24 January 2021
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Jan 6, 2021 — John Horgan & George Musser
Is spacetime obsolete?
Quantum spookiness explained!
Black holes and the big bang are spooky too.
What preceded space and time?
Is physics just poetry with math?
George’s next book: how mind relates to matter
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?
Jun 18, 2020 — Mark Sussman & John Brenkman
John’s new book,
Mood and Trope
From the “linguistic turn” to the “affective turn”
Kant vs. Nietzsche vs. Heidegger vs. Deleuze
In praise of unsystematic criticism
Clarifying some Heideggerian terminology
From the sublime to the Anthropocene
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
Sep 18, 2019 — Nikita Petrov & David Poleski
Nikita’s Soviet experience
The individual in Russian and English languages
Toska
, the noble Russian sadness
Nikita’s American friend, the murderer
David’s Negative Mystical Experience and brush with Sai Baba
What Nikita learned from DMT trips
Creativity and depression
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 25, 2019 — Josh Summers & Aaron Goldberg
Aaron’s latest album,
At the Edge of the World
How Aaron attempts to strip away complexity in his music
What makes a jazz musician “post-bop”?
Drummer Leon Parker and the Yes! Trio’s origins
Aaron’s double life in jazz and academic philosophy
What’s wrong with “Analytic Swing”?
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
Nov 10, 2018 — Colin Pugh & Daniel Pinchbeck
Daniel’s book,
How Soon Is Now?
An example of a modern myth: the GDP
Can society be reborn into new myths?
Daniel: We need to devote most of our efforts to sustaining the health of the planet
Why Daniel calls his beliefs “post-New Age”
What is “neo-Shamanism”?
Oct 31, 2018 — Nikita Petrov & Tony Ortega
Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard’s most compelling story
Hubbard as a writer
Hubbard’s mystical experience during a dental surgery
“Study tech”: Scientology’s obsession with dictionaries
Bullbaiting, or pushing one’s buttons
How Scientology teaches followers to identify enemies
The
Matrix
scenario
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
May 1, 2018 — Scott Barry Kaufman & Ellen Hendriksen
What does it mean to “be yourself”?
Introversion vs. anxiety
Ellen’s advice for heading out into the world: Just do it
Men, women, and liquid courage
The building blocks of beautiful friendships
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
Apr 2, 2018 — William Black & Elizabeth Catte
The narrative of “economic anxiety” in Appalachia
Elizabeth: Appalachia is more diverse than you think
The myth of the “mountain white”
Critiquing J.D. Vance’s book
Hillbilly Elegy
Political activism in the region
How Elizabeth sees her role as a “public historian”
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?
Mar 4, 2018 — Philip Menchaca & Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble
Growing up Very Catholic
Sister Theresa’s atheist youth and subsequent return to faith
Finding a calling within the Church
Why remembering her own mortality is essential to Sister Theresa’s faith
Sister Theresa: Not all believers understand their children’s doubt
Feb 15, 2018 — Josh Summers & Tami Simon
From Swarthmore sophomore to meditating in India
How Tami started Sounds True publishing company at age 22
Tami’s spiritual teacher, Jasmine the cocker spaniel
Why it’s okay to mourn a deceased pet
Confronting the unethical behavior of spiritual teachers
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?
Jan 24, 2018 — Josh Summers & Drew Ackerman
Drew’s journey from insomniac to teller of bedtime stories for adults
“Interesting, but not too interesting; boring, but not too boring”
Warning: This segment may put you to sleep
The countercultural community of insomniacs
How podcasting led to personal growth
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