All Episodes

#65 Dale Purves: How Perception and Cognition Work

Aug 30, 2018

Dr. Dale Purves is Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, at Duke University. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989 for his work on neural development and synaptic plasticity. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. He is the author of many books, including Principles of Neural Development, and Brains: How they Seem to Work, and also the lead author on the textbooks Neuroscience, and Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience. His research during the last 15 years has sought to explain why we see and hear what we do, focusing on the visual perception of lightness, color, form, and motion, and the auditory perception of music and speech. More»
#64 Patricia Churchland: Neurophilosophy, Consciousness, Free Will, and Morality

Aug 27, 2018

Dr. Patricia Churchland is a Canadian-American Philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, at Moscow State University. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She’s also the author of a number of books, including Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain, and Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality. More»
#63 Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: The Philosophy of Science, and The Science of Philosophy

Aug 24, 2018

Dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an American philosopher, novelist and public intellectual. She is a MacArthur Fellow and has received the National Humanities Medal of the US, the National Jewish Book Award, and numerous other honors. She’s the author of ten books, both fiction and nonfiction, including The Mind-Body Problem, Betraying Spinoza, and Plato at the Googleplex. More»
#62 Lewis Goldberg: The Development and Scientific Relevance of the BIG FIVE

Aug 23, 2018

Dr. Lewis Goldberg is an American personality psychologist and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon. He is closely associated with the lexical hypothesis, that says that any culturally important personality characteristic will be represented in the language of the particular culture. This hypothesis led to the discovery of a five-factor structure of personality trait adjectives (which he dubbed the Big Five). More»
#61 Oliver Scott Curry: Morality as Cooperation, Moral Foundations

Aug 20, 2018

Dr. Oliver Scott Curry is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2005. In addition to his research, which focuses a lot on morality, Dr. Curry has previously taught courses on evolution and human behavior, covering evolutionary theory, animal behavior, evolutionary psychology, cross-cultural psychology, statistics and research methods. He is also a consultant for kindness.org. More»
#60 Fernanda Drumond (Gapminder): The Right Way to Look at Progress

Aug 17, 2018

Gapminder Foundation is a non-profit venture based in Stockholm, Sweden, that promotes sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels. More»
#59 Peter Kappeler: Sexual and Mating Dynamics in Primate Species, Human Universals

Aug 16, 2018

Dr. Peter Kappeler is a Professor at the faculty of Zoology and Anthropology at Göttingen University, Germany, and at the Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology department at the German Primate Center. He also teaches as a guest lecturer at the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar. He’s the author or editor of books like Mind the Gap: Tracing the Origins of Human Universals, Animal Behaviour: Evolution and Mechanisms, and The Evolution of Primate Species. More»
#58 April Bleske-Rechek: The Psychology of Friendship, Mate Selection, Modern Psychology

Aug 13, 2018

Dr. April Bleske-Rechek is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. As a researcher, she focuses on human mating, friendship, cognitive abilities and intellectual giftedness, and science literacy. More»
#57 Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Bitcoin and the Blockchain; The Prosociality of Digital Currencies

Aug 10, 2018

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a critically-acclaimed best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts. He is a teaching fellow at the University of Nicosia, and serves on the Oversight Committee for the Bitcoin Reference Rate at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He’s also the author of three books, including Mastering Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, and The Internet of Money Volume Two. His fourth book, Mastering Ethereum (O’Reilly Media) will be available in the fall of 2018. More»
#56 Simon Blackburn: Metaethics, The Bases of Ethical Systems, Meaning of Life, and Beauty

Aug 9, 2018

Dr. Simon Blackburn taught Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002, and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008. More»