8 episodes

The ultimate goal of this podcast is understanding what it means to be alive, conscious, and free (to choose life).

In the first series of interviews, Barry Komisaruk and I discuss biological rhythms, excitation-inhibition balances, self-organized criticality, the nature(s) of pleasure and pain, consciousness, agency, and more.

Future podcasts will have discussions with additional scholars, with the goal of going into greater depth than is common practice. Some conversations will be brief, and others will be longer series. Please contact me if you're interested in exploring ideas.

Exploring the Hard Problems of Mind and Life Adam Safron

    • Science

The ultimate goal of this podcast is understanding what it means to be alive, conscious, and free (to choose life).

In the first series of interviews, Barry Komisaruk and I discuss biological rhythms, excitation-inhibition balances, self-organized criticality, the nature(s) of pleasure and pain, consciousness, agency, and more.

Future podcasts will have discussions with additional scholars, with the goal of going into greater depth than is common practice. Some conversations will be brief, and others will be longer series. Please contact me if you're interested in exploring ideas.

    Episode 8: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    Episode 8: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    This is the 8th of a series of conversations with Barry Komisaruk.

    We discussed the nature(s) of informational and physical flows in mind and life, the potentially synesthetic affective nature of all perception, and ways in which core body processes may provide scaffolding for all other aspects of the evolution and development of minds.

    Next week: Thinking about ways in which ontogeny does and does not recapitulate phylogeny; considering the mind as music.

    Last week's discussion (with previous discussions linked in the video description).

    • 45 min
    Episode 7: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    Episode 7: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    This is the 7th of a series of conversations with Barry Komisaruk.

    This conversation continued our exploration on the nature(s) of body maps in brain and mind, going more deeply into how these may inform our understanding of the physical and computational substrates of consciousness.

    Last week's discussion (with previous discussions linked in the video description).


    Some links of potential relevance for today's discussion:

    On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

    A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

    The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

    Does an Ionic or Biophoton Plasma Transduce Neural Activity into Subjective Conscious Awareness?

    • 59 min
    Episode 6: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    Episode 6: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    This is the 6th of a series of conversations with Barry Komisaruk.

    This conversation focused on the nature(s) of body maps in brain and mind, including some initial discussions of how these may inform our understanding of the physical and computational substrates of consciousness.

    Last week's discussion (with previous discussions linked in the video description):


    Some links of potential relevance for today's discussion:

    Body-perception as inference:
    Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran

    Flexible fundamental body maps:
    The Body Has a Mind of Its Own by Sandra Blakeslee & Matthew Blakeslee

    Electromagnetic information exchange for neural activity:
    Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons | Nature Neuroscience

    Holographic principle:
    Nature’s cosmic hard drive? Black holes could store information like holograms | Ars Technica

    Consciousness, homunculi, electromagnetic coordination (and dimensionality reduction/channeling) of neural activity:
    Does an Ionic or Biophoton Plasma Transduce Neural Activity into Subjective Conscious Awareness?

    Phenomenal binding via body maps:
    The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

    Models of cortical computation:
    Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) Expanded: Implications for Theories of Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence

    • 1 hr
    Episode 5: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    Episode 5: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    This is the fifth of a series of conversations with Barry Komisaruk.

    In this conversation we discussed a broad range of topics, ranging from similarities and differences in the principles of organization of insect and vertebrate nervous systems, to language and the meaning of meaning as wholistic resonance, to spatiotemporal binding/alignment via traveling waves in the hippocampus, and more.

    Last week's discussion (with previous discussions linked in the video description).


    Some links of potential relevance for today's discussion:

    Facebook note on brains as shared spider’s web

    How Can the Brain Efficiently Build an Understanding of the Natural World | The Center for Brains, Minds & Machines

    Twitter thread on language and the brain

    Smolensky's Harmonium

    Cortical Traveling Waves: Mechanisms and Computational Principles

    Bidirectional propagation of low frequency oscillations over the human hippocampal surface 

    • 1 hr 2 min
    Episode 4: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    Episode 4: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    This is the fourth of a series of conversations with Barry Komisaruk.

    Last week's discussion (with previous discussions linked in the video description).


    Some links of potential relevance for today's discussion:

    Entwinement - I Am a Strange Loop - Douglas R. Hofstadter (publicism.info)

    Wedding Haka - Subtitled & translated - YouTube

    See - Jason Momoa - Performs Haka - YouTube

    Rapid Anxiety Reduction (RAR): A unified theory of humor (arxiv.org)

    The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again (mdpi.com)

    Does an Ionic or Biophoton Plasma Transduce Neural Activity into Subjective Conscious Awareness?

    • 56 min
    Episode 3: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    Episode 3: Conversation with Barry Komisaruk

    This is the third of a series of conversations with Barry Komisaruk.

    Last week's discussion (with previous discussions linked in the video description):


    Some links of potential relevance for today's discussion:

    When frequencies never synchronize: The golden mean and the resting EEG - ScienceDirect

    Breathing is coupled with voluntary action and the cortical readiness potential | Nature Communications

    Creativity and the default network: A functional connectivity analysis of the creative brain at rest - ScienceDirect

    The structure of intuitive abilities and their relationships with intelligence and Openness to Experience - ScienceDirect

    Adam Safron on Twitter: "1/ Creativity and insight thread."

    • 52 min

Top Podcasts In Science

Hidden Brain
Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam
The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC Radio 4
Ologies with Alie Ward
Alie Ward
Radiolab
WNYC Studios
All In The Mind
ABC listen
Making Sense with Sam Harris
Sam Harris