruffians vs free-staters, hanging chads, Pearl Harbor, and why education can serve as an immune response to mind viruses?
Nov 17, 2025•46 min•Ep. 130
Would a utopia be possible? Or does our innate tribalism and jealousy make perfect societies difficult to achieve? Do we secretly love hierarchies? Why are primate brains such excellent detectors of unfairness? Why do things become more desirable when we’re told we can’t have them? Did the church’s disavowal of first-cousin marriage lead to better politics? This week Eagleman talks with psychologist Paul Bloom about the (im)possibility of achieving societal utopias.
Nov 10, 2025•44 min•Ep. 129
Imagine we eventually meet some alien scientists. If they can see electrons or smell photons, would their science look like ours? Is physics a universal language, or just a local dialect of the human brain? Would aliens use math, or might their truths be organized unrecognizably? Are the “laws of nature” really laws, or simply our interpretations? Join Eagleman with particle physicist Daniel Whiteson, author of the new book “Do Aliens Speak Physics?”
Nov 03, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 128
What is a brain-computer interface? How can a paralyzed person use her brain to control a robotic arm? How can someone who's lost the gift of speech use brain signals to broadcast his voice again? Can we eventually restore autonomy and dignity so seamlessly that the technology disappears and the person reappears? Where are the ethical boundaries between restoring function and spying on private thought? Who owns the stream of neural data that represents you? Join this week with guest neuroscienti...
Oct 27, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 127
How is sci-fi like a cultural research and development lab? Will we someday have AI agents that live in robot bodies, and will we be liable if they commit murder? What happens when reality is no longer verifiable? How can we create AI advocates that guide us toward self-actualization over distraction? What is a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer? This week we talk with researcher Bethany Maples about science fiction and how it might prepare us to wrestle with the deepest questions about AI, identit...
Oct 20, 2025•36 min•Ep. 126
