In his new book, "Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason" philosopher Justin Smith presents a fascinating narrative that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationality. Smith, a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris, acknowledges that we are living in an era when nothing seems to make sense. Populism is on the rise, pseudoscience is still around and there is no shortage of of conspiracy theori...
Jun 16, 2019•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Professor Toby Walsh is a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, and has spent his life dreaming about machines that might think. He is a Professor of AI at the University of New South Wales and leads a research group at Data61, Australia’s Centre of Excellence for ICT Research. In this episode of Bridging the Gaps Professor Toby Walsh discusses his latest book ““2062: The World That AI Made”. By 2062 there will be huge developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence and some...
Apr 10, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Adrienne Mayor is an author and historian of ancient science and human curiosity. She is a research scholar at Stanford University who investigates natural knowledge contained in pre-scientific myths and traditions. In this podcast Adrienne Mayor discusses the fascinating research that she presents in her book "Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines and Ancient Dreams of Technology". This is a captivating account of the earliest expressions of the enduring urge to create machines that imitate life. Ad...
Dec 17, 2018•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Origin of Human Emotions and Underlying Neurophysiological Functions with Professor Joseph LeDoux by Dr Waseem Akhtar
Dec 10, 2018•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast A History of the Concept of Genius from Antiquity to the Modern Time with Professor Darrin McMohan by Dr Waseem Akhtar
Dec 10, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Memory Slips, Ageing and Strategies For Keeping Brain Healthy with Dr Gary Small by Dr Waseem Akhtar
Nov 17, 2018•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Phoenix Mars Mission with NASA's Peter Smith by Dr Waseem Akhtar
Nov 17, 2018•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast False Memories, Misinformation Effect and Eyewitness Testimony: Professor Elizabeth Loftus by Dr Waseem Akhtar
Apr 02, 2018•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age with Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger by Dr Waseem Akhtar
Feb 17, 2018•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Human Consciousness is a fascinating research topic. Discussed previously in a number of Bridging the Gaps conversations, cutting edge research on consciousness – an ungrasped concept and an unsolved problem in science today – will keep appearing here at this Portal for Curious Minds. It is widely accepted that consciousness arises as an emergent property of the human mind. An important question is where does consciousness arise; does this arise from a single seat in the brain or is this a distr...
Apr 24, 2017•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Galileo pointed his telescope towards Saturn (circa 1610), he was not able to fully understand what was around the planet; in 1659 Christian Hygen published a drawing of the rings of Saturn and suggested there was thin, flat ring around the planet. He observed that the ring was inclined to the ecliptic and didn’t touch the planet. In 1675, Giovanni Domenic Cassini described that Saturn’s ring was composed of multiple smaller rings with gaps between them. In 1787, Pierre-Simon Laplace sugges...
Nov 27, 2016•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr Edgar Mitchell discusses his journey to the moon on board Apollo 14 in this very interesting conversation at Bridging the Gaps. He describes when and how he joined NASA, talks about the "Original 19" and discusses interesting details of his mission to the moon, and ten hours that he spent on the lunar surface. He also touches upon the incident with Apollo 13. In this podcast we also discuss Dr Mitchell's two books: The Way of the Explorer and Psychic Exploration. Dr Mitchell talks about a num...
Nov 06, 2016•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast An in-depth conversation with Professor Wendy Freedman on the topic of space exploration with ground based telescopes. We discuss the history of space exploration using ground based telescopes, and try to imagine the future that what is next. Professor Wendy Freedman gives a detailed description of the features of the Giant Magellan Telescope, a ground based extremely large telescope under construction. We discuss the challenges involved in constructing the GMT and talk about the research opport...
Oct 13, 2016•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Evaluating the quality of teaching and learning in our schools, and assessing the effectiveness of our school systems and primary education frameworks is an important research area that focuses on questions such as “what works and what does not work in our schools”. An important aspect of this research is to evaluate the impact of factors such as class size, homework, use of digital technologies, duration of academic year, teaching very bright and weak learners in same cohorts on the quality of ...
Dec 31, 2015•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the most existing developments of the last two decades in the field of astronomy is the discovery of exoplanets: planets that orbit around the stars other then our sun. The idea of finding planets outside our solar system is not new; philosophers and scientists have imagined exoplanets for centuries. Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer theorised exoplanets in sixteenth century. However for centuries there was no mechanism available to detect exoplan...
Oct 16, 2015•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft approaches Pluto, Dr Mark Showalter describes in detail the nature of the mission and what to expect in terms of scientific findings. Dr Showalter discusses in detail the features of the spacecraft and the challenges involved as it approaches Pluto.
May 17, 2015•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Multiple intelligences, future minds, and characteristics and expectations of 21st century learners with Dr Howard Gardner.
Mar 07, 2015•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is consciousness? In this podcast David Chalmers starts addressing this question by saying that “being conscious is when there is something it is like to be that being”. This argument was initially presented by an American philosopher Thomas Nagel in an influential paper “what is it like to be a bat”. This paper was first published in the Philosophical Review in 1974. David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and a cognitive scientist specializing in the area of philosophy of mind. He is ...
Mar 01, 2015•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast A conversation with Dr Jill Tarter on the past, present and future for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Dec 27, 2014•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast A Conversation with Professor Carol Dweck
Nov 30, 2014•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast What exactly is a memory? How much do we know about the processes that a human brain executes to store and retrieve a memory? An individual memory may contain different elements such as explicit information, one or many contexts, relevant emotions; does the brain pre-process all individual elements of a memory and then stores this processed memory as one single entity? Or, are different elements of an individual memory stored at different locations in the form of a connected structure or network...
Nov 30, 2014•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is philosophy dead? Well over the past few years a number of scientists and researchers have said that we don’t need philosophy, philosophy should not be taught, it is waste of time and some have suggested that philosophy is dead. This is obviously a question that should be discussed at Bridging the Gaps. Tim Maudlin, professor of philosophy at New York University, says that the scientists, particularly physicists, who suggest that philosophy is dead, simply don’t know what is done now-a-days in...
Nov 30, 2014•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast How much do we think about thinking? How aware usually are we of our awareness, and about what is happening around us? Jonathan Schooler, professor of psychology at the University of California (Santa Barbara), whose research focuses on consciousness, memory, meta-awareness, mind-wandering, and mindfulness, describes meta awareness as our ability to take explicit note of the current contents of consciousness. He notes that when we are not focusing on what is happening around us, we generate imag...
Oct 24, 2014•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast 
