Inside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have―older than language. In Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation (Norton, 2022), Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do.
Fueled by his ow ... Show More
Oct 4
Gerta Keller, "The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs" (Diversion Books, 2025)
The story behind Dr. Gerta Keller’s world-shattering scientific discovery that dinosaur extinction was NOT caused by asteroid impact, but rather by volcanic eruptions on the Indian peninsula, a discovery that highlights today’s existential threat of greenhouse gasses and climate ... Show More
59m 52s
Oct 3
Daniel K. Sodickson, "The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed ou ... Show More
1h 9m
Oct 2
157 Mangrum's Comical Computation (JP)
When does comedy become more than a laugh? Ben Mangrum of MIT joins RtB to discuss his new book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence (Stanford UP, 2025), which in some ways is organized around “the intriguing idea that human knowled ... Show More
46m 23s
Oct 2023
Dan Dennett Looks Back on His Career
Get tickets for our event: skeptic.com/event Daniel Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering the thorniest, most fundamental mysteries of the mind. Do we have free will? What is consciousness and how did it come about? What disting ... Show More
1h 28m
Feb 2025
523. Why We Dream, Learn, and Adapt Faster Than Any Other Species | Dr. David Eagleman
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with neuroscientist, bestselling author, and PBS presenter Dr. David Eagleman. They discuss brain plasticity, how perception works, whether free will exists (and if it’s superordinate), how willingness to engage with higher entropy indicates sophi ... Show More
1h 30m
Jul 2024
E106 - Donald Hoffman: The Emerging Science, “We Are ONE Consciousness” - Life, Death & The Simulation
Donald Hoffman is back on Know Thyself today to explore the constraints of time and space, and how they shape our understanding of the world around us. He discusses the "headset analogy" - the idea that our senses act as a kind of cognitive filter, preventing us from directly per ... Show More
2h 20m
Dec 2024
Charles Foster, "Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness" (Metropolitan Books, 2021)
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, de ... Show More
1h 2m