Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

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.

Why do some things endure while others vanish? The show explores persistence from neural moments that stitch music and motion to cultural and material longevity. Hear stories about Greek fire, Roman self-healing concrete, sharks and tools that resist change, and why myths and religions outlast facts through redundancy and replication.

Eric Weinstein, mathematician and physicist known for bold critiques of scientific institutions, joins to probe why breakthroughs often come from outsiders. He explores cowboy science, how peer review and gatekeeping can stifle innovation, and the uneasy overlap between cutting-edge research and national security. Short, provocative takes on secrecy, scientific credit, and rebuilding systems to protect daring ideas.

Nicole Rust, neuroscientist and author of Elusive Cures, argues for reframing the brain as a complex, feedback-driven system. She compares brains to weather systems and explores why linear, single-target approaches fail for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. They discuss serendipity in drug discovery, landscape models of neural activity, and how large-scale recordings plus AI could reshape neuroscience research.

Sam Harris, public intellectual and neuroscientist known for writing on rationality and consciousness, joins to probe why beliefs stick. He discusses belief as brain-driven action, the social roots of truth, why debunking fails, identity’s role in stubbornness, and how science and politics shape disagreement. Short, sharp takes on belief formation and its societal stakes.

Danielle Perszyk, a cognitive scientist who leads human-computer interaction at Amazon’s AGI Lab. She explores intelligence as social alignment. They discuss communicative drive, neural synchrony, and how conversation stabilizes shared concepts. She outlines building agents that model minds, coordinate with one another, and support personalized learning while avoiding human flaws.

Kaizen Asiedu, a philosopher-turned-political commentator who runs Clear Thinker, discusses why certainty in politics often feels truer than it is. He explores why conspiracies thrive, how social identity and outrage entrench beliefs, and why simple, emotional narratives beat complex truth. Conversation covers teaching clearer reasoning, social media’s amplification, and using AI and debate training to raise the rhetorical bar.

In this discussion, Thomas Goetz, a science journalist and author focused on medicine, dives into the complex reality of medications. He explores how modern diseases, like obesity and anxiety, may be products of our environment rather than just individual flaws. With a fascinating look at GLP-1 drugs, Goetz debates the societal implications of dependency on pills versus structural influences on health. He emphasizes the unintended consequences of medications and the evolving relationship between society and pharmaceutical solutions.