Claim OwnershipInner Cosmos with David Eagleman
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Neuroscientist and author David Eagleman discusses how our brain interprets the world and what that means for us. Through storytelling, research, interviews, and experiments, David Eagleman tackles wild questions that illuminate new facets of our lives and our realities.
40 Episodes
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What does the insanity defense mean in a court of law? And is there such a thing as temporary insanity? Is the twinkie defense a real thing? Can someone use premenstrual syndrome as a defense? And what does the legal wrestling around insanity tell us about the differences between brains: yours and other people’s, or even yours one day and yours the next day? How does law comport with science, and how are they sometimes like two people with quite different ways of looking at the world? Join to find out what happened to Andrea Yates, how the legal system deals with mental illness, and so much more.
Eagleman answers listeners questions.
What is the insanity defense? Are some people’s brains so different that it makes sense to use a different legal category? How does a legal system decide where the dividing line is? How are science and law strange bedfellows? Join us for the first of two episodes about the insanity defense: where it comes from, where it's going, and why it is so difficult to decide where to draw our societal lines.
1f you look at a brain, how can you immediately tell if it belongs to a piano player or a violinist? How can a dog learn how to walk on its rear legs? And what does this have to do with expertise, or the good news about the brains of digital natives, or how governments respond to change just like brains do? While we all like to talk about brain plasticity, the truth is that most of what happens in your life makes no meaningful change to your brain. So what’s the difference between the stuff that sticks and the stuff that doesn’t?
What would it be like to have a much lower or higher IQ than you currently have -- for example, to be a squirrel or an advanced space alien? This week's episode is about intelligence. What is it and what is its history and future? Join Eagleman on a whistle-stop tour of several schools of thought about what intelligence might mean in the brain.
Why do they use a gun at the Olympics? And why can you get off the blocks after the bang but still be disqualified for jumping the gun? Few things are as bizarre as our time perception. From sprinters to basketball players, from Kubla Khan to Oppenheimer, from television broadcasting to hallucinations, Eagleman unmasks illusions of time that surround us. Why does the brain work so hard to pull off editing tricks? And what does this tell us about our perception of reality?
Does life end inevitably or instead only because we don’t understand biology well enough yet? Today’s episode is about understanding what happens when your molecular cycles grind to a halt... and whether there's anything we can do to hit control-Z. Join Eagleman and his guest Dr. Zvonimir Vrselja to dive into the weird possibility of understanding cells well enough to reverse death.
Eagleman answers listeners questions.
Why can you hear some sounds two different ways, depending on which word you’re looking at? Why do electrical outlets sometimes look like a face? How can you have rich visual experience with your eyes closed? Are some crosswalk buttons fake? Why are some pictures interpretable only once you’ve been told what to look for? And although brains are often celebrated for their parallel processing, what should they really be celebrated for? Tune in to learn what happens when the raw facts of the world collide with your expectations.
Can we explain our rich experience of life only by studying the molecules that compose us? How is the color of your passport related to your chances of presenting with schizophrenia? Males are more predisposed to commit crime, so why don’t all males commit crime? And what does any of this have to do with traffic jams, why Seinfeld is funny, and how we’re ever going to come to know ourselves from studying biology? Join Eagleman to talk about levels of understanding, what a meaningful explanation would look like, and the possibility that we are not near the conclusion of science's journey, but instead near the beginning.
Did Joan of Arc turn the tide of the 100 Years War as the result of a brain disorder? Would you appreciate Taylor Swift if you only had an internal camera to watch her vocal chords? What do almost all drugs of abuse have in common? How can the tiny molecules of rabies virus control your behavior? Join Eagleman on a two-part deep dive into the fundamental question of how biological insights can shed light on the ancient question of who we are.
Are there really dozens of words for snow in northern cultures? What did the movie Arrival have to do with language and cognition? Why are Russians better than Americans at distinguishing certain shades of blue? And what does any of this have to do with space, time, gender, and how your language influences your thought? Join Eagleman and his guest, cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky, as they take a deep dive into the intersection of words and understanding.
Can your thoughts be read with neurotechnology? When is measuring the brain like reading the mind? How close or far are we from being able to know if you're thinking about some particular thing you did or intend to do? What's hype and what's real? Join Eagleman for a deep dive into mind reading: what it means, where we are now, and whether your thoughts could ever be readable with new technologies.
We all know people who hate the word "moist". But why are they fine with synonyms such as "damp" or "wet"? What’s going on in their brains, and what does this have to do with synesthesia, autism, shapes, slacks, and sound probabilities? Join this week's episode as Eagleman leads us into the new and wild world of word aversion.
Why are we humans so easily deceived? What are the tricks of the trade, and how can we train ourselves to be more aware of them? What does all this have to do with Theranos, forged letters, and the shell game? Although you presumably wouldn't cheat a stranger out of all her money, there are people who would -- so how can we beef up our immunity against deception? Join Eagleman with guests Christopher Chabris and Dan Simons to discuss their new book, Nobody's Fool.
Why do you still feel the waves after getting off a boat? Why does the wall seem to come at you faster after you step off the treadmill? Why do the rocks seem to move upward after you stare at a waterfall? Why did people in the 1980s think their book pages had some red color in them… but no one thought that before or after the 80s? And what does any of this have to do with drugs, heartbreak, yellow sunglasses, or Aristotle watching a horse stuck in a river? Join Eagleman to understand how the brain constantly readjusts its circuitry to best read the world, and what it means for our (sometimes strange) perceptions of what's out there.
If we meet extraterrestrials someday, how will we figure out what they're saying? We currently face this problem right here at home: we have 2 million species of animals on our planet... and we have no Google Translate for any of them. We’re not having conversations with (or listening to podcasts by) anyone but ourselves. Join Eagleman and his guest Aza Raskin to see the glimmer of a pathway that might get us to animal translation, and relatively soon.
Why do briefly glimpsed people appear to be more attractive? Why did portrait photographers put Vaseline on their lenses, and what does that have to do with Instagram filters? Why are thirsty people more likely to perceive something as transparent? And what does any of that have to do with mating, optimal decision making, puberty, frogs, and movie stars? In this episode, Eagleman gets us to view the familiar as strange as we examine beauty, instincts, and what drives us.
Would you torture someone if you were commanded by an authority figure? To what degree are your decisions contextual, and what does this have to do with matching the length of a line, the Iroquois Native Americans, the banality of evil, soldiers posing with dead bodies of their enemies, propaganda, giving shocks to a stranger, or how we should educate our children? Join Eagleman for part 2 of the exploration into brains, dehumanization, and what we can do to improve our possible future.
Why do we so naturally form ingroups and outgroups? And what does that have to do with evolution, monkeys, Greeks, psychopaths, Syndrome E, and propaganda posters? Join Eagleman to learn why our brains are so wired for tribalism, what the consequences are for the world, and how a bit of knowledge goes a long way to making us more immune to propaganda.
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my favorite part of this episode is when david eagleman starts talking shit about how others animals dont know anything. Haha great burn eagleman!
09:02 You're absolutely right. I think when he is 7, he has an imaginary friend. but when 13, he has an imaginary monster *nothing changed in outside world The main topic is inside world.. the "line" means line. But friend and monster have different opinion
I really wanna to be a participant of that experiment and say lie.. after it, scream Ohhhhh! electrical shock really hurted me, it was funny buddy... I'll continue to lie and you can't put me under pressure and convince me to tell the truth. just enjoy this awesome pain😂
In addition to the existing content, you choose the title of each episode in the best way. It makes your podcast unique (If we don't consider the ads in the middle of each episode!)
07:40 I have to note this quote
30:42 Oh mannnn🤯 how amazing and scary!
27:32 That's the darkest part. So, in my opinion we can't enjoy the future (10:25) now!
good one! I laughed how the episode en
David Eagleman is by far my favorite science communicator. And this podcast definitely doesn’t disappoint!
a nice and complet episode 👌 🦆
Fascinating! Thanks
What ending! Simple(not easy) way to live longer
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