Science for the People | 27 February 2023 | 1h 00m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Suzie Sheehy about her book The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World. Discusses seminal physics experiments that have discovered various particles and revealed the nature of the atom. Explains the ways that particle physics touches our everyday lives.
Category: Science
Andrew Knoll – A Brief History of Earth
The Dissenter | 20 January 2023 | 0h 54m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Andrew Knoll about his book A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters. Discusses the main events in the history of the Earth: its formation, the formation of its atmosphere, where water came from, plate tectonics, the origins of life, the rise of oxygen, evolution from the first unicellular organisms to animals, the colonization of land by plants and animals, the mass extinctions, the evolution of and ecological impact of humans, and the future of the Earth.
The Mighty T-Rex Brain
Many Minds | 8 March 2023 | 0h 55m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Suzana Herculano-Houzel about her paper Theropod dinosaurs had primate-like numbers of telencephalic neurons. Backgrounds that the most revealing thing about a brain is not how big it is or how big it is relative to the body, but simply how many neurons it has. Argues a T-Rex’s brain was comparable to a baboon’s so that it was probably quite behaviorally flexible and long-lived and may even have had culture.
Diet: The New Science of Healthy Eating
The Next Big Idea | 12 January 2023 | 1h 01m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Tim Spector about his book Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well. Argues that food decisions are the single most important modifiable factor in preventing common diseases and staying healthy and digs into what science has learned about what we should eat – and why.
I’m pretty sceptical about dietary advice – but found this quite convincing.
The Cult of Freud: Science, Sex & Psychoanalysis
History Extra | 22 February 2023 | 0h 48m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Seamus O’Mahony about his book The Guru, the Bagman and the Sceptic: A story of science, sex and psychoanalysis. Tells the story of Freud’s founding of psychoanalysis, and unravels how it was intertwined with those of two other doctors, Ernest Jones and Wilfred Trotter. Discusses the impact the three made on science and medicine against the intellectual and bohemian backdrop of early 20th-century London.
Simon Baron-Cohen: Autism, Systemizing, Empathy, and Sex Differences
The Dissenter | 20 February 2023 | 1h 00m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Simon Baron-Cohen about his book The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention. Discusses what characterises autism; why it is classified as a mental disorder, and the idea of neurodiversity; its early signs; and the lower quality of life of autistic people; the systemizing mechanism, and the distinction between systemizing and empathizing; the role of testosterone in intra-uterine development, and differences in the brain development of autistic people; the distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy; sex differences, regions of the brain that might be sexually dimorphic, criticisms of the biological bases of sex differences, and whether it is possible to distinguish between male and female brains.
Sam Harris on Meditation, Mindfulness, and Morality
EconTalk | 6 February 2023 | 1h 51m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Sam Harris discussing the subtleties of his religious and cultural critiques; what he has learned as a podcaster and author; how ecstasy launched his spiritual journey; and the power of meditation, exploring the way it can lead to self-transcendence and real connection with others.
This is a fine example of two people discussing their differences constructively to find common ground.
Eli Finkel || How the Best Marriages Work
The Psychology Podcast | 16 February 2023 | 0h 41m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Eli Finkel about his book The All-Or-Nothing Marriage. Discusses how the best marriages work, how the institution of marriage has evolved over time, and why higher expectations are not necessarily bad for marriages if people use them strategically. Shares love hacks to improve our relationships with our partners.