Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

Judson Brewer, psychiatrist and neuroscientist who studies anxiety and habit change, explains anxiety as learned habit loops. He discusses how worry forms, parallels with addiction, and why curiosity and mindfulness can break the loop. Short, actionable frameworks and surprising clinical stories illustrate how people can unlearn chronic worry and move beyond avoidance.

Jewel, singer-songwriter and mental-health advocate, shares slices of her journey from homelessness and panic to practices that helped her heal. She talks about journaling, the observer/gap method, somatic tools like cold water, creativity as therapy, and building scalable supports for youth. Short, vivid stories and practical tactics pepper the conversation.

Matt Ridley, science writer and author with a doctorate in zoology, makes the case for “rational optimism.” He explains why human progress often comes from recombining ideas and simple, low-tech fixes. He explores why pessimism feels natural, how innovation thrives in decentralized systems, and what areas — from AI to energy — deserve cautious hope.

Adam Haar Horowitz, neuroscientist and dream engineer who studies real-time dream interaction and therapeutic dream tools. He explores why dreams are bizarre, when cinematic REM dreams occur, and how hypnagogia fuels creativity. He discusses nightmare therapies, targeted dream incubation and lucid-communication experiments, plus apps and methods to influence, recall, and track dreams.

David Sussillo, neuroscientist and technologist who rose from a chaotic childhood to work at Stanford, Google Brain, and Meta. He recounts surviving addiction, group homes, and schooling shifts. Conversations cover mentorship, how the internet and video games offered refuge and skills. They also explore genes versus environment, probabilistic paths to resilience, and better supports for kids aging out of care.

Saul Perlmutter, Nobel-winning astrophysicist who helped discover dark energy, talks about why people cling to beliefs and how scientific habits can change political dialogue. He discusses treating ideas probabilistically, inviting dissent to catch mistakes, teaching deliberation over debate, and using tools like citizen assemblies and calm AI to help people update views. The conversation ends on a hopeful long-term vision for cooperative problem-solving.

Tom Griffiths, a Princeton cognitive scientist who studies probabilistic models and human learning, joins to explore whether thought can be mathematized. He traces the history from early logicians to modern neural networks. He compares how children learn from little data versus AI’s vast needs and highlights probability, inductive biases, and the mix of symbolic and network approaches.

Lasana Harris, social neuroscientist at UCL who studies mind perception and dehumanization, joins the conversation. He explains when our brains fail to see others as having minds and how that silence of social circuitry can enable harm. They explore why we sometimes treat people like objects, why we anthropomorphize AI and robots, and whether growing up with AI might change future moral intuitions.

Angele Christin, a sociologist who studies how algorithms reshape work and media, joins to trace how metrics and platform incentives changed journalism and content creation. She maps the rise of clickbait and ragebait, explains how real-time analytics steer writers toward sensational formats, and explores how monetization, platform shifts, and subscription alternatives reshape attention and polarization.

Alexander Rose, long-term thinker and former Long Now leader who helped build the 10,000-year clock. He explores designing objects to last millennia, materials and bearings that survive, site and maintenance choices, how institutions and traditions persist, lessons from ancient trees and hotels, and risks like digital decay and provenance loss for the far future.