9 December 2025
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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
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | meditation | mysticism | spirituality
Sep 1, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Alexander Wendt
- Why Alex shifted from international relations to quantum physics
- Alex: “We are walking wave functions”
- Do the origins of consciousness and free will lie in the wave collapse?
- Quantum decision theory and human irrationality
- The advantage of viewing humanity as quantum rather than classical
- How a nation-state is like a quantum state
- Alex: Language is best understood quantumly
- The possibility of collective consciousness
Mar 4, 2019 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | enlightenment | human nature | literature | philosophy | religion | spirituality | technology
Jan 15, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Alice Robb
- Alice’s new book, Why We Dream
- All the wrong ways we used to think about dreams
- The unusual discovery of REM sleep
- When scientists thought dreams were a paranormal gateway
- Alice describes participating in a “dream group”
- What do events in dreams really mean?
- Why do we have nightmares?
- How to get started with lucid dreaming
Nov 16, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Eddy Nahmias
- Explaining “compatibilism,” the view that there’s no conflict between free will and determinism
- Without free will, what happens to moral responsibility?
- Eddy tells Bob he errs in saying determinism means events are “inevitable”
- Free will is hard to imagine, but not nonsensical
- Why most philosophers today are compatibilists
- Bob: Compatibilists are just playing word games
- Were prisoners destined from birth to wind up in prison?
- Waiting for the “Einstein of consciousness”
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
TAGS Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | human nature | meditation | psychology | religion | science | spirituality
Nov 10, 2018 —
Colin Pugh & Daniel Pinchbeck
TAGS climate change | consciousness | drugs | history | human nature | meditation | mysticism | psychology | science | spirituality | the future
Nov 3, 2018 —
John Horgan & Owen Flanagan
- Owen’s transition from Catholicism to “quiet skepticism”
- The problem of evil
- The hubris of modern philosophers
- Can we live with the scientific image of man?
- The origin of the universe, life, and consciousness
- Owen: Doubt yourself
- Does philosophy lead to practical wisdom?
- Mind-altering chemicals and free will
TAGS atheism | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | ethics | evolution | free will | human nature | mind-body problem | philosophy | psychology | religion | science
Sep 20, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
- John’s new book, Mind-Body Problems, is free online
- “What are we really, what can we be, and what should we be?”
- Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist with an affinity for violence
- Douglas Hofstadter, a playful writer, but a melancholic person
- Why ex-materialist Christof Koch embraced panpsychism
- How losing a daughter made Stuart Kaufman study the paranormal
- Story time! Nikita and John exchange psychedelic tales
TAGS biology | cognitive science | consciousness | enlightenment | evolution | human nature | meditation | mind-body problem | philosophy | psychology | religion | science | spirituality
Jul 11, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Michael Shermer
- Michael’s controversial Scientific American column on the “final mysterians”
- Bob’s thought experiment about God and quantum mechanics
- The split among philosophers over the free will question
- Revisiting Thomas Nagel’s famous essay, “What is it like to be a bat?”
- What’s a harder problem, God or consciousness?
- What laws should govern a colony on Mars?
- Michael reports from inside the Intellectual Dark Web
- Deconstructing Jordan Peterson’s appeal
- Bob: Life is hard and religion can help
TAGS consciousness | Daniel Dennett | free will | Islam | New Atheists | philosophy | physics | religion | Richard Dawkins | science
Jun 15, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Jim Holt
- Jim’s new book of essays, When Einstein Walked with Gödel
- The Platonists who believe mathematics is transcendent
- Against viewing math as transcendent
- The implications of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem
- What’s so special about light? Einstein can explain
- Tachyons, the hypothetical particles that travel faster than light
- How Jim became a “rigorous dilettante” (with cameos by B.F. Skinner and Bette Midler)
Jun 4, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Brian Greene
- Why a particle isn’t what you think it is
- Reasons to doubt the many worlds interpretation
- The theory Einstein developed that he didn’t believe
- Would going back in time violate the laws of physics?
- Black holes and the natural selection of universes
- What are the strings in string theory made of?
- Audience Q and A
Feb 23, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Galen Strawson
- Why scientific materialism is harder to define than you think
- Galen explains panpsychism
- What does “mind is all there is to reality” mean?
- Is human consciousness epiphenomenal?
- Do physical laws come from somewhere?
- Is it like something to be a rock? (And is Galen saying it is?)
- Galen: Discussion of the mind-body problem was better 100 years ago
Feb 9, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Jeff Warren
- How Jeff went from science journalist to meditation teacher
- Jeff’s new book, co-authored with Dan Harris: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics
- How ADD and bipolar tendencies shaped Jeff’s practice
- The life-changing experience of falling out of a tree while on mushrooms
- The interaction between mindfulness, not-self, and suffering
- Jeff takes a stab at defining enlightenment
- The varieties of consciousness
- How meditation can shift your priorities
Jan 29, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Michael Shermer
- The time Michael thought he was being abducted by aliens
- Michael’s new book, Heavens on Earth
- Deepak Chopra’s afterlife
- Why uploading your brain to achieve immortality makes no sense
- Is radical life extension just bunk?
- The Second Coming, presented by Ray Kurzweil
- What consolation can the atheist offer to the dying?
- The spookiest thing that’s ever happened to Michael
TAGS aging | atheism | Buddhism | consciousness | death | Hinduism | mind-body problem | New Atheists | religion | the future | transhumanism
Jan 17, 2018 —
Nikita Petrov & Tanya Luhrmann
- How psychosis and prayer can make invisible entities ‘real’
- Why the voices heard by American schizophrenics are especially mean
- Turning madness into vocation: the shamans of West Africa
- Why talking to one’s hallucinations is a good idea
- How evangelicals shape their God
- ‘Remembering’ past lives in Scientology and ‘satanic ritual abuse’ in therapy
Dec 7, 2017 —
Robert Wright & John Horgan
- John continues to ruffle the feathers of scientists and philosophers
- Concepts of consciousness, from pure materialism to panpsychism
- John: The solipsism problem will keep the mind-body problem problematic
- Daniel Dennett’s inordinate aversion to mystery
- John gives us the plot spoiler about his book-in-progress
- Bob thought he had Dan Dennett cornered. But then…
- Are we in a simulation? Perish the thought, says John
Sep 8, 2017 —
Josh Summers & Stephen Asma
TAGS altruism | cognitive science | consciousness | Donald Trump | dreaming | empathy | ethics | evolution | meditation | philosophy
Feb 15, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Robert Stickgold
TAGS biology | cognitive science | consciousness | creativity | dreaming | evolution | psychology | science
Feb 2, 2017 —
Robert Wright, Deepak Chopra, & Michael Shermer
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | enlightenment | Hinduism | human nature | meditation | mysticism | perception | philosophy | physics | psychology | science | self | spirituality
Jan 19, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Dale Wright
TAGS Buddhism | Christianity | compassion | consciousness | enlightenment | meditation | mindfulness | perception | philosophy | politics | religion | spirituality | war | Zen
Dec 18, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & George Young
- Does Russian thought have anything to contribute to the world?
- Nikolay Fedorov, an eccentric thinker who influenced Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
- Fedorov’s plan: Immortality for everyone
- “Kinship” as a fundamental property of all matter
- A mass movement for the spiritual unity of humankind
- Vladimir Solovyov’s The Meaning of Love: Sexuality as a path to a Christian utopia
- Christ as the ultimate role model
TAGS Christianity | consciousness | death | evolution | history | human nature | literature | mysticism | occult | philosophy | politics | religion | science | spirituality | technology | the future | transhumanism
Nov 27, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & Robert Place
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | enlightenment | meditation | mysticism | mythology | occult | philosophy | politics | psychology | religion | self
Nov 13, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Keith Frankish
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | human nature | memory | mind-body problem | panpsychism | perception | philosophy | psychology | self | technology
Nov 12, 2016 —
David Bryce Yaden & Scott Barry Kaufman
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | creativity | ethics | meditation | mindfulness | psychology | spirituality
Nov 4, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Christof Koch
- The search for non-human consciousness
- Consciousness in the organic and inorganic worlds
- Measuring consciousness
- Lucky us: The universe breeds consciousness
- How scientific and spiritual worldviews can enrich each other
- Artificial intelligence is not (necessarily) artificial consciousness
- The Allen Institute for Brain Science and its mission
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | panpsychism | physics | science | spirituality | technology | the future
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