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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.


Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

How can we understand music's effect on human brains? Is music universal or does it rely on your experiences? How is music similar to a language? Can music be leveraged to help anxiety, dementia, or Parkinson's disease? What does any of this have to do with Stevie Wonder on the high hat, or the relationship between music and color? Join Eagleman with guest Daniel Levitin -- neuroscientist, musician, and author of This Is Your Brain on Music and I Heard There Was A Secret Chord.

Ep84 "Why do brains love music?"

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.

Ep85 "What is a Thought?"

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.

Ep10 rebroadcast "Why is it so hard to spot a counterfeit bill?"

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.

Ep39 rebroadcast "What is the future of AI relationships?"

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 the truth about our feelings.

Ep86 "What are emotions?"

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.

Ep 87 "How do we operate in the present when we perceive the past?"

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.

Ep88 "Might there exist very different kinds of minds?"

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.

Ep89 "Why do you love some flavors and not others?"

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.

Ep90 "What's the future of connecting our tech to our brains?"

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.

Ep91 "What is love?"

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?

Ep102 "Could you ever know what it’s like to be someone else?" (Part 1)

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