The Economist asks: What is consciousnes...

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, is a huge video-game fan. Now his hobby is becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry for the kingdom, which is acquiring some of the world’s biggest gaming firms. How Finnish icebreakers became a focus for polar power politics. And ... Show More

Donald Trump has brokered an agreement between Israel’s government and Hamas. It’s a momentous breakthrough. Our correspondent analyses what comes next. We launch “The Economist Insider”, our new TV show for subscribers, where senior editors debate the news. And, do red-light mas ... Show More

France’s newly-appointed prime minister has resigned only weeks into the job. Now President Emmanual Macron has given him 48 hours to come up with a plan for next year’s budget. Can Macron survive the turmoil? As driverless taxis take over San Francisco, what will happen to the h ... Show More

How did consciousness come into existence? Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes'Steven Pinker and Sam Harris have argued "the emergence of consciousness is simply incomprehensible". While recent neuroscientists have concluded "there ... Show More

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 i ... Show More

What exactly it means to be conscious has long been a question of profound debate amongst philosophers, and more recently, scientists. There are no easy answers, and it gets even trickier when you start asking whether animals are conscious: how can you find out about their subjec ... Show More

What is consciousness? How does it arise? Where do our thoughts come from? And how do the mind and the material world relate to one another? In this recording of a talk given in 2014, Daniel Morley looks at the question of consciousness from a Marxist perspective and analyses one ... Show More

How wrong was Descartes exactly? Listen to find out!Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesProfessor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Anil Seth explores the ultimate mystery of our consciousness experience. In this interview, ... Show More

What does consciousness mean? How artists, writers and scientists understood consciousness in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

How do your billions of tiny brain cells build consciousness as they chatter away with electrical spikes and chemical signals? And why is your laptop, with its sophisticated algorithms and billions of parts, presumably not conscious? Could other large systems like a city become c ... Show More

Today, most humans accept the brain as the seat of human consciousness, but this was not always the case. Join Robert and Joe as they explore ancient, alternative views on the anatomical center of reason and tackle contemporary mysteries regarding the neurological seat of conscio ... Show More

Is fully conscious AI just around the corner?Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesEarlier this year, Google fired Blake Lemoine, for claiming that the company's chatbot was a self aware person. While the claim was derided, the belief ... Show More

What happens in our brains when we die? Where does consciousness come from? And what can out of body experiences teach us about how we create our own realities? In this episode of How We’re Wired, join evolutionary anthropologist Dr Anna Machin as she unpicks the neuroscience of ... Show More