Anil Seth has spent more than twenty-five years asking one of the most disorienting questions a scientist can ask: what is it that makes you conscious, and are you as real as you feel? A Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, Seth has published more than 200 research papers and is recognized by Web of Science as being in the top 0.1% of researchers worldwide in his field. His 2017 TED talk, "Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality," has been viewed more than 14 million times, one of the most-watched science talks in TED history. His 2021 book, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller and a Book of the Year for The Economist, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New Statesman, and Bloomberg. In 2023, he was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for his extraordinary contribution to public engagement with science. In 2025, he won the Berggruen Prize Essay Competition for "The Mythology of Conscious AI." And in 2026, he delivered a new main-stage TED talk: "Why AI is unlikely to become conscious." His central argument is as simple as it is radical: we do not perceive the world as it actually is. Instead, the brain is a prediction machine, constantly generating its best guess about what's out there, using sensory signals only to correct its errors. What we experience as reality is a "controlled hallucination." And crucially, the self, the very sense of being a "you" behind your eyes, is part of that hallucination too. In this wide-ranging and mind-bending episode, Anil unpacks the ideas at the frontier of consciousness science, exploring: The controlled hallucination: why every perception you have, color, pain, the weight of your own body, is a construction of your brain, not a window onto objective reality, and what that means for how you move through the world The predictive brain: how your mind is not passively receiving information but constantly generating predictions, and why the experience of surprise is actually your brain updating its model of the world The "beast machine" theory of selfhood: why Anil believes that consciousness is not just about computation but is deeply grounded in the biological drive to stay alive, and why that matters for debates about AI The hard problem and the real problem: why philosophers have spent decades asking why there is subjective experience at all, and why Anil thinks we've been asking the wrong question Animal consciousness and the octopus: what creatures with radically different nervous systems reveal about the many possible ways of being conscious, and why this should expand our moral circle Can AI be conscious? Why Anil argues, against the dominant view in Silicon Valley, that large language models are almost certainly not conscious, what we'd actually need to look for, and why anthropomorphizing AI carries real societal risk The Dreamachine: how Anil led a groundbreaking science-art project that used stroboscopic light to induce visual hallucinations in more than 35,000 people, and what the largest ever citizen science study into perceptual diversity revealed about how differently each of us experiences the world What the neuroscience of consciousness means for medicine: from anaesthesia and disorders of consciousness to psychedelics and mental health, how understanding the brain's generative nature opens new clinical possibilities Free will, the self, and what's left: if the self is a controlled hallucination, does that mean we aren't really in control? And is that terrifying, or strangely liberating? This is a deeply searching and surprisingly personal conversation about the most intimate fact of human existence: the experience of being you. Learn more about Anil's work at anilseth.com, and find his book, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, wherever books are sold. His TED talks are available HERE, and his 2025 Berggruen Prize essay, "The Mythology of Conscious AI," can be read at Noema Magazine. 🎙️ What is Impact in the 21st Century? Impact in the 21st Century is a podcast that celebrates the impactful work being done around the globe and shares the stories of the inspiring individuals behind it. 👤 Who hosts the podcast? Aaron Friedland is a National Geographic Explorer, PhD Candidate in Econometrics at UBC, and Founder of the Simbi Foundation. 🦻 Who makes it sound good? Tom Foster is an Award-Winning Recording Engineer and Cinematographer, Up-and-Coming Composer, Film Scoring Student at Berklee College of Music, and Head of Audio & Music for the Sea Change Project. This podcast is brought to you by Simbi Foundation & The Goood Life. Proudly recorded at Waterfall Farm
