What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. Consciousness: Confessions ... Show More
Oct 31
Autisms with Darian Leader (Penguin, 2026)
Strikingly clear, humane and helpful, this is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand autism and the autistic spectrum. Drawing on many years of clinical experience and research, as well as the testimonies of autistic people, Autisms (Penguin, 2026) is an up-to-the min ... Show More
37m 31s
Oct 23
Human Rights in Psychiatry: Prospects and Dilemmas of Abolishing Coercion in Mental Health Care with Dirk Richter (Springer, 2025)
In Human Rights in Psychiatry: Prospects and Dilemmas of Abolishing Coercion in Mental Health Care (Springer, 2025), Professor Dirk Richter describes the ethical lines of conflict, shows why coercion can no longer be justified and analyzes the consequences and dilemmas of a possi ... Show More
45m 36s
Oct 18
In Defence of the Human Being: Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology with Thomas Fuchs (Oxford UP, 2021)
At a time when artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and digital technologies increasingly shape our understanding of what it means to be human, Fuchs argues that we need to recover a richer conception of the human person. Rather than viewing ourselves as information-processing ... Show More
44m 56s
Sep 2025
How to Expand Your Consciousness | Dr. Christof Koch
My guest is Dr. Christof Koch, PhD, a pioneering researcher on the topic of consciousness, an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the chief scientist at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation. We discuss the neuroscience of consciousness—how it arises in our brain, ho ... Show More
2h 11m
Jul 2024
#374 — Consciousness and the Physical World
<p>Sam Harris speaks with Christof Koch about the nature of consciousness. They discuss Christof's development as a neuroscientist, his collaboration with Francis Crick, change blindness and binocular rivalry, sleep and anesthesia, the limits of physicalism, non-locality, brains ... Show More
42m 7s
Apr 2023
#113 — Consciousness and the Self
Sam Harris speaks with Anil Seth about the scientific study of consciousness, where consciousness emerges in nature, levels of consciousness, perception as a “controlled hallucination,” emotion, the experience of “pure consciousness,” consciousness as “integrated information,” me ... Show More
1h 44m