Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

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Latest Episodes:

Re-Release " What is Color? Part 2: Why royals wear purple" Nov 02, 2026

Show notes

This week we reach into the archive for one of the most popular episodes of Inner Cosmos.

Are there new colors you could see? And why are they impossible to imagine before you've seen them? Can you lose your color vision? And what does any of this have to do with linguistic color terms, why the military likes colorblind people for a particular task, and why Eagleman suggests that the cultural history of Thailand was influenced by one single, unknown neurodivergent?

Re-Release "What is color? Part 1: Why hunters wear orange" Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

This week we reach into the archive for one of the most popular episodes of Inner Cosmos.

Why do birds and bees choose different flowers? Why do mammals' eyes seem to be optimized for moving around at night, and what does that have to do with hairless humans getting angry? What does any of this have to do with road signs, camouflage, mantis shrimp, the sun, the dress that broke the internet, and women who can see more colors than you can?

Ep175 Who Are You When Your Brain Changes? with Robert Kolker Oct 19, 2026

Show notes

Is your personality written into the circuitry of your brain? With brain disease, can someone lose who they are without realizing it? What happens when the person changing is the only one who can't see it? What does it mean to love someone whose personality has become unrecognizable? If you carried a genetic mutation that would alter your brain in the near future, would you want to know? Join Eagleman with bestselling author Robert Kolker to discuss these questions in the context of his new book about frontotemporal dementia, The Vanishing Family.

Ep174 "Can Evolution Teach AI?" with Athena Aktipis Oct 12, 2026

Show notes

How do you get trillions of cells to collaborate as the single organism that we call you? Does that kind of cooperation create opportunities for hijacking -- for example, is cancer a form of "cellular cheating"? Can we take the lessons learned from biology and apply them to understanding politics? And what do models of cooperation tell us about building and living with AI? Join Eagleman with evolutionary biologist and cooperation theorist Athena Aktipis to understand cooperation and competition from cells to societies to our technological future.

Re-Release "Why Do Brains Dream" Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

This week we reach into the archive for one of the most popular episodes of Inner Cosmos.

Why do brains dream, and why are dreams so bizarre? Why doesn't your clock work in your dreams? And even though you spend much of your working day looking at your cell phone and computer – why do they almost never make appearances in your dream content? Is dream content the same across cultures and across time? Are dreams experienced in black & white, or in color? Are dreams the strange love child of brain plasticity and the rotation of the planet? What is the relationship between schizophrenia and dreaming? In the future, will we be able to read out the content of somebody's dream? Join Eagleman this week to learn why and how we spend a fraction of our sleep time locked in different realities, swimming in plots which aren't real but which compel us entirely nonetheless.

Ep173 "Why Do We Have Emotions?" with Robert Kurzban Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

What's a feeling for? What is jealousy measuring and motivating? Why do both awe and grief slow us down? What happens when ancient emotions meet dating apps and like buttons? Does the intensity of a feeling decide which part of you takes control? Can understanding an emotion loosen its grip? Today we sit down with evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban to understand the logic behind the our varied panoply of emotions.

Ep172 "Can You Quantify Yourself to Improve Health?" with Michael Snyder Sep 21, 2026

Show notes

Can your smartwatch detect subtle changes before you feel them? Might a continuous glucose monitor pick up on things you didn’t know about yourself? Could a drop of blood map your future health? Why does your personal baseline matter more than a population average? Could AI decode the massive signaling networks of your body? Does seeing your own data change your behavior? Join Eagleman with Michael Snyder, Stanford professor of genetics and a pioneer in massive personal data, to understand what happens when healthcare moves from a snapshot of your body to a movie.

Ep171 "Why Do Some Urges Feel Irresistible?" with Paige Gordon Sep 14, 2026

Show notes

Why do two people facing the same choice feel different urges? How much effort hides behind resisting a cookie? Why can the brain keep wanting something long after pleasure fades? Can a molecule crank down the volume of your internal radio? Does a biological understanding of behavior reduce responsibility, or does it deepen compassion? And how would your life change if your loudest urge went quiet? Today Eagleman examines free will through the lens of eating disorders, with guest Paige Gordon, an author and former model who spent decades suffering an invisible internal battle.

Ep 170 "Will Mars Create a New Species of Human?" with Scott Solomon Sep 07, 2026

Show notes

What happens when we start birthing babies on Mars? Might a Martian human become unable to survive on Earth because of differences in microbes and gravity? How much of your body is shaped by the details of this planet? Will radiation accelerate human evolution on Mars? Could living on Mars eventually create a new species of human? Could Mars change the way humans dream? Would a Martian child find Earth's oceans as strange and awe-inspiring as we find another planet? Could two branches of humanity become too different to recognize each other? Today we’re joined by Scott Solomon, evolutionary biologist and author of the book “Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds”.

Ep169 "What Is Claude Thinking But Not Saying?" with Jack Lindsey Aug 31, 2026

Show notes

Is AI thinking things it never says aloud? How would we know if a large language model were having a subjective experience? Is there a way to read the 'thoughts' of an LLM? Human brains seem to have a 'global workspace' -- what would it mean if we discovered that AI has something similar? Can you reach inside an LLM to change one of its 'thoughts'? Join Eagleman with Anthropic interpretability researcher Jack Lindsey to talk about what might be going on inside the mind of Claude.

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