13 April 2021
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Mar 22, 2021 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
Nikita Petrov and John Horgan talk about the nature of time, the simulation hypothesis, whether humanity has made a lot of progress since its hunter-gatherer days, John’s frustration with quantum physics, war, suffering, politics, and Nikita’s latest DMT trip.
Jun 22, 2020 —
Nikita Petrov & Tony Ortega
- A Scientology ship commander calls the pandemic “suppressive and anti-social”
- Turning to L. Ron Hubbard during the pandemic: radiation as a state of mind
- The appeal of groups like Scientology in a crisis
- The pandemic is the rare mainstream event that got Scientologists’ attention
- Hubbard and Trump, Scientology and post-truth
- Nikita’s experience with an exercise similar to “past lives auditing”
- We thought the Internet was a threat to Scientology. Were we wrong?
Mar 2, 2020 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
- Nikita’s new project, Psychopolitica.com
- A collection of DMT stories
- The drama and the silliness of life as experienced by children
- The ontological status of DMT entities
- Three big pretenses: “I exist,” “I know what’s going on,” “Everything is ok”
- Between a zombie and a madman
- The paradoxical writings of Jorge Luis Borges
- John’s new book, Pay Attention
- Podcasting is the new rock’n’roll
Aug 26, 2019 —
John Horgan & Frederick Crews
- How Frederick became a Freudian and then an anti-Freudian
- Frederick: Psychoanalysis is the Metamucil of the intellectuals
- The politics of anti-Freudianism
- Why has Freud persisted in the public imagination?
- Frederick psychoanalyzes John
- Repressed memories as a Freudian legacy
- Frederick’s new book, Freud: The Making of an Illusion
Jul 23, 2019 —
Josh Summers & Jenny Odell
- Jenny’s new book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
- Learning from “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (part 1)
- Cultivating attention through art and mindfulness
- Josh’s critique of contemporary mindfulness
- How social media destroys context
- Jenny: “Aliveness is change”
- Learning from “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (part 2)
Jun 11, 2019 —
Josh Summers & Matthew Remski
- Matthew’s new book, Practice and All Is Coming
- Justifications for sexual abuse in the early Ashtanga yoga community
- Matthew: “Sacred” leaders like Pattabhi Jois have been absolved of personal responsibility
- Just how ancient are modern yoga practices?
- Matthew responds to accusations from the Ashtanga community
- How much agency do victims of sexual abuse really have?
- Reforming yoga communities with histories of abuse
Feb 5, 2019 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- What is metaphysics, and did it get derailed?
- The desire to live in a universe that “makes sense”
- How the human lifespan limits our scope of understanding
- Why we’re drawn to metaphysical questions
- Why younger generations are choosing the supernatural and spiritual over traditional religion
- Metaphysics as a means of organizing the sublime
- Is the feeling of awe older than humanity itself?
- The uncertain future of metaphysics
Jan 27, 2019 —
Josh Summers & Dan Keown
- Dan’s new book, The Unchartered Body: A New Textbook of Medicine
- How Dan’s intrepid grandmother brought him to Eastern medicine
- Explaining Eastern medicine to a skeptic
- Embryology and the importance of “connectedness” within a body
- What is “chi,” exactly?
- Where Western medicine falls short
- What placebo research proves (and doesn’t prove) about acupuncture
- What does the acupuncture needle do?
- Dan’s recommended lifestyle changes for systemic health
Nov 13, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & Tanya Luhrmann
- Tanya’s “local theory of mind”
- Harry Potter, prayer, and other “cultural invitations”
- Psychotherapy in the US and witchcraft in Ghana
- American individualism and Asian interdependence
- The differences between hearing God in Ghana and the US
- The Internet as externalized imagination: Pepe and Kek
- A “hyper-real God”: having coffee with Jesus
- Thoughts, perceptions, the world, and the self
Oct 28, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- Minding Emotions: music edition
- The emotional shift between minor and major chords
- Examining tonal dissonance in Western music
- When melodies become “pregnant with meaning”
- Why we find beauty in disharmony
- Rami: Social class and culture imbue music with meaning, too
- Is music hardwired in humans?
- How practicing art and music hones the eye and the ear
Oct 14, 2018 —
Colin Pugh & Alex Guerrero
- Alex explains “lottocracy,” a system using random selection to choose politicians
- Does democracy have to mean voting?
- Democratic systems as forms of technologies
- Imagining many legislatures, each devoted to a single issue
- Capture and accountability in elections
- How would randomly selected politicians learn about policy?
- Leveraging collective knowledge for political decisions
- Alex: Elections encourage short-term focus and tribalism
Aug 23, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- What is pleasure, and what isn’t?
- How human will fits into philosophies of pleasure
- Addiction, brain chemistry, and the lies we tell ourselves
- Why are some people more prone to addiction than others?
- Addiction as a disease of deprivation
- Antonio Demasio’s new book that rethinks culture and the roots of consciousness
Aug 9, 2018 —
Josh Summers & Stephen Asma
- Stephen’s new book, Why We Need Religion
- Who is Stephen’s intended audience?
- How religion shaped our emotional lives for millennia
- Can you benefit from religion without sincere belief?
- “False consolation”? No such thing, Stephen says
- Stephen learns to appreciate the “smells and bells” of Buddhism in Bhutan
- How will religion evolve in America?
Aug 6, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & Gary Lachman
- The rise of “occult politics” in the Trump era
- Pepe the Frog and “willing Trump into office”
- Trickle-down metaphysics from Nietzsche to Trump
- Steve Bannon’s connection to European far-right esoteric philosophy
- “Putin’s Rasputin,” Alexander Dugin
- Gary’s new project on the return of “Holy Russia”
- Gary’s thoughts on Jordan Peterson
Jun 20, 2018 —
William Black & Jemar Tisby
- Jemar’s path from educator to historian
- How racial history shapes the landscape of the Deep South
- The “quiet exodus” of black Christians from white evangelical churches
- Not a “skin problem,” but a “sin problem”
- Jemar: Kindness isn’t just being polite to avoid offense
- Bill explains the historic racial divide within the Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Jun 13, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- Where do culture, emotion, and cognition intersect?
- Is altruism a fluke of humans’ inherently selfish nature?
- How Western individualism clouds our view of human nature
- Stephen: The strongest cultural adaptations are shared unconsciously
- An evolutionary explanation of Trump’s cult of personality
- Complicating the narrative on immigrant cultural values and success
- Reactions to Stephen’s new book, Why We Need Religion
Jun 7, 2018 —
William Dailey & Ross Douthat
- Ross’s new book, To Change the Church
- The strengths and weaknesses of Ross’s intellectual approach to faith
- Father Bill speaks from Ireland about the country’s recent abortion referendum
- Ross challenges liberal Catholics to explain their logic of doctrinal change
- How marriage, divorce, and communion came back into Catholic conversation
- What will people who read Ross’s book in a hundred years think of it?
May 17, 2018 —
William Black & ContraPoints
- What is “autogynephilia”?
- Are there identifiable “subtypes” of trans women?
- Are trans individuals’ souls “trapped in the wrong body”?
- Why ContraPoints ruffles feathers in the Twittersphere
- New Atheism as an entry point to the alt-right
- Assessing Sam Harris and Ezra Klein’s recent debate on race and IQ
May 15, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- Are emotions cultural or physiological?
- Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s argument for emotion-via-culture
- Why social construct theory is all the rage today
- Rami’s thoughts on self-help psychology
- Rami: Pets teach us that emotional connection predates language
- What makes emotions adaptive to environment?
- Stephen and Rami review the Jaak Panksepp Memorial Symposium
- What neuroscientists say about the brain’s unpredictability
Apr 23, 2018 —
Philip Menchaca & Kelly Baker
- The Ku Klux Klan’s appeal to Protestant America
- How the KKK rationalized a Jewish Jesus
- The Birth of a Nation and the symbology of the burning cross
- How to “love thy neighbor” as a Klansman (answer: very selectively)
- Kelly: The Klan declined, but its politics went mainstream
- Kelly’s search for apocalyptic rhetoric in Klan literature
Apr 9, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- Puppet Show: Are emotions in the brain?
- Luiz Pessoa’s argument for the feedback between lower and higher brain function
- How the regions of the brain evolved to interact
- “The content problem” in the neuroscience of emotion and cognition
- Are the common fears of snakes and spiders “hard-wired,” and how?
- What brain mapping fails to tell us about cognition
- Rami’s research on prosopagnosia (face blindness) and emotional cognition
Mar 13, 2018 —
Josh Summers & David Lesondak
- What is fascia and why does it matter?
- When fascia malfunctions
- What David does as a “body worker”
- How body posture could influence mental health
- Unanswered questions in fascia research
- Can mindfulness meditation reduce the perception of pain?
- The concept of “tensegrity,” or tensional integrity, in the human body
Mar 7, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- Puppet show: Why are human emotions unique?
- Does self-restraint make us human?
- Considering emotions as social constructs
- Stephen: If you have emotions, you have consciousness
- Artificial intelligence doesn’t necessarily defer to it its creator
- How insects are like robots
- Does culture change how the brain reads emotion in faces?
Feb 9, 2018 —
Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel
- This week’s puppet show: How do emotions help us survive?
- Darwin’s attempts to understand the inner lives of animals
- Can we really hide our feelings? Rami doubts it
- The “seeking” drive that keeps us going
- Angst: Fear without an object
- How culture complicates finding a mate
- Is there an adaptive function to recognizing beauty?
Feb 5, 2018 —
William Black & Benjamin Park
- The Mormon Church’s new president, 93 year-old Russell M. Nelson
- The decades-long campaign to incorporate the Church into the American mainstream
- Does the Church clash with academic historical study?
- Untangling the fates of remarried Mormons’ souls
- The LDS Church as a contained society within the US
- Why did the first Mormon women choose polygamy?
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