general science

#1123 Philip Nitschke: Assisted Suicide and the Right to Die

Jul 14, 2025

Dr. Philip Nitschke is an Australian humanist, author, former physician, and founder and director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International. He campaigned successfully to have a legal euthanasia law passed in Australia's Northern Territory and assisted four people in ending their lives before the law was overturned by the Government of Australia. Nitschke was the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection, after which the patient activated the syringe using a computer. More»
#1116 Adam Safron: Consciousness, AI, Psychedelics, and The Self

Jun 27, 2025

Dr. Adam Safron is Research Fellow at the Allen Discovery Institute at Tufts University, and is leading an interdisciplinary research program at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies. Most of his work has focused on characterizing the nature of preferences and motivation from mechanistic, developmental, and evolutionary perspectives. He has also studied the effects of brief mindfulness interventions on cognition and well-being. While conducting this research, he developed a neurophenomenological model of sensory absorption and ecstatic states via neural entrainment, which eventually led to developing a synthetic theory of consciousness attempting to integrate across seemingly conflicting perspectives. More»
#1112 Angela Potochnik - Recipes for Science: An Introduction to Scientific Methods and Reasoning

Jun 19, 2025

Dr. Angela Potochnik is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the University of Cincinnati. Her research addresses the nature of science and its successes, the relationships between science and the public, and methods in science, especially population biology. She is the author of Idealization and the Aims of Science, and coauthor of Recipes for Science: An Introduction to Scientific Methods and Reasoning. More»
#1108 Laurie Mintz - Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It

Jun 9, 2025

Dr. Laurie Mintz is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Florida, where she teaches the Psychology of Human Sexuality. She is the author of two books: Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It (HarperOne, 2017), and A Tired Woman’s Guide to Passionate Sex: Reclaim Your Desire and Reignite Your Relationship (Adams Media, 2009). More»
#1105 Kostas Kampourakis - Trusting Science: Why We Need to Reconsider School Science Teaching

Jun 2, 2025

Dr. Kostas Kampourakis is author and editor of several books about science. He works at the Teacher Training Institute and the Section of Biology at the University of Geneva. At the Section of Biology, he teaches the courses “Biologie et Société” and “Comprendre l’évolution”. He is the author and editor of several books, including Trusting Science: Why We Need to Reconsider School Science Teaching. More»
#1097 Kostas Kampourakis: Dunking Myths and Falsehoods About Charles Darwin

May 15, 2025

Dr. Kostas Kampourakis is author and editor of several books about science. He works at the Teacher Training Institute and the Section of Biology at the University of Geneva. At the Section of Biology, he teaches the courses “Biologie et Société” and “Comprendre l’évolution”. He is the author and editor of several books, including Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods. More»
#1094 Cody Moser: Collective Intelligence and Cultural Innovation

May 8, 2025

Cody Moser is a PhD candidate and Fletcher Jones Fellow in the Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced, and a 2024 Junior Fellow at The Institute for Humane Studies. He works on questions examining the relationship between structure and adaptation in social, biological, economic, and neural systems from a complex systems perspective. To do this, he utilizes methods from network theory, agent-based modeling, and large-scale corpus analysis. More»
#1093 Agustín Fuentes - Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary

May 5, 2025

Dr. Agustín Fuentes is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. His latest book is Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary. More»
#1092 Mads Larsen: Mating Ideologies, Dating Dysfunction, and Demographic Collapse

May 2, 2025

Dr. Mads Larsen is a Postdoc and Researcher at the University of Oslo. He a is literary scholar who uses evolutionary perspectives to study cultural change. He is the author of Stories of Love from Vikings to Tinder: The Evolution of Modern Mating Ideologies, Dating Dysfunction, and Demographic Collapse. More»
#1088 Karoline Wiesner: What Is a Complex System?

Apr 24, 2025

Dr. Karoline Wiesner is Professor of Complexity Sciences at the University of Potsdam. Interested in the sciences of complexity, Dr. Wiesner began to work on information theoretic representations of complex systems as a PostDoc at the Santa Fe Institute (USA) and the University of California, Davis. Her work centered around information theoretic representations of quantum dynamical systems. Her research focuses on the use of information theory in the study of formation, maintenance and stability of complex systems. She is co-author of “What Is a Complex System?”. More»