It's pretty obvious to each of us that we are conscious, as we go about our days and feel the experience of just ‘being ourselves'. But how do we know that someone else is conscious?
It’s something we lose during dreamless sleep, under anaesthesia or in a coma. But what exactly is consciousness? On the one hand, it’s pretty obvious - it’s what we all feel ... Show More
Jul 4
Can we harness solar energy from other stars?
Listener Dickson Mukisa from Uganda has been gazing up at the stars. But he’s not making wishes. He wants to know whether we can harness their energy, in the same way we do with our OWN star – the sun. After all, they may seem small and twinkly to us, but each one is a gigantic f ... Show More
26m 28s
Jun 20
How can we persuade more people to cycle?
Cycling is good for our health, good for the planet, and it can be an efficient way of moving around busy cities. But despite all the rational arguments for it, in most cities the number of people who get on their bikes is low.CrowdScience listener Hans wants to know whether it’s ... Show More
26m 28s
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
Aug 2023
Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist
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 ... Show More
17m 12s
Jun 2015
Anil Seth on consciousness
Anil Seth is professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the Sackler Centre at the University of Sussex, where he studies consciousness.His research has taken him in all kinds of directions, from reading philosophy, to computing and virtual reality, and mapping the b ... Show More
37m 42s