Can we explain consciousness as emerging from classical neuroscience, or do we require deeper principles? Could quantum physics have something to do with it? Is it possible that consciousness predates biology, and biology evolved to take advantage of it? What are the right ways to build new theories in neuroscience when we don’t know the answers? Join Eagleman with Nobel laureate Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to explore the controversial idea that there could be, even possib...
Jun 30, 2025•48 min•Ep. 110
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 can you hear a voice in your head when there's no one speaking in the outside world? And what does any of this have to do with a small marine animal who eats its own brain? Join Eagleman for this week's deep dive into our inner life.
Jun 23, 2025•37 min
Is your brain a one-person show or an ensemble cast of rivaling neural networks? How do we manage the conflict between different drives, and what does this have to do with literature, deities, maturation, and what Nietzsche meant when he said “every drive wants to be master, and it attempts to philosophize in that spirit”? Join Eagleman this week with Jordan Peterson as we examine the way lives are built on conflicting wants.
Jun 16, 2025•43 min•Ep. 109
Is it possible to become happier? How much of your happiness has to do with genetics, social connection, comparison to other people, your balance of optimism vs pessimism, and whether it would be useful to keep a journal of your life? Join Eagleman this week with Bruce Hood, experimental psychologist and author of “The Science of Happiness”.
Jun 09, 2025•39 min•Ep. 108
How do brains slip so easily from the real world into made up worlds? What do authors of great literature have in common with stage magicians and comedians? What does any of this have to do with cognitive shortcuts, prediction machines, Marcel Proust, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, or why jokes are always structured in threes? Join Eagleman this week for a conversation with his Stanford colleague Joshua Landy as they discuss brains on story.
Jun 02, 2025•49 min•Ep. 107
Why do movies work so well? What does film reveal about the way the brain processes reality? What does any of this have to do with omniscience, simulation, jumping around in time, or why dogs don’t do story? Join Eagleman with guest Jeffrey Zacks, cognitive scientist at Wash U, as we dive into the peculiar magic that happens when the lights go down, the screen glows to life, and we find ourselves pulled into the world of a film.
May 26, 2025•48 min•Ep. 106
Is AI an intelligent agent, or is there a different way we should be thinking about it? Is it more like a piece of cultural technology? What in the world is a piece of cultural technology -- and how would re-thinking this change our next steps? What does any of this have to do with the myth of the Golem, printing presses, Socrates, Martin Luther, or the story of stone soup? Join Eagleman this week with cognitive scientist Alison Gopnik for a new take on a new tech.
May 19, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 105
If you had to give a detailed description of what flits through your mind, how good would you be at it? Might you be surprised at how many of your thoughts don't involve language? Are your thoughts changed by paying attention to them? What does this have to do with getting surprised by a random beep and immediately writing down what you’re thinking? Join Eagleman this week in conversation with Russell Hurlburt, a clinical psychologist who developed a new method to probe inner life.
May 12, 2025•42 min•Ep. 104
What would it take to get inside someone else's head, and could new brain technologies ever help us get there? Will there be dream celebrities, in which uploads go viral? What does consciousness feel like from the inside, and why do movies always get this wrong? Why don't you see your own blinks? What would it be like if exactly 1/2 of your brain was numbed to sleep? And what would it be like to become a horse?
May 05, 2025•39 min•Ep. 103
What does it mean to stand in another’s shoes—and when are the gaps between us too wide to cross? This week, Eagleman explores bats, kicked robots, Helen Keller, empathy, storytelling, and the phrase “I know exactly how you feel.” We'll weave through neuroscience, philosophy, literature, and technology to ask: Can we ever truly understand another’s inner world?
Apr 28, 2025•36 min•Ep. 102
What enables some people to keep going when everything falls apart? We all know someone who’s been through hell and comes out standing. This episode is about resilience. Join Eagleman with guest Dr. Jonathan Downar to discover what happens in the brain when we face adversity. Is resilience something you’re born with, or is it something your brain can develop? What does any of this have to do with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, using magnetic fields to zap the brain, the less famous partner t...
Apr 21, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 104
What does The Matrix tell us about the brain and time perception? And what does that have to do with champion bicyclists, hidden data, elementary particles, secret murderers, or time machines? Today’s episode is about slow motion: what’s going on in the brain, and why we are so mesmerized by it. Whether watching a sword battle, basketball dunk, or sprinters, we're pulled to slow motion like moths to flame... but have you ever wondered from a neuroscience perspective what that’s all about? Me too...
Apr 14, 2025•44 min
Your brain occasionally cooks up falsehoods that you believe entirely, but why does this confabulation happen, and how frequently? What does this tell us about memory, truth-telling, and your life as a story that drifts? And what does this have to do with a paralyzed Supreme Court judge, a blind person who insists she can see, whether Nelson Mandela did or did not die in the 1980s, or whether Curious George had a tail?
Apr 07, 2025•41 min•Ep. 99
How many people are having relationships with artificial neural networks? Should we think of AI lovers as traps, mirrors, or sandboxes? Is there a clear line between relationship bots and therapist bots? And what does this have to do with Eliza Doolittle, a doll cabinet in your head, loneliness epidemics, or suicide mitigation? Join Eagleman with guest researcher Bethanie Maples to discover where we are and where we're going.
Mar 31, 2025•49 min•Ep. 98
You're defined in part by the genome you arrive with -- so what does it mean when you can edit it? What does this have to do with viruses, copy-pasting, and whether we will modify the story of our own species? Join Eagleman with guest Trevor Martin, CEO of Mammoth Biosciences, for this week's episode about the remarkable situation we find ourselves in, now that we know how to read and write our biological inheritance.
Mar 24, 2025•46 min•Ep. 97
Now that we’re careening into our AI future, what are the most important things for our students to learn? Do we keep teaching as we always have, do we drop our heads on the desk, or are there clever ways to steer and optimize education? What would Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, say about all this? Find out in this week's episode.
Mar 17, 2025•52 min•Ep. 96
How can we rethink schools to meet the future? What does this have to do with the invention of the printing press, the prevalence of desk calculators, or the spread of Google? And how is this connected to the writer Goethe, a digital replica of the philosopher Aristotle, or the two lasting bequests that we should give our children? Join Eagleman this week for surprises about what AI means for the next generation.
Mar 10, 2025•47 min•Ep. 95
Do you perceive red the same way I do? What is wrong with the textbook model of vision? Why do brains have so many internal feedback loops? And what does any of this have to do with Plato’s cave, Ernest Hemingway, or artificial neural networks that perceive dogs everywhere? Join Eagleman with guest Anil Seth, author of “Being You”, to explore the scientific problem of consciousness.
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 94
Meet David Eagleman - neuroscientist, author, and more. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw and is currently a neuroscientist at Stanford University. I thoroughly enjoyed picking his brain and I hope you enJOY too!
Feb 28, 2025•51 min
How will creative people make a living in a world with AI? Is there a different way to think about the economy of the future -- and how might it involve mystifying and elevating humans? What does the term “data dignity" mean? Join Eagleman with guest Jaron Lanier -- computer scientist, artist, futurist -- as they discuss AI's boundless creative output and how we might thoughtfully navigate into the future.
Feb 24, 2025•34 min•Ep. 93
How are secrets in the brain like Abraham Lincoln’s political cabinet? Will AI in the near future hide things from you? And what does any of this have to do with political hierarchies, the formula for Coca-Cola, or deceptive chimpanzees? Join Eagleman to understand what neuroscience tells us about secrets: what they are, why they weigh on us, and how they sometimes grow into tangled webs we never meant to weave.
Feb 17, 2025•43 min
What are we talking about neurobiologically when we talk about love? What does it have to do with how you were raised, the symmetry of someone's face, or the smell of their underarms? What do we learn from heartbreak, rom-coms, and little rodents called prairie voles? And what is the future of love & AI? Join Eagleman for a Valentine's Day special to learn what unseen sparks in the skull set the heart ablaze.
Feb 10, 2025•49 min
A brain's 86 billion neurons are always chattering along with tiny electrical and chemical signals. But how can we get inside the brain to study the fine details? Can we eavesdrop on cells using other cells? What is the future of communication between brains? Join Eagleman with special guest Max Hodak, founder of Science Corp, a company pioneering stunning new methods in brain computer interfaces.
Feb 03, 2025•56 min•Ep. 90
Why do you like the taste of things that your friend doesn't? Why do kids not like coffee but adults do? What does any of this have to do with smelling people’s armpits, whether women really synchronize their menstruation, whether your culture eats a lot of spicy foods, and how animals sense the world? Join Eagleman this week to understand why there's no accounting for taste.
Jan 27, 2025•36 min•Ep. 89
Why is it so difficult to define intelligence? What does this have to do with being a fish in water trying to describe water? Might we humans possess one kind of intelligence in a constellation of many other types? And what does this have to do with empathy, AI, and our search for extraterrestrial life? Join Eagleman with guest Kevin Kelly as they dive into whether there might exist very different kinds of minds.
Jan 20, 2025•47 min•Ep. 88
Because visual signals take time to process, we live slightly in the past. So how do we ever catch a baseball? And what does this have to do with certain visual illusions, or the view in New York City, or the things you were never taught in school, or the warp drive in Star Trek? Join Eagleman this week for a mind blowing look at the strange relationship between vision and time.
Jan 13, 2025•35 min•Ep. 87
Are emotions something that happen to you, or are they bodily signals we interpret? Does everyone show emotions in the same way -- that is, are there particular markers of the face or the body that always mean anger, sadness, or joy? And what does this have to do with Charles Darwin, the truth about facial expressions, or the movie Inside Out? Join Eagleman with this week's guest, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of hundreds of papers and "How Emotions are Made", for a deep dive into ...
Jan 06, 2025•50 min•Ep. 86
Why are our brains so wired for love? Could you fall head over heels for a bot? Might your romantic partner be more satisfied with a 5% better version of you? How does an AI bot plug right into your deep neural circuitry, and what are the pros and cons? And what will it mean when humans you love don’t have to die, but can live on in your phone forever? Join Eagleman for a deep dive into relationships, their AI future, and what it all means for our species.
Dec 30, 2024•38 min
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 campaign to the European Central Bank that all their bills should be blank with a single hologram in the middle? In this episode, explore the crossroads of perception and deception. Brief appearance from special guest Adam Savage.
Dec 23, 2024•36 min
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 can you hear a voice in your head when there's no one speaking in the outside world? And what does any of this have to do with a small marine animal who eats its own brain? Join Eagleman for this week's deep dive into our inner life.
Dec 16, 2024•37 min
