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PODCAST

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

Neuroscientist and author David Eagleman discusses how our brain interprets the world and what that means for us. Through storytelling, research, interviews, and experiments, David Eagleman tackles wild questions that illuminate new facets of our lives and our realities.

science mental health

All Episodes

55:25

Ep148 "How can we improve political dialog?" with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/04/06

How can we improve political dialogue, and what does this have to do with the discovery that the universe behaves differently than expected? Why do we cling to beliefs even when evidence pushes against them? What if the biggest problem facing humanity could be solved with practice? Join Eagleman today with Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel-prize winning astrophysicist, but instead of the cosmos we talk about the inner cosmos: why polarization happens and how we might address it with a different kind of

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50:22

Ep147 "Can we engineer human thought?" with Tom...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/03/30

Can the mind be captured with math? Modern AI seems to have burst out of the gate recently, but is it actually the latest chapter in a 300-year project to turn thought into something we can model? Why does current AI need petabytes of data, but a child can learn from just a few examples? Why does AI have 'jagged' intelligence – meaning it looks brilliant in one moment and then does something that seems nonsensical? In physics we have various laws (gravity, motion, etc), and today we’re

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67:33

Ep146 "Who Counts as Human in Your Mind?" with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/03/23

When do you view another person like an object? This is what neuroscientists mean when they talk about de-humanization:your brain doesn't crank up its social circuitry to understand the other person as having a mind like you do.Is dehumanization a cause of violence, or the fuel that keeps it burning? Do people who view themselves as highly empathetic dehumanize more than others? And on the flip side, why do we sometimes think chatbots or robots are people with interior minds? Will kids raised with

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70:28

Ep145 Why do we compulsively click on ragebait? with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/03/16

Do algorithms shape our lives? What didclickbait look like before the internet? Why do journalists start writing differently when metrics are introduced? What does any of this have to do with cooking pasta in the bathtub, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, or Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year? Join Eagleman with sociologist Angele Cristin to learn how algorithms invisibly sculpt our behavior.

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55:50

Ep144 "How do things last?" Part 2: Millennia with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/03/09

What is a 10,000 year clock? What is the Y10k bug? What allows some organizations to last a millennium? What do ancient ceramics have to do with ball bearings in satellites? What does any of this have to do with bristlecone pine trees, cymbals, or an extant hotel that launched in the sixth century? Join today for thinking about ourselves on a 10,000 year timescale with guest Alexander Rose.

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44:23

Ep143 "How do things last?" Part 1: neurons to...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/03/02

What makes things last, and what do very different lasting things have in common? Why might a space alien not be able to understand music? Why do windows in medieval cathedrals look thicker at the bottom, and what does this reveal about the world’s religions? What was the most important weapon in ancient history, and how did it disappear? Join today for the story of persistence, from sharks to schizophrenia to Roman concrete to DNA.

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92:59

Ep142 "Do breakthroughs require rule-breakers?" with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/02/23

Why do revolutionary ideas so often come from outsiders? Do good scientists sometimes crowd out great ones? Do we still have room for scientific cowboys? And what is the relationship between national security and modern science? Are scientists participants in a larger game they barely see? What if the most important ideas are the ones you’re not allowed to hear about? From Crick and Watson to nuclear bombs and AI, today we’ll cover it all with physicist, mathematician, and iconoclast

en-US

36:42

Ep141 "What do brains and weather systems have in...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/02/16

Does brain science need a new grand plan? Is the brain less like an assembly line and more like a weather system?What does this mean for what counts as explanatory, and how might AI help us in the near future? What does any of this have to do with how the drug Ritalin got its name? Today we’ll speak with neuroscientist Nicole Rust, author ofElusive Cures.

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80:33

Ep140 "How does your brain decide what’s true?" with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/02/09

Why do we believe what we believe? Why is changing our opinions so difficult, and why does a challenged belief so often feel like a personal attack? What if beliefs didn’t evolve to be true, but to be socially useful? Today we speak with Sam Harris about the topic of our beliefs: how we see the world and what we take to be true about it.

en-US

58:24

Ep139 "What does alignment look like in a society of...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/02/02

Is intelligence a property of individual brains, or is it something that emerges from many brains trying to align with one another? How can we build AI agents to improve our understanding of the world and to mediate between rivaling humans? For this and much more, we speak today with Danielle Perszyk, a cognitive scientist who leads the human-computer interaction team at Amazon’s AGI Lab.

en-US

67:53

Ep138 "Why do our political brains mistake opinion...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/01/26

What if your confidence in your political beliefs does not correlate with their accuracy? Why does a pundit's outrage often feel so convincing and nuanceso unsatisfying? Are conspiracy theories a predictable feature of human brains? Is there any way to stop ourselves from mistaking our feelings for conclusions? How can we come to be clearer thinkers? Today we speak with political commentator Kaizen Asiedu about how we arrive at our hot takes on the world.

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47:10

Ep137 "Do cures ever create the next crisis?" with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/01/19

Medications are among the most important advancements of science, but their social consequences are often complex. What if some of our most common diseases are design flaws of modern life? Does it matter if we're fixing a root cause rather than just circumventing it?If a pill can quiet hunger, pain, or anxiety, is that "cheating"? Today we talk about the fascinating world of prescription drugs with science journalist Thomas Goetz.

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41:31

Ep136 "Why do we care about mattering?" with Rebecca...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/01/12

What does it mean for your life to matter? We all talk a lot about happiness, pleasure, and meaning... but what if the real engine underneath it all is the need to feel we count? Is it possible that depression, extremism, and ambition all stem from the same psychological source? When is political polarization less about beliefs and more about threatened significance? Join Eaglemanwith philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein, author of "The Mattering Instinct".

en-US

55:17

Ep135: What does neuroscience mean by hypnosis? with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2026/01/05

What exactly is hypnosis? We’ve all heard of circus-like versions, but is there a real element to hypnosis that psychiatrists and neuroscientists are able to leverage? Can attention and expectation change what we feel (such as pain or anxiety)? What do suggestible states reveal about the brain’s pathways? How does hypnosis compare to meditation, flow states, or psychedelic drugs? Today we speak with David Spiegel, Stanford psychiatrist and one of the world’s experts in

en-US

29:29

Ep82 Re Broadcast "Why Do Your 30 Trillion Cells Feel...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2025/12/29

Happy Holidays- New Episodes starting Jan. 5th Every cell in your body changes, so why do you have a sense of continuity of the self – as though you're the same person you were a month ago? What does this have to do with the watercraft of the Greek demigod Theseus, or the End-of-History illusion, or why you go through so much trouble to make things comfortable for your future self, even though you don't know that person? And if there really were an afterlife, what age would your deity make

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33:52

Ep70 Re Broadcast "Why do our memories drift? Part 1:...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2025/12/22

Happy Holidays- New episodes starting Jan. 5th Why did lions look so strange in medieval European art? What does this have to do with Native American folklore, eyewitness memory of a car accident, or what a person remembers 3 years after witnessing the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center? And what does any of this have to do with flashbulb memories, misinformation, and the telephone game that you played as a child? Join Eagleman for part 1 of an astonishing journey into what we believe about our

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75:32

Ep134 "What do brains teach us about morality?" with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2025/12/15

Why will you make differentmoral decisions in similar circumstances? Why do some people make different choices than you? What happens when ancient moral instincts collide with modern problems such as pandemics, AI alignment, and political tribalism? Could a simple online game reduce polarization? Could you contribute to charities more effectively if you understood how your moral brain decides? Join Eagleman this week with guest Joshua Greene as weopen the hood of human morality.

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46:35

Ep133 "Why do people hold misbeliefs?" with Dan Ariely

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2025/12/08

Why do people sometimes buy into ideas that seem obviously false from the outside, as with conspiracy theories? Is this kind of misbelief a universalfeature of human brains? Does itoffer clarity and belonging when reality feels chaotic and threatening? What would it take for you (under the right emotional conditions) to begin believing something that your past self would find unbelievable? Today we’ll speak with behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who has thought a lot about misbelief: for him

en-US

51:24

Ep132 "What will AI mean for the economy?" with...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2025/12/01

If AI can do everything from writing novels to designing proteins, what remains that only humans can do? What's the human advantage in a world where machines can outperform us at almost any measurable task? What does any of this have to do with Stephen King’s nightmares, Tom Cruise’s stunts, the first shoeshine caught on camera, the shortage of air conditioner repairmen, and why hyper-capable AI might actuallyincreasethe demand for unexpected jobs? Today we speak with author and

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49:02

Ep131 "What do brains tell us about politics?" Part...

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman ·

2025/11/24

How do societies work their way out of polarization? And what does the answer have to do with broken trucks, the Apollo program, the movie 'Watchmen', Iroquois Native Americans, a new idea for social media algorithms, moral taste buds, and how we can take advantage of the common threads that bond us -- coming to see each other again as fellow travelers improvising their way through the same noisy world?

en-US

162 results

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