Sam Harris:
Every time you look for this feeling of self, it disappears.
Elizabeth Koch:
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. What's a Perception Box? It's this invisible mental box that each one of us lives inside, built from the material of our beliefs, life experiences, and the meaning we've made out of those experiences. You could think of it as a kind of reality filter that's constantly shaping how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us. This podcast explores how. Although the walls of this box are always present, they can expand in moments of curiosity, awe, and wonder. Or contract in response to fear, anxiety, and anger.
In each episode, we invite experts to share how to create lasting shifts in our perception. I'd like to introduce our esteemed host, Heather Berlin, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Christof Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Welcome to the Science of Perception Box. This week, our guest is Sam Harris. Through the lens of the Perception Box, what we experience as me, the one controlling events may be an illusion the mind is constructing in real time. Training ourselves to see that construction process can transform how we relate to challenges, how resilient we are to stress, and how to hold our fears with compassion rather than resistance.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Christof, I want to ask you, when you look at yourself or you think about yourself or what you're directly experiencing right now, how does that work in your mind? What does your mind do?
Dr. Christof Koch:
Well, it seems that it strongly believes like most people, there's a person sitting inside my head, a little guy, homunculus, called Christof, in my case, looking out at the world. That person is a thinker, is a carrier of my thought, that's a person who experienced. That person carries all my behavioral traits and all my autobiographical memories, and that person really essentially remains the same throughout my life.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So your subjective sense is that there's this unique, unified self within you-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Looking out at the world.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
... looking out at the world and experiencing it.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yes. And then of course it goes hand in most of us with this voice inside my head. I talk to myself, this is running commentary. And sometimes it gets really annoying and then you want to shut it up so you go into states of flow, like running or any other activity where you get totally absorbed by your work. Whether it's mathematics or writing code or whatever, and we lose our sense of self, but that's rare.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But enjoyable.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Very enjoyable.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
We have someone here who's an expert on all things self and mind. So welcome to the podcast, Sam Harris.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, great to see you guys.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
When you look at yourself via your sort of direct experience right now, what do you think your mind is doing? What does it feel like, and what do you think is going on?
Sam Harris:
I think the brain for most people is doing three things. It's forming a representation of the world, it's forming a representation of the body in the world. And then for most people, this is going to be the self where we're going to deconstruct and ultimately, from my point of view, deconstruct as an illusion, there's this third representation of a subject interior to the body. So most people don't feel identical to their bodies. They feel like they have bodies paradoxically. They might know if they're scientifically sophisticated, they know that they're identical to their bodies.
Or certainly a physicalist view of the mind would say the mind is what the brain is doing or the mind is what the entire central nervous system is doing. And when you're actually talking about the first person experience of most people, that's not what it is. People don't feel merely coterminous with their bodies. They feel like there's a subject in the head that is this kind of unchanging locus of conscious awareness and conscious will, and it's the place from which the spotlight of attention can be moved and those movements can be voluntary or involuntary.
And when you ask someone to meditate and to look for this thing they're calling a self, the starting point for everyone is to, whether they close their eyes or not, but it's even heightened when you close your eyes, you feel like, okay, now I'm this interior witness to the world and to the body and the world. And there is this strangely paradoxical relationship to the body. Where you sort of know it's you, but if you have a pain in your knee, you, the conscious subject has a relationship to that pain. You're not liking it, you're wanting it to go away.
And everything points back to this feeling of being a kind of passenger in the body that witnesses everything, that is the one that is having experience, appropriating experience moment to moment. It's the thinker of your thoughts. So in addition to the flow of thought, there's a sense that there's this author of the thoughts. In addition to the next intention that arises to reach for a glass, say, there's a feeling that there's a one who intends.
And again, subjectively, it's not felt to be the whole body. It's felt to be this kind of inner witness. And it's that inner witness when you look for it closely enough is not findable. And in that not finding, you can actually discover its absence.
Dr. Christof Koch:
What do you mean it's not findable.
Sam Harris:
In my experience, it's possible to look precisely enough for this feeling that we're calling "I" moment to moment and to recognize that it's something we're doing. It's almost like you're making a fist and you've been making a fist your whole life. And by a very precise use of attention, I can make you aware of the fact that you're making this fist. This just feels like what a hand is for you. But if we could just pay close enough attention to what's happening here and you could relax your hand, realize the thing you thought you were holding doesn't exist.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But there's still the locus of attention, right? There's me intending to close a... That's what it feels like subjectively.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. The illusion is that there's experience and then there's a self that's on the edge of experience or in the center of experience to whom experience refers. But if that is experienced at all, that's just more experience. That's just part of the field of experience. Whatever this wrinkle is you're calling I, whatever it feels like to be me. I mean, so you can imagine intensifying it in... We're all walking around with this feeling of I, but there are conditions under which it can contract even further. So if you suddenly become acutely self-conscious, right?
Dr. Christof Koch:
You have something between your teeth.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. Someone says, "Oh no, what's that?" And you're like, "What, me?" And so you realize that you're this thing that feels implicated behind your face. It's almost like your face is a mask and you're behind this mask. And if someone points to you and it implicates you, or if there's a crowd that suddenly draws its attention to you, you're on stage and you've done something that's acutely embarrassing, say. That collapse of attention where everyone else's gaze suddenly impresses itself upon you almost as to form a kind of singularity of self. It's an experience of energy, the physiological changes in your body.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So just to pull that apart a little bit, so from a neuroscience perspective, we think of a sense of self, it's just made up of really different parts of the brain acting different... Parts of our brain that encode our sense of our body and that construct this reality of a self that's experiencing things. When you have more activation in certain parts of the brain, like the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, your sense of self-awareness and self-consciousness and the inner critic sort of turns up.
But in certain states when you can get that to turn down, you kind of lose a sense of self. And there are different ways to get to those states as well, becoming more open. If we think about a Perception Box when you're closing in and where you can expand it and open up and the sense of self can dissolve. Which makes it clear that it is a construct of the brain.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. It's something the brain is doing and it's something the brain can cease to do.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But that doesn't make an illusion. I mean, it's as much a construct as pain is or seeing you. I have a picture of you. I know it's created in parts of my visual cortex, right?
Sam Harris:
There's one type of illusion certainly that you think something is so, I mean the classic from Indian literature is that you think there's something coiled in the corner of a room and you mistake it for a snake. But you pay closer attention to it and then you recognize it's just a coil of rope. The true perception is revealed by what remains when you actually bring your full attention to the thing. If the snake always collapses into a rope and it never goes the other way, it's not you're looking closer still and then suddenly the rope becomes a snake, you then draw the conclusion, well, it's not really a snake, it's a rope even though out of the corner of my eye it still [inaudible 00:09:27].
Dr. Heather Berlin:
You're saying the more you look into the self, the more it kind of disappears. There's nothing to be found there.
Sam Harris:
Once you have this insight, again, this is just within the frame of meditation and specifically a non-dual approach to mindfulness. What becomes stable is every time you look for this feeling of self, it disappears. You couldn't actually feel like a self on demand if you wanted to. So it's unstable in a way that whenever you look for it, it's gone.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But you can make similar arguments for any conscious perception. I submit that the consciousness of self is a subset of all conscious experiences.
Sam Harris:
But I can't do that with you. Every time I look at your yellow sweatshirt, I see your yellow sweatshirt. And I can't look at it closely enough for it to disappear. It is a stable percept for me.
Dr. Christof Koch:
There are certain things that are more stable like pain, unfortunately, chronic pain is more stable and visual perception. Yeah. But the character of them really. I mean, do you think that conscience of self is different from consciousness of seeing yellow-
Sam Harris:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Christof Koch:
... or pain?
Sam Harris:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's based on a mistake and it's what it's like to be identified with thought without knowing you're identified with thought. I mean, the flow of thought is the thing that is dragging this sense of subjectivity into consciousness moment to moment. I mean, I actually think our sense of self is interrupted much more than people realize. You mentioned flow states and this condition of losing yourself in your work.
We're constantly breaking it without clear awareness of it being broken. What meditation is by this specific exercise of paying attention in a certain way, you can make these breaks in this subject/object dualism very salient.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I want to get into free will a bit. I would just dare to say that I think a lot of time we are not aware of ourself when we're just in a flow state or you're just driving on your way to work and your mind is wondering. It's only when you start to begin to focus on self that it almost constructs itself in that moment to be there again and it's always there when you look to it. I don't constantly have this awareness of my sense of self until I focus on it.
But what I find with patients is that who are suffering, they are hyper-focused on their thoughts and the rumination. And when we look at imaging studies show that they have hyperactivation in parts of their prefrontal cortex, and when you get them to let go, whether it's through meditation or flow states, creativity, psychedelics, that part of the brain, the rumination kind of parts of the prefrontal cortex calm down. And you can't simultaneously be in flow and also be ruminating and anxious and depressed because you're kind of turning down those parts of the brain so they're antithetical to each other.
I want to get into this idea. So if self is a kind of whatever you want to call it, an illusion, a construct of the brain, it's malleable, it can change, how much control do we really have over our agent? I know our sense of agency can be an illusion, but do we have control? Do we have any kind of free will in any kind of philosophical sense? Or what about just in the sense of having control over actions? Because when I'm treating patients and I'm like, okay, you have control over your thoughts, you have OCD, you have a sense of you can change this. How does free will mix into that equation?
Sam Harris:
Yeah, so there are really two levels at which you can talk about control and agency. There's the conventional level at which yes, we have control over all kinds of things and not as much of it as we want in other areas. There's one way of framing the whole project of having insight into the nature of mind and adopting a practice like meditation, as a project of actually gaining yet another degree of freedom. Once you learn a practice like mindfulness, you can actually notice the wheel works of your own neurosis and unhappiness and you can notice, okay, well I had that angry thought about this argument I had with my friend yesterday and I'm now kind of ruminating about the things I wish I said or wish I hadn't said.
But now I can be mindful of it. I can notice the physiological changes that these thoughts are producing. I can separate them. I can notice the physiology is one thing and the imagery and the bits of language in my mind are a different stream, and I can get some space from it. One way to summarize that whole thing is that you're getting some freedom that you didn't have before. I mean now you can actually get off the ride. You can decide, okay, anger is no longer useful. This conversation I'm playing in my head already happened.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So that's like a Dan Denis kind of degrees of freedom versus actually having free will.
Sam Harris:
But this is sort of a compatibilist framing of all that, which okay, this is what we mean by freedom.
Dr. Christof Koch:
In a practical sense. In a [inaudible 00:14:24] sense.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. In Dan Denis sense. This is a freedom worth wanting. This isn't sort of radical libertarian free will where you're free of the laws of physics. In my view, free will is a concept that doesn't map onto anything deep about us. There's a difference between voluntary behavior and involuntary behavior. Phenomenologically, that's still true whether free will is a thing or not. I mean, having a tremor that you can't control is different than just doing this on purpose.
But on a deep level, we know that the dominoes of physics are just falling and our brain is part of the universe. Traditionally, it's been very hard to map the sense of libertarian free will that everyone feels they have onto the physics of things, whether you're going to talk about determinism or determinism plus randomness. And however you turn those dials, it doesn't give people the libertarian free will they think they have. Which is the feeling in each moment that I could have done otherwise a moment ago.
When I actually pay attention to my experience, I don't know what... There is no free will. I don't feel that there's free will. It's not that I feel like I have alien hand syndrome and I can't control my hand, but when I actually look closely at my behavior, everything is simply springing out of the darkness.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But once again, when I raise my hand to make this point, you're saying that just came out of-
Sam Harris:
It's just like you're hearing this.
Dr. Christof Koch:
... ontological nothingness.
Sam Harris:
You can hear this, you can't choose not to hear it. You can be distracted from it, but-
Dr. Christof Koch:
I can choose not to pay attention to it.
Sam Harris:
But still, it's an adventitious intrusion into the theater of your conscious life. So is that intention to raise your arm. You could have spent an hour deciding, okay, I'm going to prove that I have free will. I know I'm going to raise my right hand or my left hand, but I'm not sure which one. Let's just figure this out. I'm going to go back and forth. I'm right-handed, maybe it should be the right, but no, but it'd be more creative somehow to use the left. There's no place to stand subjectively where you can explain. It really is as mysterious as someone sitting in another room with a keyboard deciding for you.
Dr. Christof Koch:
It's only mysterious if you don't accept the primacy of consciousness. If you have a different ontology where you see first and foremost, existence means to be conscious. And that existence has causal power and the causal power arise from that. Physics, of course, correlates. So clearly you can read up Ben Libet and all of that. If I raise my right hand, we know 300 millisecond before, there's a signal that I can pick up with EG or even with FMI much earlier, but that's correlation. As we tell all of our students, correlation is not causation. It's a different point of view.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But You're taking a very radical-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Well, because otherwise, Sam is suggesting, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't you saying the fact that I raised my hand, leaving aside noise, which we all agree isn't that important, actually was determined 12, 13.4 billion years ago in the Big Bang.
Sam Harris:
Or it could also be randomness as well.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
How would you describe your philosophical view of free will?
Sam Harris:
That it doesn't map onto anything. It doesn't map onto the physics of things, whether randomness or determinism or any combination thereof. And the truth is it doesn't actually map onto our experience when we pay attention. See, the traditional conundrum is we know it doesn't map onto the physics of things, but we know in our bones that we have this thing because we feel it moment to moment. So the endurance of free will as a topic of philosophical interest is based on the common experience that people can have.
Dr. Christof Koch:
The feeling of agency.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So this has been a perspective that I've taken is, okay, the brain is this complex information processing machine. You have certain constraints, your genetics, your history, the environment, all these things. The brain is doing these calculations. It decides in any given moment based on all this data, what to do in that moment. We have the Benjamin Libet, 350 milliseconds before you're even consciously aware of the intention to move, the brain is sort of gearing up to make a movement. But there is some randomness that goes on as well. Would you say that the unconscious in a way has some sort of more free will than our consciousness because that's a sort of afterthought?
Sam Harris:
Nobody thinks they're a robot, but we are just wet robots from the point of view of the physics of things. The reason why that's so difficult to swallow is, this is a line from my friend Paul Bloom, the psychologist who you probably know, he describes people as common sense dualists, and I think that really is the case. People feel like their mind, their agency, their subjectivity, their sense that they are the author of their thoughts and intentions, it must somehow float free of the physics of things.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But if there's no free will, let's just say, we still have the capacity to have self-control. We still have responsibility for our actions. We're still held accountable.
Sam Harris:
The sense that I could have done otherwise is a total illusion. There was no other way for me to finish this sentence. It is subjectively mysterious that I can do any of this. So the fact that you can decode what I'm saying, you have no first person insight into that. It's just happening. You're just a witness to the fact that your brain accomplishes this thing. So consciousness is epiphenomenal, certainly with respect to your being able to decode these sounds meaningfully. I mean, the semantics, it's all just getting-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Most of it's unconscious, but consciousness is not per definition, it is the phenomena par excellence. I can deny everything. I cannot deny my-
Sam Harris:
I totally agree with that.
Dr. Christof Koch:
... unconscious.
Sam Harris:
The way I would summarize that-
Dr. Christof Koch:
You seem to come close to it. You say the self is an illusion.
Sam Harris:
No, no, no.
Dr. Christof Koch:
The sense of agency is an illusion.
Sam Harris:
The one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion is consciousness. I'm making a very strong epistemological claim. I'm very slow to make any ontological claims. So when I say consciousness is the one thing that cannot be an illusion, epistemologically. Also, I guess that has ontological implications, but by my asserting that, I'm not claiming to know what happened before the Big Bang or how consciousness relates to brains, or what happens after death and see how the conversation-
Dr. Christof Koch:
And so it's not an ontological unlike, for instance, integrated information theory that makes this ontological point of either-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Can you guys just break down-
Dr. Christof Koch:
... really exists is consciousness.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
... for our listeners, the difference between ontological and epistemological just to-
Sam Harris:
So epistemology is the question of what we know and how we can know it. What can we be certain about is a question of epistemology. Is there anything we can be certain about? Is there anything that we can know that's not based on axioms that we can't justify? Do we always have to pull ourselves up from our bootstraps and just assert something as a brute fact being true, but we really can't argue, we can't get behind it.
Dr. Christof Koch:
This is where René Descartes comes in.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Right.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. And this is where all philosophy struggles to make sense of our knowledge of reality. Ontology is a question of what actually exists, what is real, what is out there? Is this a physical universe only? Is it a mental universe only? Is there some marriage of the two and there's some kind of dualistic-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you're not asking any of those larger questions about what is actually reality?
Sam Harris:
No.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Can we just have a bookmark? I just wanted to finish the debate on free will. So what do you tell, let's say, someone who suffers, let's say alcoholism and he tries to stop alcohol. Do you tell him, well, don't worry, you don't have a free will. There's nothing you can do about it.
Sam Harris:
No, no.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah. What do you tell people that want to change but are unable to for whatever reason?
Sam Harris:
Okay. So one way of mistaking what I'm claiming when I deny the existence of free will is to lurch into fatalism. So if there's no free will, then I'm just going to sit here and see what happens. You can't step out of the mechanics of things by just deciding to do nothing because that is as much of a decision as deciding to do something. All of these decisions are merely arising based on states of the brain and states of the universe that you didn't consciously author.
If you want to learn to play the piano, the only way to do that is to do the things that encode that skill into your nervous system, such that you wake up one day actually being able to play the piano. It's not just going to happen to you by accident.
What I know is that I'm a system that is open to influence. So if I watch a movie that inspires me to want to learn to play the piano, if I meet someone who's even older than I am who says they learned to play the piano in the last 18 months and it's the greatest thing they've ever done. And that suddenly corrects a view of myself that I didn't even know I had, which it was just my tacit assumption that in your late 50s, you can't learn to play the piano.
It's a perturbation of my nervous system that came from outside. It came from the gene transcription. It's part of the physics of things.
Dr. Christof Koch:
So what do you tell the alcoholic who wants to kick the habit? Don't worry, someday it'll happen.
Sam Harris:
No, no. I mean, the optimistic thing is you have no idea how radically you can change. I mean, you are this open system. You have no idea how deeply the next conversation you have can affect you. How the look on your child's face, the look of disappointment seeing you drunk again, how deeply that could land for you. And you might've seen it a thousand times before, but this one time where you really see it might completely change your sense of who you need to be in the world.
Again, the causality here is everywhere. I'm just saying that there's no one in the middle. There's no man in the boat who's really controlling things.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But then I want to talk about the kinds of things that we can do to, in a way, help us gain a little bit more control or shift our perspective, our perception. We have this constant narration in our head, but how does your perception or your Perception Box shift when you move into a state of full absorption of attention, or focusing on the self or some sort of meditative state?
Sam Harris:
My book and the app that was derived from my book, the title is Waking Up, and it's not original to me. I mean, the notion that the analogy to waking up from a dream, waking up from sleep and waking up from a dream is everywhere in the contemplative literature. I mean, the word Buddha means awakened one. But it's a very deep analogy. It's more than an analogy. I think just it is also neurologically the case that there's something very similar, being lost in thought, thinking without knowing your thinking is very much like being asleep and dreaming without knowing your dreaming.
And there's this transition that many people have experienced from ordinary dreaming to so-called lucid dreaming. Which you can suddenly wake up within a dream and yet the dream persists and that gives you a degree of freedom within a dream, which is subjectively pretty interesting. And people have played with that a lot. And there are traditional practices. In Tibetan Buddhism, there's something called dream yoga, and there's a whole practice around that, which anticipates what was later done in Western psychological circles around lucid dreaming.
But the phenomenology there is interesting. And then also, of course, you can just wake up from a dream totally and realize, "Okay, I'm safely in my bed. I thought I was running in a jungle being chased by a jaguar, and my physiology was appropriate to that hallucination, but now I'm restored to my real circumstance, which is safely in my bed." Certainly, once you learn to meditate, but even people who know nothing about meditation, can experience something like that transition. Where you're thinking thoughts that are really driving your experience. I've asked you to think of a celebrity that you can, just the first celebrity who comes to mind, just a movie star, just bring that image to mind.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Jennifer Aniston.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I went with Brad Pitt. Just go on.
Sam Harris:
So you might interrogate your intuition around free will here, and the phenomenology is someone comes to mind or a couple of people come to mind, and then there's the selection process where you think... Maybe the first person comes to mind is someone who you'd be sort of embarrassed to have been the first person you thought. It's sort of unseemly for me to think of whoever, Sylvester Stallone. Maybe I can think of somebody more highbrow than Sylvester Stallone. So now the search space continues to light up. But crucially, they're all the people you couldn't think of because you don't know their names or you don't even have imagery in your head around them. They're the people whose images you know, you've seen them in a bunch of movies, but you don't know their names, so you couldn't form the sentence.
Dr. Christof Koch:
I could still have the image. So actually I've done this experiment in the clinical context where we recalled from the heads of people here at UCLA [inaudible 00:27:37]. That's where we discovered these Jennifer Aniston neurons, and that's where Jennifer Aniston comes to mind because I think about her a lot in a scientific academic context. So you do have neurons for some of these people.
Sam Harris:
Exactly. Yeah. The Bill Clinton neuron.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah. When you asked me to think about that, once some of these neurons by top down get activated, and then the ones presumably that are strongest in some sense, they make it into my conscious awareness.
Sam Harris:
But try to map free will into this. So people have a deep sense that... So one, you'll admit you couldn't think of the people who you don't know. There's no free will there. Then let's say there's 2,000 people who you could have known, you could have thought of, but only a few were vying for inclusion. So what does it mean to say that you could have thought of Oprah Winfrey? All it means to say, this goes back to your question earlier, how do I map on the old free will language onto the way I think about human experience?
To say that you could have thought of Oprah Winfrey a moment ago is to say that you do know who she is, you could think of her next time, but you could not have thought of her a moment ago.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Okay, Sam, but here's a slightly different paradigm. I'm now thinking both Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Aniston. So I have the fork in the road up ahead in my mind. I think about both consciously, and then I decide one versus the other.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, you could do that with 10 people.
Dr. Christof Koch:
With 10 people, I would submit it's a free decision.
Sam Harris:
But there's still another person who... Okay-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Who you didn't think of.
Sam Harris:
There's another person who you know just as well as any of those 10 who you didn't think of.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Totally.
Sam Harris:
So now that you have your 10 to select from, I say pick a card and any card, you can't explain. It is subjectively inscrutable.
Dr. Christof Koch:
No, it's because I know I like, for whatever reason, I prefer Jennifer Aniston. Consciously, I've decided that. This is when you choose to marry someone and move to a city, you think about the two possibilities, that's sort of your paradigmatic decision. You think about the two possibilities, then you think on benefit, I want to do A, for whatever reason that I'm mostly unconscious.
Sam Harris:
Well, yes. So you're the last to know. So I'm saying that our experience of the world is completely compatible with there being no free will.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Okay. So again, coming from a clinical perspective as well, both neuroscience and clinical. Patients have these intrusive thoughts. I think they're just thoughts on hyperdrive. We can't really control when thoughts come into our mind. They're coming, it's like a flow of water coming through or whatever you want to call it. Once they're there, we can then maybe control or think about or decide what to do with them or how to react to them or whatever. But the thoughts themselves are in some sense out of our control. They're coming.
Sam Harris:
Even if you feel like you... But people feel like they can consciously author a thought. Like I'm going to think of a celebrity right now. I'm thinking of-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
You can purposely make a thought.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, but the thing is you can't because that would be to think it before you think it. I mean, really something, it just springs out of the darkness. We're talking about physical states of... We're talking about changing physiology moment to moment. We're talking about electrical potentials. We're talking about what's happening at the synapse.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Are those the causes or the correlate?
Sam Harris:
I'm saying that our experience... Again, this is the mystery that I'm saying doesn't exist. The mystery for most people is we have an experience that doesn't seem at all like that mere physical causation, just chemical billiard balls just banging away. I'm saying our experience when we really pay attention to it, is totally compatible with that.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I want to get to what we can do pragmatically outside of this philosophical conundrum, let's say that we're in right now, because we can debate about free will for hours, but I do want to-
Dr. Christof Koch:
People have.
Sam Harris:
The reason why people are so energetically taking the other side of this debate is because they feel a certain way.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you're saying the closer you look, the more you pay attention, the more you can get closer to reality and sort of dissolve these illusions.
Sam Harris:
Yeah.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So what is that practice pragmatically?
Sam Harris:
The practice is to notice that the self you think you have on the edge of consciousness and on the edge of experience, isn't there. I mean, you look for it and you can't find it and the not finding it feels like something.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Meditation would be a way to get there. What about psychedelics?
Sam Harris:
What's incredibly useful about psychedelics and the reason why so many of us have found them to be indispensable, is that it takes... It almost doesn't matter which drug we're talking about, but I mean obviously these drugs are very different. But it takes ordinary lumping materialists, Western thinkers who are overeducated people who just have never noticed that there's anything else to do with a mind but think. It overrides their patterns of thinking and feeling so fully. I mean whether you're talking about something like MDMA, which is not classically a psychedelic or psilocybin or LSD, which are. It changes the contents of consciousness so fundamentally that one thing you realize beyond any possibility of doubt is that it is possible to have a radically different experience of being a self in the world than you're tending to have.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you would in some sense expand your Perception Box with these different methods.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. It just advertises to you that this experience you have of being virtually identical to who you were yesterday and having your waking life be one moment after another of that, is just this sort of arbitrarily trimmed down... You've sort of plunged into some kind of local basin of attraction on a much larger landscape and you never got out of it because you didn't even know that there was a larger landscape. And what 200 micrograms of LSD does is it just takes you and puts you over here on the landscape.
And it could be pathological, it could be heroin, it could be psychotomimetic as these drugs were often described to be early on. You could be very happy to return back to your local basin of attraction and be yourself again because you hated that. But there are other places on the landscape and many of us happily have very positive encounters with radical difference in these psychedelic states. This is a difference between meditation and psychedelics. I would say that many of the places you visit on the landscape through psychedelics are not really normative in the spiritual sense or the contemplative sense.
You're not really trying to recapitulate those for the rest of your life. But what they do show you is that there's just a vast landscape of mind that you're not noticing.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But you can get to places through meditation that can be just as transformative.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. And more so in that the real difference is, the thing that can be misleading about psychedelics is that let's say you take any one of these drugs and have an incredibly positive experience. You don't have a bad acid trip, you have a good acid trip. It's very easy to form the impression based on a so-called good trip that, okay, freedom, radical psychological freedom is about changing the contents of consciousness fundamentally. So to be-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Losing yourself.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. And loss of self must entail radical energetic changes in one's perceptual field. So to be on acid or on mushrooms at any significant dose, if you're walking in the forest, you walk up to a tree and you put your hand on it and you have this overwhelming feeling of energetic continuity with nature. Those experiences are possible. I wouldn't say they're normative. I mean, they're normative in the sense that-
Dr. Christof Koch:
They show you the way.
Sam Harris:
... they show you that-
Dr. Christof Koch:
They show you what's possible.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But I would say ultimately, I don't want to scare people away from meditation that you have to go to a retreat for a year and try-
Sam Harris:
No-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
... you could do it in small doses and you don't need... Psychedelics would be a quick path there, but you also don't need to spend a year in a retreat or whatever. People could do it in their daily lives every day.
Sam Harris:
Oh yeah. And dualistic mindfulness is also very helpful. You can be much more precise in the instruction around this and that's what I attempt to do over Waking Up. I mean, the analogy I often make here is to the optic blind spot. So we know that there's a very simple experiment you can perform with just you put two dots on a piece of paper, you just create a fixation cross and a dot and you close one eye and you move the paper back and forth and the dot disappears.
So obviously most people on earth have no idea this is there to be noticed. You can describe it to people and they still can't notice it, but then you give them this very simple experiment and virtually everyone notices it. And so we can understand how that's done. All of that's just a matter of having the information, right?
Dr. Heather Berlin:
For some reason, I was just thinking of those 3D images that you are staring at.
Sam Harris:
Staring at the mind's eye images.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
The mind's eye and you have to let go and then suddenly it comes and it's there.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, that's similar. I mean it's right on the surface-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Right in front of your face.
Sam Harris:
... there's like a plane of focus problem.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Right. And then once you get it transforms you.
Sam Harris:
I'll give you one more analogy because I think people will find it useful. It's also like looking... You know what it's like to see your reflection in a window. I mean, you can be looking through a window and using it as a window. You see what's outside, but if you just suddenly change your plane of focus, you can see your face looking back at you in that window. And it's hard to describe what is entailed there, but it's not a major effort to change that.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
It's a shifting of attention.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah, shift attention and focus.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So every episode we ask one question to try to open our own Perception Box. And I chose this week's question and neither of you know what it is. So the question is, in moments of deep solitude, what major concerns or questions about yourself tend to dominate your thoughts?
Sam Harris:
The frame around all of this for me is one of understanding that the preciousness of life and its impermanence. So it's like thoughts about if I'm going to be thinking about my life and whether it's going well. Again, this is a level of mental activity that... This is a dream that I like to wake up from as often as possible. But if I'm going to be thinking about my life, it's often a matter of wondering whether I'm using my time and attention in light of the reality of death and the fundamental uncertainty around how much time any of us have left, whether I'm using my time and attention well.
To live without regret is kind of my master utility function at this point. I mean, I don't want to be spending my time in any way that I can look back on and wish I had not spent it that way.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Yeah. No, that's very beautiful and profound and important. I think about that a lot too. And having had recently a near death car experience, it brought it all the more just to the forefront. How important every moment we have is and to use it well. And Christof, do you have a-
Dr. Christof Koch:
No, I don't worry too much about myself. Maybe... I simply don't. It's just a tide, I know-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you have this ever present self yet it doesn't worry about itself.
Dr. Christof Koch:
It doesn't worry too much about itself. It's outward, thinking what the world, what exists.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you care about the big questions of the world out there.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah, because they always obsess me for better, worse, and I don't worry about... I had an experience where I lost... An NDE when, near death experience, where I totally lost my fear of death. So I don't think about death. I used to think about death. You wake up middle of the night and say, oh my God, I'm going to die. What am I going to do about it? And you get this existential vertigo looking down like when you climb and there's this cliff that goes down and has no bottom, but all of that's gone. So now it's just trying to think about big questions and the love I have for a lot of people.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I am going to say, I feel like, first of all, I can talk to you for hours and I'm sure most people can.
Sam Harris:
I'm long-winded, so that's-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
No, I mean, it's a privilege.
Dr. Christof Koch:
You're making an ontological assumption that causality is all in the physical.
Sam Harris:
No, I'm not. Let's add ectoplasm to it or some mental magic or something we don't understand.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Consciousness. I say consciousness has causal power.
Sam Harris:
Okay. Let's just say idealism is true. It's all consciousness. There's no physical. We can run the ontology any way you want. I'm saying the phenomenology is when you pay attention, there's this deep mystery that things are simply emerging into consciousness, and they don't emerge before they emerge. It's deeply mysterious why you raise the right hand versus the left hand, even if you spent two hours making the decision. And so it is with marrying your wife.
And if we discover that really, really at bottom, it was the pheromones that you can't consciously notice, but some people smell better to you than others, and it turns out all your friends have pheromone XYZ 12 and all of your enemies have some other molecule. If that's the answer at the back of the book of nature, it actually doesn't deflate anything. For me, it actually fundamentally wouldn't change the story.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So we're going to agree to not be able to resolve this completely right now. I think it's a really-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yes. I thought we could nail the problem of free will today.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Dammit, in this short podcast. But I think it's really insightful and it's going to help people think about it in a different way and maybe sort of get out of their own Perception Box and expand a bit.
On that note, thank you so much, Sam, for joining us today.
Sam Harris:
Pleasure.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
And if you'd like to learn more about your own Perception Box, spend some time this week answering the same Perception Box questions that we asked our guests, and check out other questions on our website at unlikelycollaborators.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the show or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
This has been Science of Perception Box created by Unlikely Collaborators in collaboration with Pod People. I'm Dr. Heather Berlin.
Dr. Christof Koch:
And I'm Dr. Christof Koch. Thank you.
The ‘Self’ You Can’t Find with Sam Harris
Most of us feel like there's a "me" behind our eyes, a thinker of our thoughts and author of our choices. Author and Waking Up founder Sam Harris argues that when you look closely enough, that self disappears. Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch dig into why the sense of self may be something the brain constructs moment to moment, and why free will, in Sam's view, doesn't hold up to either physics or careful attention. Along the way they explore what meditation and psychedelics reveal about the mind, why denying free will isn't fatalism, and why Sam sees that as grounds for optimism about how much we can change. Sam’s exploration into free will reveals a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
6:50 Self-consciousness and the neuroscience of self
12:50 Do we have free will?
24:00 Waking up: lucid dreaming and meditation
29:20 Intrusive thoughts and what we can control
31:00 Psychedelics and meditation
38:45 Can free will be settled?
Sam Harris:
Every time you look for this feeling of self, it disappears.
Elizabeth Koch:
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. What's a Perception Box? It's this invisible mental box that each one of us lives inside, built from the material of our beliefs, life experiences, and the meaning we've made out of those experiences. You could think of it as a kind of reality filter that's constantly shaping how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us. This podcast explores how. Although the walls of this box are always present, they can expand in moments of curiosity, awe, and wonder. Or contract in response to fear, anxiety, and anger.
In each episode, we invite experts to share how to create lasting shifts in our perception. I'd like to introduce our esteemed host, Heather Berlin, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Christof Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Welcome to the Science of Perception Box. This week, our guest is Sam Harris. Through the lens of the Perception Box, what we experience as me, the one controlling events may be an illusion the mind is constructing in real time. Training ourselves to see that construction process can transform how we relate to challenges, how resilient we are to stress, and how to hold our fears with compassion rather than resistance.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Christof, I want to ask you, when you look at yourself or you think about yourself or what you're directly experiencing right now, how does that work in your mind? What does your mind do?
Dr. Christof Koch:
Well, it seems that it strongly believes like most people, there's a person sitting inside my head, a little guy, homunculus, called Christof, in my case, looking out at the world. That person is a thinker, is a carrier of my thought, that's a person who experienced. That person carries all my behavioral traits and all my autobiographical memories, and that person really essentially remains the same throughout my life.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So your subjective sense is that there's this unique, unified self within you-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Looking out at the world.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
... looking out at the world and experiencing it.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yes. And then of course it goes hand in most of us with this voice inside my head. I talk to myself, this is running commentary. And sometimes it gets really annoying and then you want to shut it up so you go into states of flow, like running or any other activity where you get totally absorbed by your work. Whether it's mathematics or writing code or whatever, and we lose our sense of self, but that's rare.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But enjoyable.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Very enjoyable.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
We have someone here who's an expert on all things self and mind. So welcome to the podcast, Sam Harris.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, great to see you guys.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
When you look at yourself via your sort of direct experience right now, what do you think your mind is doing? What does it feel like, and what do you think is going on?
Sam Harris:
I think the brain for most people is doing three things. It's forming a representation of the world, it's forming a representation of the body in the world. And then for most people, this is going to be the self where we're going to deconstruct and ultimately, from my point of view, deconstruct as an illusion, there's this third representation of a subject interior to the body. So most people don't feel identical to their bodies. They feel like they have bodies paradoxically. They might know if they're scientifically sophisticated, they know that they're identical to their bodies.
Or certainly a physicalist view of the mind would say the mind is what the brain is doing or the mind is what the entire central nervous system is doing. And when you're actually talking about the first person experience of most people, that's not what it is. People don't feel merely coterminous with their bodies. They feel like there's a subject in the head that is this kind of unchanging locus of conscious awareness and conscious will, and it's the place from which the spotlight of attention can be moved and those movements can be voluntary or involuntary.
And when you ask someone to meditate and to look for this thing they're calling a self, the starting point for everyone is to, whether they close their eyes or not, but it's even heightened when you close your eyes, you feel like, okay, now I'm this interior witness to the world and to the body and the world. And there is this strangely paradoxical relationship to the body. Where you sort of know it's you, but if you have a pain in your knee, you, the conscious subject has a relationship to that pain. You're not liking it, you're wanting it to go away.
And everything points back to this feeling of being a kind of passenger in the body that witnesses everything, that is the one that is having experience, appropriating experience moment to moment. It's the thinker of your thoughts. So in addition to the flow of thought, there's a sense that there's this author of the thoughts. In addition to the next intention that arises to reach for a glass, say, there's a feeling that there's a one who intends.
And again, subjectively, it's not felt to be the whole body. It's felt to be this kind of inner witness. And it's that inner witness when you look for it closely enough is not findable. And in that not finding, you can actually discover its absence.
Dr. Christof Koch:
What do you mean it's not findable.
Sam Harris:
In my experience, it's possible to look precisely enough for this feeling that we're calling "I" moment to moment and to recognize that it's something we're doing. It's almost like you're making a fist and you've been making a fist your whole life. And by a very precise use of attention, I can make you aware of the fact that you're making this fist. This just feels like what a hand is for you. But if we could just pay close enough attention to what's happening here and you could relax your hand, realize the thing you thought you were holding doesn't exist.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But there's still the locus of attention, right? There's me intending to close a... That's what it feels like subjectively.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. The illusion is that there's experience and then there's a self that's on the edge of experience or in the center of experience to whom experience refers. But if that is experienced at all, that's just more experience. That's just part of the field of experience. Whatever this wrinkle is you're calling I, whatever it feels like to be me. I mean, so you can imagine intensifying it in... We're all walking around with this feeling of I, but there are conditions under which it can contract even further. So if you suddenly become acutely self-conscious, right?
Dr. Christof Koch:
You have something between your teeth.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. Someone says, "Oh no, what's that?" And you're like, "What, me?" And so you realize that you're this thing that feels implicated behind your face. It's almost like your face is a mask and you're behind this mask. And if someone points to you and it implicates you, or if there's a crowd that suddenly draws its attention to you, you're on stage and you've done something that's acutely embarrassing, say. That collapse of attention where everyone else's gaze suddenly impresses itself upon you almost as to form a kind of singularity of self. It's an experience of energy, the physiological changes in your body.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So just to pull that apart a little bit, so from a neuroscience perspective, we think of a sense of self, it's just made up of really different parts of the brain acting different... Parts of our brain that encode our sense of our body and that construct this reality of a self that's experiencing things. When you have more activation in certain parts of the brain, like the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, your sense of self-awareness and self-consciousness and the inner critic sort of turns up.
But in certain states when you can get that to turn down, you kind of lose a sense of self. And there are different ways to get to those states as well, becoming more open. If we think about a Perception Box when you're closing in and where you can expand it and open up and the sense of self can dissolve. Which makes it clear that it is a construct of the brain.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. It's something the brain is doing and it's something the brain can cease to do.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But that doesn't make an illusion. I mean, it's as much a construct as pain is or seeing you. I have a picture of you. I know it's created in parts of my visual cortex, right?
Sam Harris:
There's one type of illusion certainly that you think something is so, I mean the classic from Indian literature is that you think there's something coiled in the corner of a room and you mistake it for a snake. But you pay closer attention to it and then you recognize it's just a coil of rope. The true perception is revealed by what remains when you actually bring your full attention to the thing. If the snake always collapses into a rope and it never goes the other way, it's not you're looking closer still and then suddenly the rope becomes a snake, you then draw the conclusion, well, it's not really a snake, it's a rope even though out of the corner of my eye it still [inaudible 00:09:27].
Dr. Heather Berlin:
You're saying the more you look into the self, the more it kind of disappears. There's nothing to be found there.
Sam Harris:
Once you have this insight, again, this is just within the frame of meditation and specifically a non-dual approach to mindfulness. What becomes stable is every time you look for this feeling of self, it disappears. You couldn't actually feel like a self on demand if you wanted to. So it's unstable in a way that whenever you look for it, it's gone.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But you can make similar arguments for any conscious perception. I submit that the consciousness of self is a subset of all conscious experiences.
Sam Harris:
But I can't do that with you. Every time I look at your yellow sweatshirt, I see your yellow sweatshirt. And I can't look at it closely enough for it to disappear. It is a stable percept for me.
Dr. Christof Koch:
There are certain things that are more stable like pain, unfortunately, chronic pain is more stable and visual perception. Yeah. But the character of them really. I mean, do you think that conscience of self is different from consciousness of seeing yellow-
Sam Harris:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Christof Koch:
... or pain?
Sam Harris:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's based on a mistake and it's what it's like to be identified with thought without knowing you're identified with thought. I mean, the flow of thought is the thing that is dragging this sense of subjectivity into consciousness moment to moment. I mean, I actually think our sense of self is interrupted much more than people realize. You mentioned flow states and this condition of losing yourself in your work.
We're constantly breaking it without clear awareness of it being broken. What meditation is by this specific exercise of paying attention in a certain way, you can make these breaks in this subject/object dualism very salient.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I want to get into free will a bit. I would just dare to say that I think a lot of time we are not aware of ourself when we're just in a flow state or you're just driving on your way to work and your mind is wondering. It's only when you start to begin to focus on self that it almost constructs itself in that moment to be there again and it's always there when you look to it. I don't constantly have this awareness of my sense of self until I focus on it.
But what I find with patients is that who are suffering, they are hyper-focused on their thoughts and the rumination. And when we look at imaging studies show that they have hyperactivation in parts of their prefrontal cortex, and when you get them to let go, whether it's through meditation or flow states, creativity, psychedelics, that part of the brain, the rumination kind of parts of the prefrontal cortex calm down. And you can't simultaneously be in flow and also be ruminating and anxious and depressed because you're kind of turning down those parts of the brain so they're antithetical to each other.
I want to get into this idea. So if self is a kind of whatever you want to call it, an illusion, a construct of the brain, it's malleable, it can change, how much control do we really have over our agent? I know our sense of agency can be an illusion, but do we have control? Do we have any kind of free will in any kind of philosophical sense? Or what about just in the sense of having control over actions? Because when I'm treating patients and I'm like, okay, you have control over your thoughts, you have OCD, you have a sense of you can change this. How does free will mix into that equation?
Sam Harris:
Yeah, so there are really two levels at which you can talk about control and agency. There's the conventional level at which yes, we have control over all kinds of things and not as much of it as we want in other areas. There's one way of framing the whole project of having insight into the nature of mind and adopting a practice like meditation, as a project of actually gaining yet another degree of freedom. Once you learn a practice like mindfulness, you can actually notice the wheel works of your own neurosis and unhappiness and you can notice, okay, well I had that angry thought about this argument I had with my friend yesterday and I'm now kind of ruminating about the things I wish I said or wish I hadn't said.
But now I can be mindful of it. I can notice the physiological changes that these thoughts are producing. I can separate them. I can notice the physiology is one thing and the imagery and the bits of language in my mind are a different stream, and I can get some space from it. One way to summarize that whole thing is that you're getting some freedom that you didn't have before. I mean now you can actually get off the ride. You can decide, okay, anger is no longer useful. This conversation I'm playing in my head already happened.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So that's like a Dan Denis kind of degrees of freedom versus actually having free will.
Sam Harris:
But this is sort of a compatibilist framing of all that, which okay, this is what we mean by freedom.
Dr. Christof Koch:
In a practical sense. In a [inaudible 00:14:24] sense.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. In Dan Denis sense. This is a freedom worth wanting. This isn't sort of radical libertarian free will where you're free of the laws of physics. In my view, free will is a concept that doesn't map onto anything deep about us. There's a difference between voluntary behavior and involuntary behavior. Phenomenologically, that's still true whether free will is a thing or not. I mean, having a tremor that you can't control is different than just doing this on purpose.
But on a deep level, we know that the dominoes of physics are just falling and our brain is part of the universe. Traditionally, it's been very hard to map the sense of libertarian free will that everyone feels they have onto the physics of things, whether you're going to talk about determinism or determinism plus randomness. And however you turn those dials, it doesn't give people the libertarian free will they think they have. Which is the feeling in each moment that I could have done otherwise a moment ago.
When I actually pay attention to my experience, I don't know what... There is no free will. I don't feel that there's free will. It's not that I feel like I have alien hand syndrome and I can't control my hand, but when I actually look closely at my behavior, everything is simply springing out of the darkness.
Dr. Christof Koch:
But once again, when I raise my hand to make this point, you're saying that just came out of-
Sam Harris:
It's just like you're hearing this.
Dr. Christof Koch:
... ontological nothingness.
Sam Harris:
You can hear this, you can't choose not to hear it. You can be distracted from it, but-
Dr. Christof Koch:
I can choose not to pay attention to it.
Sam Harris:
But still, it's an adventitious intrusion into the theater of your conscious life. So is that intention to raise your arm. You could have spent an hour deciding, okay, I'm going to prove that I have free will. I know I'm going to raise my right hand or my left hand, but I'm not sure which one. Let's just figure this out. I'm going to go back and forth. I'm right-handed, maybe it should be the right, but no, but it'd be more creative somehow to use the left. There's no place to stand subjectively where you can explain. It really is as mysterious as someone sitting in another room with a keyboard deciding for you.
Dr. Christof Koch:
It's only mysterious if you don't accept the primacy of consciousness. If you have a different ontology where you see first and foremost, existence means to be conscious. And that existence has causal power and the causal power arise from that. Physics, of course, correlates. So clearly you can read up Ben Libet and all of that. If I raise my right hand, we know 300 millisecond before, there's a signal that I can pick up with EG or even with FMI much earlier, but that's correlation. As we tell all of our students, correlation is not causation. It's a different point of view.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But You're taking a very radical-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Well, because otherwise, Sam is suggesting, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't you saying the fact that I raised my hand, leaving aside noise, which we all agree isn't that important, actually was determined 12, 13.4 billion years ago in the Big Bang.
Sam Harris:
Or it could also be randomness as well.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
How would you describe your philosophical view of free will?
Sam Harris:
That it doesn't map onto anything. It doesn't map onto the physics of things, whether randomness or determinism or any combination thereof. And the truth is it doesn't actually map onto our experience when we pay attention. See, the traditional conundrum is we know it doesn't map onto the physics of things, but we know in our bones that we have this thing because we feel it moment to moment. So the endurance of free will as a topic of philosophical interest is based on the common experience that people can have.
Dr. Christof Koch:
The feeling of agency.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So this has been a perspective that I've taken is, okay, the brain is this complex information processing machine. You have certain constraints, your genetics, your history, the environment, all these things. The brain is doing these calculations. It decides in any given moment based on all this data, what to do in that moment. We have the Benjamin Libet, 350 milliseconds before you're even consciously aware of the intention to move, the brain is sort of gearing up to make a movement. But there is some randomness that goes on as well. Would you say that the unconscious in a way has some sort of more free will than our consciousness because that's a sort of afterthought?
Sam Harris:
Nobody thinks they're a robot, but we are just wet robots from the point of view of the physics of things. The reason why that's so difficult to swallow is, this is a line from my friend Paul Bloom, the psychologist who you probably know, he describes people as common sense dualists, and I think that really is the case. People feel like their mind, their agency, their subjectivity, their sense that they are the author of their thoughts and intentions, it must somehow float free of the physics of things.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But if there's no free will, let's just say, we still have the capacity to have self-control. We still have responsibility for our actions. We're still held accountable.
Sam Harris:
The sense that I could have done otherwise is a total illusion. There was no other way for me to finish this sentence. It is subjectively mysterious that I can do any of this. So the fact that you can decode what I'm saying, you have no first person insight into that. It's just happening. You're just a witness to the fact that your brain accomplishes this thing. So consciousness is epiphenomenal, certainly with respect to your being able to decode these sounds meaningfully. I mean, the semantics, it's all just getting-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Most of it's unconscious, but consciousness is not per definition, it is the phenomena par excellence. I can deny everything. I cannot deny my-
Sam Harris:
I totally agree with that.
Dr. Christof Koch:
... unconscious.
Sam Harris:
The way I would summarize that-
Dr. Christof Koch:
You seem to come close to it. You say the self is an illusion.
Sam Harris:
No, no, no.
Dr. Christof Koch:
The sense of agency is an illusion.
Sam Harris:
The one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion is consciousness. I'm making a very strong epistemological claim. I'm very slow to make any ontological claims. So when I say consciousness is the one thing that cannot be an illusion, epistemologically. Also, I guess that has ontological implications, but by my asserting that, I'm not claiming to know what happened before the Big Bang or how consciousness relates to brains, or what happens after death and see how the conversation-
Dr. Christof Koch:
And so it's not an ontological unlike, for instance, integrated information theory that makes this ontological point of either-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Can you guys just break down-
Dr. Christof Koch:
... really exists is consciousness.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
... for our listeners, the difference between ontological and epistemological just to-
Sam Harris:
So epistemology is the question of what we know and how we can know it. What can we be certain about is a question of epistemology. Is there anything we can be certain about? Is there anything that we can know that's not based on axioms that we can't justify? Do we always have to pull ourselves up from our bootstraps and just assert something as a brute fact being true, but we really can't argue, we can't get behind it.
Dr. Christof Koch:
This is where René Descartes comes in.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Right.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. And this is where all philosophy struggles to make sense of our knowledge of reality. Ontology is a question of what actually exists, what is real, what is out there? Is this a physical universe only? Is it a mental universe only? Is there some marriage of the two and there's some kind of dualistic-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you're not asking any of those larger questions about what is actually reality?
Sam Harris:
No.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Can we just have a bookmark? I just wanted to finish the debate on free will. So what do you tell, let's say, someone who suffers, let's say alcoholism and he tries to stop alcohol. Do you tell him, well, don't worry, you don't have a free will. There's nothing you can do about it.
Sam Harris:
No, no.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah. What do you tell people that want to change but are unable to for whatever reason?
Sam Harris:
Okay. So one way of mistaking what I'm claiming when I deny the existence of free will is to lurch into fatalism. So if there's no free will, then I'm just going to sit here and see what happens. You can't step out of the mechanics of things by just deciding to do nothing because that is as much of a decision as deciding to do something. All of these decisions are merely arising based on states of the brain and states of the universe that you didn't consciously author.
If you want to learn to play the piano, the only way to do that is to do the things that encode that skill into your nervous system, such that you wake up one day actually being able to play the piano. It's not just going to happen to you by accident.
What I know is that I'm a system that is open to influence. So if I watch a movie that inspires me to want to learn to play the piano, if I meet someone who's even older than I am who says they learned to play the piano in the last 18 months and it's the greatest thing they've ever done. And that suddenly corrects a view of myself that I didn't even know I had, which it was just my tacit assumption that in your late 50s, you can't learn to play the piano.
It's a perturbation of my nervous system that came from outside. It came from the gene transcription. It's part of the physics of things.
Dr. Christof Koch:
So what do you tell the alcoholic who wants to kick the habit? Don't worry, someday it'll happen.
Sam Harris:
No, no. I mean, the optimistic thing is you have no idea how radically you can change. I mean, you are this open system. You have no idea how deeply the next conversation you have can affect you. How the look on your child's face, the look of disappointment seeing you drunk again, how deeply that could land for you. And you might've seen it a thousand times before, but this one time where you really see it might completely change your sense of who you need to be in the world.
Again, the causality here is everywhere. I'm just saying that there's no one in the middle. There's no man in the boat who's really controlling things.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But then I want to talk about the kinds of things that we can do to, in a way, help us gain a little bit more control or shift our perspective, our perception. We have this constant narration in our head, but how does your perception or your Perception Box shift when you move into a state of full absorption of attention, or focusing on the self or some sort of meditative state?
Sam Harris:
My book and the app that was derived from my book, the title is Waking Up, and it's not original to me. I mean, the notion that the analogy to waking up from a dream, waking up from sleep and waking up from a dream is everywhere in the contemplative literature. I mean, the word Buddha means awakened one. But it's a very deep analogy. It's more than an analogy. I think just it is also neurologically the case that there's something very similar, being lost in thought, thinking without knowing your thinking is very much like being asleep and dreaming without knowing your dreaming.
And there's this transition that many people have experienced from ordinary dreaming to so-called lucid dreaming. Which you can suddenly wake up within a dream and yet the dream persists and that gives you a degree of freedom within a dream, which is subjectively pretty interesting. And people have played with that a lot. And there are traditional practices. In Tibetan Buddhism, there's something called dream yoga, and there's a whole practice around that, which anticipates what was later done in Western psychological circles around lucid dreaming.
But the phenomenology there is interesting. And then also, of course, you can just wake up from a dream totally and realize, "Okay, I'm safely in my bed. I thought I was running in a jungle being chased by a jaguar, and my physiology was appropriate to that hallucination, but now I'm restored to my real circumstance, which is safely in my bed." Certainly, once you learn to meditate, but even people who know nothing about meditation, can experience something like that transition. Where you're thinking thoughts that are really driving your experience. I've asked you to think of a celebrity that you can, just the first celebrity who comes to mind, just a movie star, just bring that image to mind.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Jennifer Aniston.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I went with Brad Pitt. Just go on.
Sam Harris:
So you might interrogate your intuition around free will here, and the phenomenology is someone comes to mind or a couple of people come to mind, and then there's the selection process where you think... Maybe the first person comes to mind is someone who you'd be sort of embarrassed to have been the first person you thought. It's sort of unseemly for me to think of whoever, Sylvester Stallone. Maybe I can think of somebody more highbrow than Sylvester Stallone. So now the search space continues to light up. But crucially, they're all the people you couldn't think of because you don't know their names or you don't even have imagery in your head around them. They're the people whose images you know, you've seen them in a bunch of movies, but you don't know their names, so you couldn't form the sentence.
Dr. Christof Koch:
I could still have the image. So actually I've done this experiment in the clinical context where we recalled from the heads of people here at UCLA [inaudible 00:27:37]. That's where we discovered these Jennifer Aniston neurons, and that's where Jennifer Aniston comes to mind because I think about her a lot in a scientific academic context. So you do have neurons for some of these people.
Sam Harris:
Exactly. Yeah. The Bill Clinton neuron.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah. When you asked me to think about that, once some of these neurons by top down get activated, and then the ones presumably that are strongest in some sense, they make it into my conscious awareness.
Sam Harris:
But try to map free will into this. So people have a deep sense that... So one, you'll admit you couldn't think of the people who you don't know. There's no free will there. Then let's say there's 2,000 people who you could have known, you could have thought of, but only a few were vying for inclusion. So what does it mean to say that you could have thought of Oprah Winfrey? All it means to say, this goes back to your question earlier, how do I map on the old free will language onto the way I think about human experience?
To say that you could have thought of Oprah Winfrey a moment ago is to say that you do know who she is, you could think of her next time, but you could not have thought of her a moment ago.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Okay, Sam, but here's a slightly different paradigm. I'm now thinking both Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Aniston. So I have the fork in the road up ahead in my mind. I think about both consciously, and then I decide one versus the other.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, you could do that with 10 people.
Dr. Christof Koch:
With 10 people, I would submit it's a free decision.
Sam Harris:
But there's still another person who... Okay-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Who you didn't think of.
Sam Harris:
There's another person who you know just as well as any of those 10 who you didn't think of.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Totally.
Sam Harris:
So now that you have your 10 to select from, I say pick a card and any card, you can't explain. It is subjectively inscrutable.
Dr. Christof Koch:
No, it's because I know I like, for whatever reason, I prefer Jennifer Aniston. Consciously, I've decided that. This is when you choose to marry someone and move to a city, you think about the two possibilities, that's sort of your paradigmatic decision. You think about the two possibilities, then you think on benefit, I want to do A, for whatever reason that I'm mostly unconscious.
Sam Harris:
Well, yes. So you're the last to know. So I'm saying that our experience of the world is completely compatible with there being no free will.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Okay. So again, coming from a clinical perspective as well, both neuroscience and clinical. Patients have these intrusive thoughts. I think they're just thoughts on hyperdrive. We can't really control when thoughts come into our mind. They're coming, it's like a flow of water coming through or whatever you want to call it. Once they're there, we can then maybe control or think about or decide what to do with them or how to react to them or whatever. But the thoughts themselves are in some sense out of our control. They're coming.
Sam Harris:
Even if you feel like you... But people feel like they can consciously author a thought. Like I'm going to think of a celebrity right now. I'm thinking of-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
You can purposely make a thought.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, but the thing is you can't because that would be to think it before you think it. I mean, really something, it just springs out of the darkness. We're talking about physical states of... We're talking about changing physiology moment to moment. We're talking about electrical potentials. We're talking about what's happening at the synapse.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Are those the causes or the correlate?
Sam Harris:
I'm saying that our experience... Again, this is the mystery that I'm saying doesn't exist. The mystery for most people is we have an experience that doesn't seem at all like that mere physical causation, just chemical billiard balls just banging away. I'm saying our experience when we really pay attention to it, is totally compatible with that.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I want to get to what we can do pragmatically outside of this philosophical conundrum, let's say that we're in right now, because we can debate about free will for hours, but I do want to-
Dr. Christof Koch:
People have.
Sam Harris:
The reason why people are so energetically taking the other side of this debate is because they feel a certain way.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you're saying the closer you look, the more you pay attention, the more you can get closer to reality and sort of dissolve these illusions.
Sam Harris:
Yeah.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So what is that practice pragmatically?
Sam Harris:
The practice is to notice that the self you think you have on the edge of consciousness and on the edge of experience, isn't there. I mean, you look for it and you can't find it and the not finding it feels like something.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Meditation would be a way to get there. What about psychedelics?
Sam Harris:
What's incredibly useful about psychedelics and the reason why so many of us have found them to be indispensable, is that it takes... It almost doesn't matter which drug we're talking about, but I mean obviously these drugs are very different. But it takes ordinary lumping materialists, Western thinkers who are overeducated people who just have never noticed that there's anything else to do with a mind but think. It overrides their patterns of thinking and feeling so fully. I mean whether you're talking about something like MDMA, which is not classically a psychedelic or psilocybin or LSD, which are. It changes the contents of consciousness so fundamentally that one thing you realize beyond any possibility of doubt is that it is possible to have a radically different experience of being a self in the world than you're tending to have.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you would in some sense expand your Perception Box with these different methods.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. It just advertises to you that this experience you have of being virtually identical to who you were yesterday and having your waking life be one moment after another of that, is just this sort of arbitrarily trimmed down... You've sort of plunged into some kind of local basin of attraction on a much larger landscape and you never got out of it because you didn't even know that there was a larger landscape. And what 200 micrograms of LSD does is it just takes you and puts you over here on the landscape.
And it could be pathological, it could be heroin, it could be psychotomimetic as these drugs were often described to be early on. You could be very happy to return back to your local basin of attraction and be yourself again because you hated that. But there are other places on the landscape and many of us happily have very positive encounters with radical difference in these psychedelic states. This is a difference between meditation and psychedelics. I would say that many of the places you visit on the landscape through psychedelics are not really normative in the spiritual sense or the contemplative sense.
You're not really trying to recapitulate those for the rest of your life. But what they do show you is that there's just a vast landscape of mind that you're not noticing.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But you can get to places through meditation that can be just as transformative.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. And more so in that the real difference is, the thing that can be misleading about psychedelics is that let's say you take any one of these drugs and have an incredibly positive experience. You don't have a bad acid trip, you have a good acid trip. It's very easy to form the impression based on a so-called good trip that, okay, freedom, radical psychological freedom is about changing the contents of consciousness fundamentally. So to be-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Losing yourself.
Sam Harris:
Yeah. And loss of self must entail radical energetic changes in one's perceptual field. So to be on acid or on mushrooms at any significant dose, if you're walking in the forest, you walk up to a tree and you put your hand on it and you have this overwhelming feeling of energetic continuity with nature. Those experiences are possible. I wouldn't say they're normative. I mean, they're normative in the sense that-
Dr. Christof Koch:
They show you the way.
Sam Harris:
... they show you that-
Dr. Christof Koch:
They show you what's possible.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
But I would say ultimately, I don't want to scare people away from meditation that you have to go to a retreat for a year and try-
Sam Harris:
No-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
... you could do it in small doses and you don't need... Psychedelics would be a quick path there, but you also don't need to spend a year in a retreat or whatever. People could do it in their daily lives every day.
Sam Harris:
Oh yeah. And dualistic mindfulness is also very helpful. You can be much more precise in the instruction around this and that's what I attempt to do over Waking Up. I mean, the analogy I often make here is to the optic blind spot. So we know that there's a very simple experiment you can perform with just you put two dots on a piece of paper, you just create a fixation cross and a dot and you close one eye and you move the paper back and forth and the dot disappears.
So obviously most people on earth have no idea this is there to be noticed. You can describe it to people and they still can't notice it, but then you give them this very simple experiment and virtually everyone notices it. And so we can understand how that's done. All of that's just a matter of having the information, right?
Dr. Heather Berlin:
For some reason, I was just thinking of those 3D images that you are staring at.
Sam Harris:
Staring at the mind's eye images.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
The mind's eye and you have to let go and then suddenly it comes and it's there.
Sam Harris:
Yeah, that's similar. I mean it's right on the surface-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Right in front of your face.
Sam Harris:
... there's like a plane of focus problem.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Right. And then once you get it transforms you.
Sam Harris:
I'll give you one more analogy because I think people will find it useful. It's also like looking... You know what it's like to see your reflection in a window. I mean, you can be looking through a window and using it as a window. You see what's outside, but if you just suddenly change your plane of focus, you can see your face looking back at you in that window. And it's hard to describe what is entailed there, but it's not a major effort to change that.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
It's a shifting of attention.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah, shift attention and focus.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So every episode we ask one question to try to open our own Perception Box. And I chose this week's question and neither of you know what it is. So the question is, in moments of deep solitude, what major concerns or questions about yourself tend to dominate your thoughts?
Sam Harris:
The frame around all of this for me is one of understanding that the preciousness of life and its impermanence. So it's like thoughts about if I'm going to be thinking about my life and whether it's going well. Again, this is a level of mental activity that... This is a dream that I like to wake up from as often as possible. But if I'm going to be thinking about my life, it's often a matter of wondering whether I'm using my time and attention in light of the reality of death and the fundamental uncertainty around how much time any of us have left, whether I'm using my time and attention well.
To live without regret is kind of my master utility function at this point. I mean, I don't want to be spending my time in any way that I can look back on and wish I had not spent it that way.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Yeah. No, that's very beautiful and profound and important. I think about that a lot too. And having had recently a near death car experience, it brought it all the more just to the forefront. How important every moment we have is and to use it well. And Christof, do you have a-
Dr. Christof Koch:
No, I don't worry too much about myself. Maybe... I simply don't. It's just a tide, I know-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you have this ever present self yet it doesn't worry about itself.
Dr. Christof Koch:
It doesn't worry too much about itself. It's outward, thinking what the world, what exists.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So you care about the big questions of the world out there.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yeah, because they always obsess me for better, worse, and I don't worry about... I had an experience where I lost... An NDE when, near death experience, where I totally lost my fear of death. So I don't think about death. I used to think about death. You wake up middle of the night and say, oh my God, I'm going to die. What am I going to do about it? And you get this existential vertigo looking down like when you climb and there's this cliff that goes down and has no bottom, but all of that's gone. So now it's just trying to think about big questions and the love I have for a lot of people.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
I am going to say, I feel like, first of all, I can talk to you for hours and I'm sure most people can.
Sam Harris:
I'm long-winded, so that's-
Dr. Heather Berlin:
No, I mean, it's a privilege.
Dr. Christof Koch:
You're making an ontological assumption that causality is all in the physical.
Sam Harris:
No, I'm not. Let's add ectoplasm to it or some mental magic or something we don't understand.
Dr. Christof Koch:
Consciousness. I say consciousness has causal power.
Sam Harris:
Okay. Let's just say idealism is true. It's all consciousness. There's no physical. We can run the ontology any way you want. I'm saying the phenomenology is when you pay attention, there's this deep mystery that things are simply emerging into consciousness, and they don't emerge before they emerge. It's deeply mysterious why you raise the right hand versus the left hand, even if you spent two hours making the decision. And so it is with marrying your wife.
And if we discover that really, really at bottom, it was the pheromones that you can't consciously notice, but some people smell better to you than others, and it turns out all your friends have pheromone XYZ 12 and all of your enemies have some other molecule. If that's the answer at the back of the book of nature, it actually doesn't deflate anything. For me, it actually fundamentally wouldn't change the story.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
So we're going to agree to not be able to resolve this completely right now. I think it's a really-
Dr. Christof Koch:
Yes. I thought we could nail the problem of free will today.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
Dammit, in this short podcast. But I think it's really insightful and it's going to help people think about it in a different way and maybe sort of get out of their own Perception Box and expand a bit.
On that note, thank you so much, Sam, for joining us today.
Sam Harris:
Pleasure.
Dr. Heather Berlin:
And if you'd like to learn more about your own Perception Box, spend some time this week answering the same Perception Box questions that we asked our guests, and check out other questions on our website at unlikelycollaborators.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the show or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
This has been Science of Perception Box created by Unlikely Collaborators in collaboration with Pod People. I'm Dr. Heather Berlin.
Dr. Christof Koch:
And I'm Dr. Christof Koch. Thank you.
Most of us feel like there's a "me" behind our eyes, a thinker of our thoughts and author of our choices. Author and Waking Up founder Sam Harris argues that when you look closely enough, that self disappears. Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch dig into why the sense of self may be something the brain constructs moment to moment, and why free will, in Sam's view, doesn't hold up to either physics or careful attention. Along the way they explore what meditation and psychedelics reveal about the mind, why denying free will isn't fatalism, and why Sam sees that as grounds for optimism about how much we can change. Sam’s exploration into free will reveals a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
6:50 Self-consciousness and the neuroscience of self
12:50 Do we have free will?
24:00 Waking up: lucid dreaming and meditation
29:20 Intrusive thoughts and what we can control
31:00 Psychedelics and meditation
38:45 Can free will be settled?
Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku joins hosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch to explore what physics can teach us about consciousness and reality itself. Dr. Kaku argues that consciousness is best understood as feedback loops, shaping the walls of our own Perception Box™ long before we're aware of it. The conversation asks if quantum mechanics has anything to do with a "warm, wet" brain, illuminating a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, bestselling author, acclaimed public speaker, renowned futurist, and popularizer of science. As co-founder of String Field Theory, Dr. Kaku carries on Einstein's quest to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into a single grand unified theory of everything. He received a B.S. (summa cum laude) from Harvard University in 1968, then went on to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in 1972. In 1973, he held a lectureship at Princeton University.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:48 Can Physics Explain Consciousness?
03:24 Defining Consciousness vs. Intelligence
09:57 Schrödinger's Cat and the Many-Worlds Theory
12:47 Do Quantum Effects Scale Up to the Brain?
16:13 Could AI Ever Be Conscious?
21:04 Perception Box Question: How Do Others Perceive You?
23:15 Kaku's Multiple Identities Through Life
Stress researcher Dr. Elissa Epel explains why the goal isn't to eliminate stress but to get better at recovering from it. She says that a sharp, short stress response followed by real rest is the hallmark of a young, healthy nervous system. She breaks down the science of why chronic vigilance quietly ages our cells and shortens telomeres. Plus: why lying down can defuse an argument, how someone can recover from years of chronic stress, and why nature, ritual, and even a good nap belong in everyone's stress prescription. Dr. Epel's research reveals a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Elissa Epel, Ph.D., is a professor of psychiatry at UCSF, where she directs the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center. She co-wrote the New York Times bestseller The Telomere Effect with Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, and her latest book is The Stress Prescription. A member of the National Academy of Medicine, her research has been featured on 60 Minutes, NPR, and in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Chapters:
03:00 What happens in mind and body under stress
05:16 Why too little stress ages you faster
13:20 Is chronic stress damage reversible?
15:12 What a healthy stress response looks like
18:06 Tunnel vision: the Perception Box under stress
24:15 Building recovery into your day
27:37 The stress prescription, part two: practices
31:13 Deep rest as a gateway to transformation
32:38 Recovering from years of chronic stress
38:41 Highly sensitive people and anxiety
40:09 Perception Box question: what do you want people to believe about you?
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Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, psychologist and neuroscientist, joins hosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch to unpack her theory of constructed emotion: the idea that emotions aren't hardwired reactions but stories the brain builds to explain physical signals like a racing heart or a furrowed brow. Dr. Barrett explains why there's no universal facial expression for anger or fear, how the same racing heart can be read as fear or excitement depending on your Perception Box™, and why "you have more control over your interpretation than you think," even if that control takes practice to build.
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a psychological scientist and neuroscientist, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, and originator of the theory of constructed emotion. She is the author of How Emotions Are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Wednesday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend!
Chapters:
03:17 Brain as Prediction Machine
07:41 Why Predictions Feel Invisible
13:55 Feelings Versus Emotions
18:43 No Universal Expressions
30:31 Babies And Basic Affect
32:03 Training Emotional Flexibility
38:42 Rewiring Predictions Over Time
41:45 Letting Go Of Convictions
Why do we speak in euphemisms instead of saying exactly what we mean? Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch sat down with cognitive scientist and bestselling author Steven Pinker to explore common knowledge — not what everyone knows, but what everyone knows that everyone knows. Get it?
Common knowledge is an awareness of something that is public or “out there” and it has an enormous impact on our social, political, and economic lives. From unspoken rules of flirtation to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pinker reveals how the social force of common knowledge shapes everything from our most intimate relationships to global financial markets. His work illuminates central ideas of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University where he conducts research on language, cognition, and social relations. Pinker is the author of thirteen books, including his latest book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows… and seminal texts like The Language Instinct, The Blank Slate, and How the Mind Works. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time and The Atlantic.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend!
Episode Chapters:
00:00 Why Honesty Fails
02:56 Defining Common Knowledge
06:38 Awkwardness and Innuendo
15:24 Markets and Shared Beliefs
28:44 Bubbles and Bank Runs
31:05 Freedom of Speech
31:49 Berlin Wall Tipping
32:46 Science Versus Assumptions
What if everything you see, hear, and feel isn't real? What if it's just your brain's best prediction of what's real? Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch sat down with neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Anil Seth to explore the profound question of: What is consciousness? Seth's answer might surprise (and even unsettle) you. Consciousness isn't a window onto reality. It's a controlled hallucination constructed by your brain to make sense of a world it can never directly access. These questions of consciousness illuminate central ideas of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness and more than 200 scientific papers.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend!
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
Chapters:
00:00 Escaping the echo chamber
01:43 Defining consciousness
09:05 Perception as "controlled hallucination"
11:26 Why perception feels like reality (an adaptive illusion)
17:06 When perception shapes social and historical "truth"
19:03 Hallucination as uncontrolled perception
21:57 What is the self?
33:38 Intelligence vs. consciousness
35:42 Anthropomorphizing AI and "bio-chauvinism"
36:10 Biological naturalism: can AI be conscious?
39:44 Should AI be designed to seem conscious?
40:52 Perception Box question
Psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman explores the difference between victimhood and victim mindset, explaining why learned helplessness is actually our default state—and how developing agency is the key to breaking free. He discusses vulnerable narcissism, the dangers of excessive accommodation, and why growth requires embracing adversity rather than avoiding discomfort. Plus: why Darth Vader is actually an example of overcoming a victim mindset. Dr. Kaufman’s exploration of the victimhood mindset reveals a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Scott Barry Kaufman is a psychologist focused on untapped potential and reframing intelligence. He is a professor of psychology at Columbia University and director of the Center for Human Potential. He has written and edited 11 books, with the most recent being Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset. He has written articles for widely respected publications, including The Atlantic, Scientific American, and Harvard Business Review, and he’s also the host of The Psychology Podcast. In addition to teaching at Columbia, he also taught as a professor at NYU and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Episode Chapters:
00:00 Opening
02:53 Defining the Victim Mindset
03:30 Rumination and Entitlement
05:42 Rethinking Learned Helplessness
08:01 Victimhood vs Victim
09:04 Empowerment Traits
09:44 Genes and Resilience
12:22 Vulnerable Narcissism Link
15:59 Escaping Emotional Victimhood
17:00 Agency Over Accommodations
19:18 Letting Kids Fail
24:56 Villain Or Victim Game
Your body already holds the tools necessary for peak mental and physical performance – you just need to unlock them. Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch sit down with Stanford neuroscientist and “Huberman Lab” host Andrew Huberman to explore the science of how your brain and body talk to each other, and how you can use that conversation to your advantage. Huberman shares his evidence-based solutions for optimizing brain function, mood, energy, and physical performance in order to learn new skills and behaviors that can transform your life. Huberman’s exploration of the brain-body connection speaks to a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Andrew Huberman is a Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine and host of the “Huberman Lab” podcast. His newest book, Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body publishes in September 2026 and culminates years of research, lab work, and conversations with scientists.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend!
Chapters:
00:00 Opening
06:33 Yoga Nidra and Tactical Breathing
09:25 What Helps Addiction
14:18 Physiological Sigh
17:37 Naming Shapes Adoption
23:05 Alcohol Health Consensus
26:20 Gut Microbiome and Nutrition
27:42 Sex and Wellbeing
30:56 Sleep, Aging and Melatonin
32:42 Protocols Book Overview
35:18 Letting Go and Faith
37:56 Psychedelics
39:44 Perception Box Questions
In a world shaped by dating apps, endless choices, and constant digital interaction, many people feel more disconnected and uncertain about relationships than ever before. In this Spark Salon, Marisa T. Cohen explores the hidden emotional patterns shaping modern love, from attachment and vulnerability to rejection, perception, and communication. Blending relationship science with real-world insight, she examines how our past experiences, assumptions, and unconscious beliefs influence how we seek, interpret, and experience connection.
Drawing from psychology, clinical practice, and years of research on relationships, Dr. Cohen explores what it means to date more intentionally in an age of constant swiping and digital noise. From communication and emotional availability to the stories we carry about love and rejection, she offers a thoughtful framework for building relationships that feel more grounded, mutual, and meaningful.
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How much of your energy is focused on trying to change people who aren't ready to change? Best-selling author and podcast host Mel Robbins joins Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch to explore what happens when you stop trying to control others and start reclaiming your own life. Robbins calls it the “Let Them Theory”: a deceptively simple idea that has struck a nerve with millions worldwide who are using it to address frustration, anxiety, their need for control, and more.
Mel’s “Let Them Theory” touches on a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.
Mel Robbins is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and host of the award-winning “Mel Robbins Podcast”, with more than 40 million followers worldwide. Her book The Let Them Theory was the top-selling nonfiction title of 2025, selling seven million copies in nine months.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend!
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
Chapters:
05:09 Introducing Mel Robbins
06:43 Parents And Instinct to Rescue
12:32 Helping Without Pushback
14:27 Annoying Spouse Habits
19:00 “Let Them, Let Me” Boundaries
21:03 Losing Control In Modern Life
26:01 The Cold Tea Test
27:12 Flow State Reset
28:51 Why Let Them Works
31:48 Let Them Let Me Boundaries
33:28 Radical Acceptance in Relationships
37:17 Perception Box Reflections
40:24 People Pleasing as Control
43:01 Let Them or Step In Game
Dr. Camilo Ortiz, clinical psychologist and creator of Independence Therapy, joins hosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch to unpack why the instinct in modern parenting is to protect kids from every risk may be backfiring. Dr. Ortiz explains how a child's Perception BoxTM starts forming almost as soon as they can speak, why parents today wildly overestimate danger despite living in the safest era on record, and how everyday tasks such as chopping vegetables, walking to the store alone can rebuild kids' confidence and resilience.
Dr. Camilo Ortiz is board-certified in behavioral and cognitive therapy. He holds an MS and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and serves as a tenured associate psychology professor at Long Island University, bringing 20 years of clinical experience to his role.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Chapters:
06:39 Independence With Guardrails
13:03 Freedom Versus Neglect
16:26 Getting Lost Builds Confidence
18:55 “When Then” Parenting
23:52 Why Parents Overprotect
28:27 Independence Therapy Basics
31:01 When Freedom Backfires
42:07 Independence Or Interference
Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend!
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
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Why do two people witness the same event and walk away with entirely different experiences of what happened? Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch return for Season 2 of Science of Perception Box, exploring the invisible framework, the Perception Box™, that shapes how your brain constructs reality, interprets experience, and defines your sense of self. Each week, they sit down with guests including Mel Robbins, Andrew Huberman and Sam Harris to unpack how perception is built, and how you can gain more agency over your own. New episodes weekly.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend. You can even do both!
Chris Gardner refused to let the circumstances of his childhood define the limits of his future.
In this episode of Corner Office, created in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Custom Content and Unlikely Collaborators, Gardner explores how questioning the beliefs shaped by poverty, violence, and rejection helped him transform hardship into possibility and inspired his lifelong mission to create opportunity for others.
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BJ Miller, MD, Katherine Shear, MD, and Paul Bloom, PhD reframe grief as a natural, necessary response to love and loss — instead of a disorder to fix on a deadline. Drawing from neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy, they explain why grief can resemble love in the brain, why mourning often takes months or years, and how modern culture makes loss harder by rushing people toward “normal” before they’ve had time to change.
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Science can explain how we think, connect, and perceive reality. But it also invites us into something deeper: awe, wonder, and a greater understanding of what it means to be human.
Neuroscientist and physician Andrew Newberg, psychiatrist and happiness researcher Robert Waldinger, and theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili explore the intersections of science, consciousness, meaning, and human flourishing—revealing how discovery itself can become a path to enlightenment and awe.
What do you do when you don’t feel loved?
In a world where we are more connected than ever, many people still feel unseen, misunderstood, or alone. The issue is not always about how much love we have in our lives, but how we experience it.
In this Spark Salon, renowned psychologist and best-selling author Sonja Lyubomirsky explores how our internal lens shapes the way we give, receive, and interpret love. Drawing from her book How to Feel Loved, she challenges the instinct to earn love by presenting our best selves, and instead points to the power of authenticity, including our imperfections and vulnerabilities.
This session explores how the way we show up in our relationships, what we express, what we hold back, and how we respond to others shapes whether love is actually felt on both sides. How do small shifts in how we communicate and engage change whether someone feels seen, valued, and understood? And how, in turn, does that transform our own experience of being loved?
Blending research from well-being and relationship science, Lyubomirsky introduces a set of core relational mindsets that can shift how we experience connection in everyday life, helping close the gap between being loved and actually feeling it.
What does it really mean when you feel lonely? The answer depends on your perception.
In this video, Robert Waldinger, MD, Kasley Killam, MPH, and Ethan Kross, PhD explore why loneliness has become so common and how it affects both the mind and the body. They explain why friendships are disappearing, how loneliness changes our health, and why being alone doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. Instead of treating loneliness as a personal failure, they suggest seeing it as a signal that helps us understand what we need and how to reconnect.
What if the voice in your head is less of a witness and more of an interpreter? Two neuroscientists discuss the brain’s drive to explain, narrate, and make everything add up.
Stories do not just entertain us; they may be one of the main ways our brains rehearse experience, assign meaning, and turn scattered moments into something that feels like a self. We are constantly sorting actions, memories and emotion into a version of events that feels coherent enough to live inside. Neuroscientists Michael Gazzaniga, PhD and Dean Buonomano, PhD draw on split-brain research to explain the left hemisphere’s “Interpreter”: the brain’s tendency to create explanations for behavior, even when it does not have the full picture. The instinct to create narratives likely shapes far more than self-understanding. It may underpin identity, belief, and the desire to belong in the world.
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The brain isn't separate from the body. It depends on it. Three scientists explain the biology behind one of science's most under-explored relationships.
Your brain didn't evolve in isolation. It evolved to run the economy of your body, and every heartbeat, breath, and moment of thirst or anxiety is evidence of that system at work.
Neuroscientist and author Aditi Nerurkar, neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki, and neurologist-philosopher Antonio Damasio break down the science of the mind-body connection: why it exists, how it works, and why understanding it can change the way you experience the world.
Every time you move your body, your brain gets what one neuroscientist calls a “bubble bath” of dopamine, serotonin, and growth factors. Here’s how to activate it.
Neuroscientists Wendy Suzuki, PhD, Samuel Wang, PhD, and Gary Small, MD explain how movement increases blood flow, boosts growth factors like BDNF, and floods the brain with mood-lifting neurochemicals. The brain and body are in constant conversation, and plasticity means your wiring is never fixed. According to Suzuki, even ten minutes of walking can shift your brain’s chemistry immediately, flooding it in a ‘bubble bath’ of positive neurochemicals.
In other words, the way you use your body today shapes how your brain works tomorrow.
Bad news: your sense of self is made up. The good news is, you’re able to change it. Neuroscience and psychology explain.
Perception feels stable. Your sense of self feels solid. Yet neuroscientist Heather Berlin, psychologist Ethan Kross and neuroscientist Nicole Vignola explain that both are created by the brain. Through prediction, memory and neural pruning, the mind builds a narrative that feels coherent and fixed, even though modern science suggests that it’s continually shaped by pre-existing beliefs and experience. Seeing the construction clearly is the first step toward altering it.
Have you ever woken up after a dream and thought to yourself, “That made absolutely no sense”? According to modern neuroscience, there’s a reason why dreams feel so abstract and bizarre. Two sleep experts discuss.
Every 90 minutes, our bodies go paralyzed while our brains become more active than during waking life. Sleep psychologist Dr. Shelby Harris and neuroscientist Dr. Patrick McNamara, Associate Professor of Neurology at Boston University, dig into one of the most fascinating mysteries in human biology: why we dream and what our brains are actually doing during REM sleep. They explore competing theories of what dreaming is for, McNamara makes a compelling case that REM sleep may have been a key driver of early human creativity, and both reflect on why reclaiming our reverence for the dream state could change the way we think and create.
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Happiness researchers Robert Waldinger MD, Tal Ben-Shahar PhD, and Peter Baumann explain why the happiest people aren’t happy all the time.
Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, MD, psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD, and author-entrepreneur Peter Baumann share what 85 years of research and lived experience reveal about happiness. They explain why chasing it directly often backfires—and how strong relationships, mindfulness, and embracing every emotion can build a baseline of positivity that actually lasts.
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Humans have always had religion. What does this say about our minds? Reza Aslan, PhD, Lisa Miller, PhD, and Rob Bell, MDiv, explain.
Why has religion been part of humanity since the beginning? Religious scholar Reza Aslan, PhD, clinical psychologist Lisa Miller, PhD, and former pastor Rob Bell, MDiv, explore innate spiritual instincts, the neuroscience of belief, and how faith and science both seek truth. They discuss substance dualism, religion’s role in resilience and mental health, and why our brains may be wired to find meaning, connection, and a sense of something greater.
About Reza Aslan, PhD:
Reza Aslan is a religious scholar, writer, and professor. Author of Zealot, he explores faith, identity, and culture, bringing religious history into contemporary conversations.
About Lisa Miller, PhD:
Lisa Miller is a clinical psychologist and Columbia University professor. She researches spirituality and mental health, authoring The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain on the science of faith.
About Rob Bell, MDiv:
Rob Bell is an author, teacher, and former pastor known for Love Wins. He explores spirituality, creativity, and the intersection of faith and modern life.
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People make decisions about your confidence before you ever speak. Authors Robert Greene and Daniel Shapiro explain how posture, presence, and even silence communicate more than words ever could.
Oftentimes, our most effective form of communication happens before we even open our mouths. Best-selling author Robert Greene and conflict negotiation expert Daniel Shapiro reveal how body language silently shapes our identity, influence, and power. From nonverbal dominance to mastering conflict, they break down why we lose arguments and explain how to win them without conflict. By mastering these subtle signals, anyone can master their own influence and create deeper trust, stronger presence, and lasting impact without ever saying a word.
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Your brain makes habits stick. The good news? The same science shows how to replace the bad ones.
Why are bad habits so hard to break?
Neuroscientist Carl Hart, PhD, journalist Charles Duhigg, and psychologist Adam Alter, PhD explain how your brain wires habits as cue-routine-reward loops that control nearly half of your daily life. They show why willpower alone rarely works, why technology fuels new forms of addiction, and why habits can only be replaced, not erased.
About Carl Hart, PhD:
Dr. Hart is an Associate Professor of Psychology in both the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at Columbia University, and Director of the Residential Studies and Methamphetamine Research Laboratories at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. A major focus of Dr. Hart’s research is to understand complex interactions between drugs of abuse and the neurobiology and environmental factors that mediate human behavior and physiology.
About Charles Duhigg:
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of The Power of Habit, which spent over three years on bestseller lists and has been translated into 40 languages, and Smarter Faster Better, also a bestseller. Mr. Duhigg writes for The New Yorker magazine and is a graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Business School. He has been a frequent contributor to CNBC, This American Life, NPR, The Colbert Report, NewsHour, and Frontline.
About Adam Alter, PhD:
Adam Alter is an Associate Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, with an affiliated appointment in the New York University Psychology Department.
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Failure is inevitable, but your response to it is a choice – and it makes all the difference.
Journalist Tim Harford, PhD, psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, and organizational behavior expert Robert Sutton, PhD, reveal how failure can become the foundation of success when it's examined and built upon. Reframing failure as information, rather than a personal setback, is what sets productive thinkers apart.
Our memories aren’t perfect records of the past — they’re reconstructions shaped by brain activity.
Neuroscientists Lisa Genova and André Fenton explain that a memory is created through neural patterns that can subtly shift each time we recall it. We may unknowingly add or lose details over time. Understanding this science helps us approach memory with more humility and empathy, and deepens our insight into how memories shape one’s identity and beliefs.
What happens when the boundaries of “you” disappear?
James Fadiman, PhD, Jamie Wheal, and Matthew Johnson, PhD explore how supported experiences with psychoactive drugs can dissolve identity and reveal a deeper reality.
What if one experience could make you lose your sense of self, forget time, and feel deeply connected to everything around you?
Experts Jamie Wheal, Matthew Johnson, PhD., and James Fadiman, PhD. give us a deeper look at psychedelic medicine, exploring how substances like psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca change the way we see ourselves and the world. Used carefully, they can bring insight and unity. However, without support, they can be overwhelming and reveal just how fragile our sense of reality can be. These researchers explain the difference.
About Matthew Johnson, PhD:
Matthew W. Johnson, PhD, is The Susan Hill Ward Endowed Professor of Psychedelics and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins. Working with psychedelics since 2004, he is one of the world’s most widely published experts on psychedelics. He has published research on psychedelics and mystical experience, personality change, tobacco smoking cessation, cancer distress treatment, and depression treatment.
About James Fadiman PhD:
Dr. James Fadiman is a leading scientific expert on the use of psychedelics for personal exploration, healing, and transformation. He has been researching, writing and lecturing on the topic for more than fifty years. His research focuses on exploring the potential of psychedelics to help individuals achieve a more meaningful, balanced and enlightened life.
About Jamie Wheal:
Jamie Wheal is the author of the global best-seller and Pulitzer Prize-nominated Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, Navy SEALs and Maverick Scientists are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work and the founder of the Flow Genome Project, an international organization dedicated to the research and training of ultimate human performance. Since founding the organization in 2011, it has gone on to become the leading voice of evidence-based peak performance in the world, counting award-winning academics, legendary professional athletes, special operations commanders, and Fortune 500 business leaders among the hundreds of thousands of people in its global community.
Around the world, small communities are preserving extraordinary skills and forms of knowledge that have endured for centuries, from rare crafts to rituals that require years of apprenticeship to master. These traditions are not simply artifacts of the past. They are living bodies of knowledge, sustained through discipline, memory, and care.In this Spark Salon, BBC journalist and author Eliot Stein shares stories from his search for the last keepers of remarkable traditions. Through immersive reporting and personal encounters, he explores what it takes to carry specialized knowledge across generations and what is lost when those skills disappear.As modern life accelerates and expertise becomes increasingly digital and disposable, Stein invites us to reflect on the value of embodied knowledge, apprenticeship, and continuity. What does it mean to inherit a skill? What responsibility comes with preserving it? And how do forms of knowledge shape the communities that sustain them?
A neuroscientist, a psychologist, and a psychotherapist discuss how emotions are stories built from old experiences.
By introducing new ones, you can shift the way your past shapes you.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, psychologist Paul Eckman, PhD, and psychotherapist Esther Perel, PhD, explain how the brain constantly rebuilds emotions from memory and prediction. According to their research, by choosing new experiences today, we can reshape how our past influences us, gain more control over our feelings, and create new possibilities for connection and growth.
About Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD:
Lisa Feldman Barrett is University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She directs the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, where she researches the nature of emotion and the brain’s predictive processes.
About Esther Perel, PhD:
Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and author recognized worldwide for her work on modern relationships. Perel is also a sought-after public speaker with TED Talks reaching millions, and consults globally with organizations on relational intelligence.
About Paul Ekman, PhD:
Paul Ekman is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a leading authority on emotion and nonverbal communication. He pioneered research on microexpressions and developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), used widely in psychology, law enforcement, and security.
Krista Tippett has spent decades convening conversations at the intersection of spirituality, science, and the human condition. Through her work On Being, she has asked some of the most searching questions of our time: What does it mean to be human? How do we live wisely with one another across differences? What kind of inner life makes a different outer world possible?
In this Spark Salon, Krista reflects on the discipline of listening, not as politeness but as transformation. She explores how the stories we inherit, the assumptions we carry, and the meaning we make of our experiences quietly shape how we see ourselves and one another.
This conversation is not about quick fixes. It is an invitation to slow down, to widen our moral imagination, and to examine the interior patterns that shape how we show up in a fractured world. When we shift the way we listen to ourselves and to others . . . something larger becomes possible.
For most of human history, that question lived in myth and imagination. Today, it lives in scientific inquiry.
In this Spark Salon, astrophysicist and astrobiologist Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger, Founding Director of the Carl Sagan Institute and author of Alien Earths, takes us into the search for worlds beyond our own. As scientists explore distant planets orbiting other stars, they are not just gathering data; they are interpreting it.
What counts as life?
What makes a world “habitable”?
How do we recognize something we’ve never seen before?
The search for life beyond Earth is ultimately a search for meaning. It forces us to examine the assumptions we carry about what is normal, possible, and real.
As our view of the cosmos expands, so does our perspective on ourselves. Looking outward into the vastness of space, we may discover something equally profound about how we construct our understanding of life here at home.
📣 Unlikely Collaborators GAME JAM Theme Announcement:
Make AWE playable:
Consciousness and Identity through Awe and Wonder
Build mechanics that create wonder.
Design systems that move identity.
Create moments where perception changes in real time.
🏆 $10,000 in prizes
📅 March 21 – April 7, 2026🔗 igdafoundation.org/gamejam
Sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators in collaboration with IGDA Foundation, Girls Make Games, and International Game Developers Association (IGDA®).
Sleep influences far more than how rested we feel. It shapes how we regulate emotion, connect with others, generate new ideas, and grow from our experiences. But even those who appreciate its importance and want to prioritize rest often find themselves struggling to reach their ideal sleep. Even gadgets, supplements, and sleep hygiene don’t seem to help in the face of life’s changes and challenges.
In this Spark Salon, board-certified sleep psychologist and author Dr. Jade Wu explores a new way to approach sleep that is intuitive and resilient—treating sleep as a relationship to nurture rather than an engineering problem to hack.
Drawing from neuroscience, clinical practice, and her work with high-performing professionals, she helps us understand how working with, instead of against, our unique sleep physiology is the foundation of steadier moods, clearer thinking, and recovery from challenge. This talk offers a grounded, humane perspective on sleep, one that moves beyond rigid rules or quick fixes and instead focuses on the malleable tools we can use to build a healthier, more sustainable relationship with rest.
We are surrounded by bold claims about the future—what’s coming next, what’s inevitable, what we should prepare for. But what if the most important work isn’t predicting what’s ahead but understanding how we relate to it in the first place?
In this Spark Salon, futures designer and author Nick Foster invites us to turn our attention inward. Drawing from his new book, Could Should Might Don’t, Nick helps us notice the stories we carry about the future—and the quiet assumptions, habits, and mental shortcuts that shape our sense of fear, urgency, agency, and possibility. Rather than offering forecasts or frameworks, he offers something more radical: a way to see the future as an extension of the present, shaped by human choices, values, and imagination.
Nick equips audiences to become more discerning thinkers about the future—less reactive, less dazzled by hype, and more grounded in choice and care. Through sharp provocation and real-world examples, the talk brings structure to imagination and expands perspective, helping people navigate uncertainty with greater confidence.
Yum! Brands co-founder David Novak reflects on a lifetime of movement, ambition, and leadership at the highest level. From a nomadic childhood to building some of the world’s most iconic restaurant brands, Novak shares how slowing down, listening more closely, and reexamining his assumptions ultimately reshaped his definition of success and meaning.
Good anxiety isn’t the enemy. Good anxiety is actually your built-in superpower for focus, creativity, and connection when you learn how to harness it. In this Spark Salon, renowned neuroscientist, author, and NYU Dean Dr. Wendy Suzuki invites us to rethink our entire relationship with stress by revealing the remarkable science behind this often misunderstood emotion. Rather than something to avoid, control, or suppress, anxiety becomes a source of energy and insight when we understand the deeper purpose of our brain’s stress responses.
Drawing from her book Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion, Dr. Suzuki shows us how to turn everyday stress into fuel for a stronger, more resilient, beautifully adaptive brain. By learning simple, science-backed strategies to support our brain’s natural responses, we can shift from feeling overwhelmed to feeling equipped. Ultimately, she demonstrates that anxiety isn’t something we simply have to endure. Rather, it’s something we can learn from, shape, and use to live a fuller, more grounded, and more empowered life.
In this provocative Spark Salon, neuroscientist and best-selling author Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, invites us to rethink everything we believe about perception, emotion, and reality itself. Drawing on groundbreaking neuroscience, she reveals that we don’t perceive reality in a more or less objective way., Reality exists only in relation to us. Every sound, color, and feeling is an act of construction by the brain, shaped by culture, context, and memory. Through vivid examples, from a falling tree to a racing heart, Dr. Barrett shows that signals from the world and body have no inherent meaning until the brain processes them. What we experience as reality is a story our brains are constantly writing. Ultimately, she challenges us to recognize that we are not spectators of reality but its architects, with the power to expand our agency, reshape meaning, and reimagine what it means to be fully human.
Grief transforms how we see the world, shaping identity, meaning, and connection in profound ways for all of us, especially for children and teens. In this Spark Salon, Brennan Wood, Executive Director of Dougy Center, and Dr. Donna Schuurman, Senior Director of Advocacy & Education and Executive Director Emeritus, invite us into the often-invisible narratives of kids who are grieving: how they make sense of loss, what they internalize, and the stories they carry forward. Together, they will explore the power of witnessing grief, in ourselves and others, without trying to fix it—how presence itself can be healing, and what it means to be truly “grief-informed.” Drawing from personal experience and decades of leadership in the field, Brennan and Donna will share practical reflections and hard-earned wisdom on how grief, when named and honored, can expand our understanding of resilience, empathy, and the human experience.
Neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Nicco Reggente, PhD, will explore the fascinating, science-backed connection between the heart and the brain in this mind-expanding Spark Salon. Drawing from the groundbreaking, soon-to-be-published study Heartbeat-Evoked Potentials as a Neural Marker of Meditative Depth, Nicco will unpack the ancient wisdom behind “listening to your heart” and what it actually means in modern neuroscience. You’ll discover how the body’s subtle signals, like your heartbeat, shape consciousness, mindfulness, and emotional regulation. Through the lens of interoception (our ability to sense internal bodily states), this session reveals how tuning in to the sensations of the body can help us respond more thoughtfully to life rather than react impulsively.
Nutrition therapist and author Kim Shapira, MS, RD, shares her transformative Six Simple Rules to Become Your Healthiest Self, based on her acclaimed book This Is What You're Really Hungry For. In this engaging session, Kim will introduce key principles from her Six Rules, guiding participants to reframe their relationship with food through science-backed strategies, self-awareness, and sustainable habits. Kim’s empowering and practical approach moves beyond restrictive diets, helping participants reconnect with their bodies, manage emotions in healthier ways, and build lasting behaviors that support physical and emotional well-being.
Join renowned psychologist and author Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman for a powerful Spark Salon exploring themes from his latest book, Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential. In this engaging session, Dr. Kaufman challenges the limiting beliefs and cultural narratives that keep us feeling stuck, offering fresh insight into how we can move beyond a victim mindset to reclaim our agency and become the heroes of our own lives. Drawing on cutting-edge psychology and grounded in empathy and humor, he reveals how to harness emotional intelligence, reframe past experiences, and unlock the resilience and potential within each of us.
In this session, digital workplace expert and author Alexandra Samuel, PhD, explores how AI sycophancy is changing the stories we tell about ourselves and how those stories shape our work, relationships, and well-being. Drawing from her podcast, Me+Viv, and forthcoming book, she shares insights on the intersection of AI and the new workplace, including the hidden tools that can help surface new perspectives, challenge assumptions, and navigate the risks and possibilities of emerging technology.
In a world increasingly marked by isolation and division, artist and urban designer Candy Chang offers a powerful counterpoint: We can still design spaces—physical, emotional, and communal—that foster connection, reflection, and belonging. Best known for her global Before I Die project, Chang has transformed walls, museums, neighborhoods, and even casinos into places of shared vulnerability, creativity, and hope. In this deeply moving and visually rich session, she explores how art can help us process grief, spark dialogue, and bridge the spaces between us. Drawing on a career of participatory installations across more than 70 countries, Candy shows us how to leverage the power of creativity and community to design lives, and environments, where people feel seen, supported, and at home.
Renowned mythologist and story expert John Bucher explores the extraordinary power of story as a force for transformation. Drawing from ancient myths and modern movements, John will reveal how stories have historically reshaped cultural norms, shifted collective behavior, and expanded what people believed was possible. Through compelling examples, John will illuminate how stories can be tools for liberation or limitation, depending on how they shape our internal narrative frameworks. This session will inspire participants to examine the stories they live by and consider how re-authoring those narratives can lead to personal growth, deeper empathy, and even social change.
In this energizing session, Ellen Bennett, founder of Hedley & Bennett and author of Dream First, Details Later, shares the unfiltered truth about fear, failure, and forging your own path. With no safety net and no investors, Ellen built her company from scratch by embracing action over perfection, reframing setbacks as fuel, and turning limited resources into powerful assets. A bold, personal take on pushing through fear, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome, this talk is a powerful reminder that self-belief, persistence, and momentum matter more than credentials or ideal circumstances, and, importantly, that we each have the power to drive our own story forward.
In this mind-expanding Spark Salon, storyteller, illusionist, and entrepreneur Harris III draws from his forthcoming book Start with Wow to explore a powerful shift: the transition from the Information Age to the Imagination Age. Blending magic, neuroscience, and storytelling, Harris makes the case that the future belongs not to those who begin with "how" or even "why" but to those bold enough to begin with "wow." As artificial intelligence and automation reshape the world, Harris offers a compelling framework for human relevance rooted in wonder, curiosity, and creativity. This session invites participants to reawaken their imaginations and see how awe—not algorithms—is the key to innovation, leadership, and purpose in the age ahead.
Sabrina's film is an animated conversation between her past, present, and future selves. The whole film was made using actual audio clips from her self when she was younger and the entire script was based around the limited dialog she could find on old home videos.
The film is meant to capture the vulnerable conversations that happen late at night and the thoughts that keep you up when you're anticipating something important the next day.
Entrepreneur and cultural icon Daymond John opens up about the experiences that shaped his hustle, worldview, and success. From the streets of Hollis, Queens to becoming one of Shark Tank’s most trusted investors, Daymond’s story is one of perseverance, reinvention, and purpose.
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Why are bad habits so easy to form and so hard to break? In this four-part Spark Salon series, renowned psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and mindfulness expert Dr. Jud Brewer will reveal how our brains get hooked on unhelpful behaviors like anxiety, overeating, doomscrolling, and more—and how we can disrupt these patterns by better understanding the science of habit formation. Drawing from cutting-edge research, Buddhist psychology, and clinical breakthroughs, Dr. Jud introduces a practical, compassionate approach to breaking habits, not through willpower but through awareness, curiosity, and kindness. The first session, held both in person and live-streamed from Unlikely Collaborators, will introduce Dr. Jud’s framework and set the stage for the series. The following three online-only sessions will each dive deep into one of the "three gears" of habit change, providing immersive, experiential opportunities for participants to apply these methods in real time. With interactive breakout discussions and practical tools, this series invites you to expand the walls of your Perception Box™ and build a new relationship with your mind.
Jud Brewer, MD, PhD (“Dr. Jud”) is a New York Times best-selling author and leading authority on habit change and the science of self-mastery. With over 25 years of mindfulness training combined with scientific research, he serves as the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and as a professor at Brown University. An internationally recognized psychiatrist specializing in mindfulness for addiction, Dr. Jud has developed innovative mindfulness programs—both in-person and app-based—for smoking cessation, emotional eating, and anxiety. He has investigated the neural mechanisms of mindfulness using standard and real-time fMRI and EEG neurofeedback. He has trained U.S. Olympic athletes, coaches, and foreign government ministers. His work has been featured on 60 Minutes and in TED (one of the most-viewed talks of 2016 with over 20 million views), The New York Times, Time, Forbes, BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg Businessweek, and more. Dr. Jud founded MindSciences—now part of Sharecare Inc.—to bring his discoveries directly to consumers. He also cofounded Mindshift Recovery, a nonprofit aiding those suffering from addiction. He is the author of The Craving Mind (Yale University Press, 2017), the New York Times Best Seller Unwinding Anxiety (Avery/Penguin Random House, 2021), and The Hunger Habit (Avery/Penguin Random House, 2024). For more information, visit www.drjud.com.
Learn more about Spark Salons at salons.unlikelycollaborators.com.
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For Vijay Gupta, music is not entertainment. It is a lifeline. He sees art as a way to process pain and grief, transforming them into something that heals and sustains. Described by The New Yorker as “a visionary violinist and a radical thinker in the classical music world,” Gupta creates spaces where people feel seen, connected, and whole. In his talks, he invites us to reconsider how we relate to struggle and shows how creative expression can shift the inner stories that shape our lives.
Described by The New Yorker as “a visionary violinist and a radical thinker in the classical music world,” Vijay Gupta is an internationally celebrated musician, speaker, and advocate who bridges the worlds of art, justice, and healing.
He is the founder and Artistic Director of Street Symphony, a Los Angeles–based nonprofit that has presented thousands of musical workshops and performances in shelters, county jails, state hospitals, and prisons—creating spaces of connection for people in reentry from homelessness, addiction, and incarceration. For Gupta, music is not entertainment—it’s a lifeline, a way to process pain, reclaim dignity, and transform grief into belonging.
A member of the first violin section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 12 years, Gupta has performed globally as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician and is a founding member of the Darshan Piano Trio and Tesserae Baroque. His recordings span repertoire from Bach to contemporary composers, and in 2024, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A dynamic communicator, Gupta has given three TED talks that have garnered millions of views. He has delivered keynote addresses for the American Medical Association, The Richmond Forum, The Aspen Institute, Hallmark, Accenture, the Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress, and the League of American Orchestras. In 2026, Grand Central Publishing will release his memoir, Restrung, exploring loss, resilience, and the power of music to transform the human spirit.
Learn more about Spark Salons at salons.unlikelycollaborators.com.
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From pregame traditions to team-building exercises, rituals are intertwined in every facet of our lives. Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, author of The Ritual Effect, shows that rituals play a role in our everyday lives: from building connections to helping us leave work behind at the end of the day. We can transform our unconscious habits into conscious productivity—and rise to challenges and opportunities like never before. Named one of WIRED’s 50 People Who Will Change the World, Michael demonstrates the power of rituals in our teams, our workplaces, our families, and even our marriages.
Michael Norton is a Harvard Business School professor whose work dives into the psychological effects of ritual. His groundbreaking research has proved the importance and flexibility of rituals in our everyday lives—they affect our feelings, thoughts, and even behaviors. Michael shows that rituals can bind us together as a community, which makes for stronger teams who coordinate and find meaning in their work, and explores the role that rituals play in our families, our friendships, and our marriages. Michael shows us the power of ritual in our personal lives and our workplaces. His groundbreaking book, The Ritual Effect, has been called “endlessly fascinating” (Dan Pink, Drive) and “an eye-opening window into why we swear by certain routines—and how we can build more enriching ones” (Adam Grant, Think Again).
Michael has also researched personal finance and spending—specifically, how to use money to get happier. Along with fellow professor Elizabeth Dunn, he’s the co-author of the book Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending, which proved that we’re going about spending our money all wrong. With five practical principles on how to increase happiness by changing the philosophy behind spending, Happy Money is “a rare combination of informed science writing, rollicking good fun, and practical pointers for a more flourishing and compassionate life” (David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness). His TEDx talk, which draws on this research, has been viewed over four million times.
Michael has appeared on National Public Radio, CBS, Fox, and MSNBC, cohosted Talking Green, a podcast on how people really interact with money, and written op-eds for The New York Times, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. His research has been featured in publications like Psychological Science, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Marketing Research, has been covered by The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Washington Post, and has been parodied by The Onion.
Learn more about Spark Salons at salons.unlikelycollaborators.com.
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Curious minds. Brave questions. Unexpected connections.
From myth to mindfulness to the science of awe, the Spark Salon speaker series brings together voices that will challenge, inspire, and expand your perspective.
According to neuroscientists and psychiatrists, healing begins with awareness and compassionate connection.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Wendy Suzuki, and Dr. James Doty explain how trauma and anxiety are processed through both the brain and body: trauma isn’t just what happens to us, but how our nervous system holds onto it, disrupting our ability to feel safe, connect with others, and think clearly.
Often a feeling people want to avoid, anxiety actually functions to motivate action and can be leveraged as a tool for focus and productivity. Through breathwork, mindfulness, and reshaping negative internal dialogue, we can begin to retrain the brain, regulate the body, and support a lifetime of growth.
Do Kids Think Rules Are Meant to Be Broken?
HiHo and Unlikely Collaborators teamed up to ask 100 kids just that—exploring how young minds view right, wrong, and everything in between.Inspired by the Perception Box framework.
What if the way you see the world is shaped by trauma you haven’t fully processed?
Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, explains how trauma isn't just remembered, it is physically lived and relived through the body and brain.
He describes how traditional talk therapy often fails to reach the survival centers of the brain where trauma resides. Instead, healing comes through visceral experiences that help rewire perception, build a sense of safety, and reconnect the self. Through movement, touch, psychodrama, and even psychedelics, the brain can learn to see the present as safe again.
About Bessel van der Kolk:
Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., is a pioneering psychiatrist and trauma researcher, best known for his work on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He authored the bestselling book The Body Keeps the Score, which explores how trauma reshapes both body and brain. As founder of the Trauma Research Foundation, he has led innovative treatments combining neuroscience, psychotherapy, and body-based approaches to healing trauma. His work has transformed trauma care worldwide.
“I want people to know that their lives matter and that their deaths ultimately will too.” How a journey to Cuba made Alua Arthur confront her own mortality, and ultimately led her to her career as a death doula.
Alua Arthur, a death doula, never expected to find her calling in the space between life and death. Struggling with depression and a sense of not belonging, she was searching for meaning when a chance encounter in Cuba changed everything.
After encountering death in her personal life, she began to confront her own mortality—and realize she wasn’t truly living. This moment, combined with the loss of her brother-in-law, set her on a path to becoming a death doula, someone who supports people through their final days. Now, she is an author, a (public speaker), and has dedicated her career to helping others embrace life by acknowledging its inevitable end.
About Alua Arthur:
Alua Arthur is a death doula, end-of-life care expert, and founder of Going with Grace, a nonprofit dedicated to helping individuals navigate the final chapter of their lives. After struggling with depression and identity, Alua found purpose in guiding others through the dying process with compassion and dignity. She has dedicated her life to empowering people to face death with grace, offering support to both individuals and their families.
Gracie Gold’s battle with mental health nearly ended her career—and her life. This is how she found her way back to herself.
Gracie Gold, a two-time national champion and Olympic medalist, seemed to embody perfection. But behind the medals and the headlines, her obsession with being flawless led her to a breaking point. After the 2016 World Championships, she spiraled into depression, binge-eating, and a complete loss of identity.
Feeling trapped and out of place, Gold hit rock bottom before seeking help at a treatment facility. There, she finally “met herself,” learning to let go of perfection and accepting “okay” as enough. Now, she’s a mental health advocate and a New York Times bestselling author.
About Gracie Gold:
Gracie Gold is an American figure skater known for her technical skill, artistry, and resilience. Born in 1995, she rose to prominence by winning the U.S. national title in 2014 and earning a bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in the team event. Gold also claimed silver at the 2016 World Championships, solidifying her status as one of the sport’s top competitors. After facing mental health challenges that led to a hiatus, she made a remarkable comeback, advocating for mental health awareness in athletics.
Can psychedelics under anesthesia heal trauma? What is the latest research around ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin? That’s part of what we explore this week on Science of Perception Box. Stanford anesthesiologist Dr. Boris Heifets joins Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch to discuss the latest research on the first double-blind study on Ketamine, the placebo effect, and the therapeutic value of anesthesia-induced dreams.
Dr. Boris Heifets, MD, PhD, is a board certified anesthesiologist who specializes in providing anesthesia for neurological surgery. He has practiced at Stanford since 2010. After completing residency training at Stanford, Dr. Heifets completed fellowship training in neuroanesthesiology, also at Stanford. In addition to treating patients, Dr. Heifets directs both clinical research and basic neuroscience. His research group studies how new rapid-acting psychiatric therapies like ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin produce lasting changes in nervous system function, behavior, and therapeutic outcomes.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Ever wonder why time seems to fly or crawl? From ancient philosophers to modern neuroscientists, the nature of time has captivated human curiosity. This week on Science of Perception Box, we investigate the relationships among time, memory, and perception. Dr. Davachi shares the mechanisms of how the brain encodes and retrieves memories, including why emotions and feelings play a role in our perception of time.
Lila Davachi is a prominent neuroscientist known for her research in the field of memory. She earned her PhD from Yale University in 1999 and currently holds a faculty position at Columbia University, where she leads the Davachi Memory Lab. Her work primarily focuses on understanding the processes of memory encoding, consolidation, and retrieval through behavioral and cognitive neuroscientific methods.
Dr. Davachi has made significant contributions to the understanding of how memories are formed and maintained in the brain. She has published extensively in academic journals, with her research being highly cited within the scientific community. In addition to her research, she is actively involved in teaching and mentoring students in psychology and neuroscience.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation as well as the current Meritorious Investigator and Former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app or tell a friend about the show.
When was the last time you felt absolutely mesmerized by something beautiful? Whether it’s seeing a breathtaking vista, losing yourself in a piece of music, or being in a crowd cheering for the same team, the feeling of awe can be all-encompassing and expansive. This week on Science of Perception Box, Dr. Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists and a scientific advisor behind Pixar’s Inside Out, shares how we can cultivate more awe in our life and why we need this sometimes overlooked emotion.
Dr. Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. Dr. Keltner is involved with the education of health care providers and judges and has consulted extensively for Google, Apple, and Pinterest on issues related to emotion and well-being.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School Of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for The Tiny Blue Dot Foundation as well as the current Meritorious investigator and Former President of the Allen Institute For Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Wednesday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app or tell a friend about the show.
How can parents embrace science in order to give their children the best possible environment to thrive in? Cognitive development expert Dr. Alison Gopnik joins us to discuss how navigating challenges fosters healthier adults, likening caregiving to being a gardener creating an environment where various ”plants” can thrive in different conditions. Exposing children to diverse environments helps them develop better coping mechanisms, akin to how the immune system strengthens against viruses.
Dr. Gopnik is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where she has taught since 1988. She is a world leader in cognitive science, particularly the study of children’s learning and development. She is the author of over 100 journal articles and several books including the best-selling and critically acclaimed popular books The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby, and The Gardener and the Carpenter. She is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
We long for love. We die for love. We kill for love. But why do we love? Cohosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch ask this question to Helen Fisher, PhD. who dedicated her career to researching romantic love. In this episode of Science of Perception Box, we explore how the act of being in love or out of love changes how we view ourselves and the world around us.
Dr. Fisher was a biological anthropologist, Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, and Chief Science Advisor to Match.com. She used brain scanning (fMRI) to study the neural systems associated with the sex drive, romantic love, attachment, rejection, love addiction, long-term partnership happiness, and the biological foundations of human personality. She conducted extensive research on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery, and divorce.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
What happens when an irredeemable person receives love, gratitude, and respect? After decades of drug and alcohol abuse, chef and television personality Andrew Zimmern learned firsthand.
As a teenager, Andrew Zimmern experienced deep pain when his mother became permanently disabled, and his father enforced a rule to avoid discussing feelings. Without an outlet, that pain grew into resentment and substance abuse. By 14, Zimmern was drinking daily, and his addiction followed him into adulthood, ultimately costing him his career, relationships, and home.
In January 1992, after hitting rock bottom, Zimmern attempted to take his own life. When he woke up, something shifted. For the first time, he asked for help. His friends intervened, sending him to rehab, where he began confronting his emotions and embracing a mindset of learning and giving.
Zimmern rebuilt his life, becoming a celebrated chef, author, and TV personality. Today, he credits that one vulnerable moment with saving his life and inspiring him to live with purpose and gratitude.
About Andrew Zimmern:
Andrew Zimmern is a chef, food writer, and television personality best known for hosting Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. A four-time James Beard Award winner, Zimmern has dedicated his career to exploring global cuisines and advocating for culinary diversity. Beyond television, he is a passionate philanthropist, focusing on hunger relief, food sustainability, and social justice. He founded the Andrew Zimmern Project to support food security initiatives and works with organizations like Second Harvest and Services for the Underserved. Through his work, Zimmern strives to create a more equitable food system and inspire cultural appreciation through cuisine.
The one phrase that changed Diana Nyad’s life, and set her on course to become the first person ever to conquer the 110 mile, 53 hour swim from Florida to Cuba.
At 64, Diana Nyad swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida, facing jellyfish, exhaustion, and tough ocean currents for over 53 hours. But this feat was more than just physical - it was the result of a lifetime of mental endurance.
As a young swimmer, she faced sexual abuse from her coach, which derailed her Olympic dreams and left deep emotional scars. Instead of letting those experiences hold her back, she found a way to channel that pain into something powerful. She talks about developing a "steel trap mind," using her struggles as motivation to pursue her goals.
Diana's journey goes beyond breaking records. It’s a powerful reminder of the human spirit's ability to persevere and heal, no matter the odds. Her swim from Cuba to Florida, completed on her fifth attempt, showcases her incredible willpower and serves as an inspiration to people everywhere.
About Diana Nyad: Diana Nyad is an endurance swimmer, author, and motivational speaker best known for her 2013 record-breaking swim from Cuba to Florida at age 64. Completing the 110-mile journey without a shark cage, she demonstrated unparalleled resilience and determination. Nyad is also a bestselling author, journalist, and co-founder of EverWalk, a fitness initiative promoting community through walking. Her story of perseverance, chronicled in her memoir Find a Way, continues to inspire audiences worldwide.
“I saw that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, and when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer.”
Author and public speaker Byron Katie shares how she transformed her life after discovering ‘The Work’, a method for identifying the thoughts that cause pain and suffering. By asking herself four simple yet profound questions, she found a way to recover from her agoraphobia, reunite with her family, and begin teaching others how to heal.
Katie’s strategy for ending suffering lies in asking yourself four questions about the thoughts you’re having: Is it true? Can you absolutely know it’s true? How do you react when you believe it? Who are you without the thought?
By asking yourself these questions, Katie explains how you can begin to escape the mentalities that hold you back. Her method shows us that peace doesn’t come from changing the world—it comes from changing how we see it.
About Byron Katie: Byron Katie is an author and teacher who helps people find peace by questioning their stressful thoughts. In 1986, after years of depression, she experienced a life-changing realization that led her to create The Work, a simple process of self-inquiry. Her books, like Loving What Is and A Thousand Names for Joy, have touched millions. Through workshops and talks, Katie shares a path to clarity and freedom, helping people live with more acceptance and ease.
Our cultural lenses can expand our Perception Box or contract it, keeping us closed off to new opportunities. So how do we become aware of the personal influences that shape our perceptions? In this episode of Science of Perception Box, cohosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch discuss the impact of cultural differences on identity and mindsets with guest Dr. Daphna Oyserman. Dr. Oyserman shares her insights on how small changes in context can significantly affect our mindset and choices, impacting our health and academic performance.
Dr. Daphna Oyserman is a Dean’s Professor of Psychology and Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Southern California. Dr. Oyserman received a PhD in psychology and social work from the University of Michigan and served on the faculty of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, before returning to the University of Michigan where she last held appointments as the Edwin J. Thomas Collegiate Professor of Social Work, Professor of Psychology, and Research Professor in the Institute for Social Research.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
What is the mind? Does the mind exist only in your own Perception Box, or is there a greater connection of consciousness? In this episode of Science of Perception Box, cohosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch discuss the interconnectedness of the mind, the impact of implicit memories from infancy on childhood attachment, and the wheel of awareness with Dr. Dan Siegel. Dr. Siegel shares his research and practices on healing unresolved trauma, preventing burnout for caregivers and medical professionals, and channeling the Perception Box-expanding power of empathy.
Dr. Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute and Founding Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, where he was also Co-Principal Investigator of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and Clinical Professor at the School of Medicine. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. He has authored numerous articles and books, including five New York Times bestsellers.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
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Humans have a symbiotic relationship with plants. Plants coevolved to suit our desires for nourishment, beauty, and altering consciousness. Journalist Michael Pollan has investigated the human connection to plants. This week on Science of Perception Box, Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch ask Pollan about modern trends like ultra-processed foods, industrialized agriculture, and consciousness-altering drugs from plants including caffeine, cannabis, and psychedelics.
For more than 30 years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers. In 2003, Pollan was appointed the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. In 2020, along with Dacher Keltner and others, he cofounded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, overcame a challenging upbringing marked by social isolation and family tragedy, channeling those experiences into a life defined by action, innovation, and iconoclasm. Though he’s undeniably earned his reputation as a business trailblazer, McKelvey remains uncomfortable with any attempts to mythologize his journey.
As a child, Bob Stiller felt unmoored. His mother’s death was a loss that fueled anger, insecurity and, as a teenager, lots of partying. He founded rolling paper company E-Z Wider in 1971 and, a decade later, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.
Sophia Amoruso (aka Nasty Gal) started a tiny online vintage clothing store that quickly turned into a $350 million business. Fame soon followed, but so did all of her insecurities.
Anxiety can make us feel like we’re trapped in our brain. So how do we open the door and gain freedom? This week in the inaugural episode of Science of Perception Box podcast, Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch invite Dr. Judson Brewer to delve into the roots of anxiety, its impact on our perception, and how curiosity can be the key to lasting change.
Dr. Judson Brewer studies the neural mechanisms of mindfulness. He is the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he’s also an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine. Dr. Brewer is a leading expert in the science of self-mastery and breaking habits. His books include Unwinding Anxiety, The Craving Mind, and The Hunger Habit.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Join renowned scientists Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch on the Science of Perception Box, where they delve into the Perception Box—a groundbreaking concept developed by Elizabeth R. Koch, that reveals how our beliefs, biases, and neural wiring shape our reality and define how we experience the world.
Through captivating conversations with expert guests like psychiatrist Dr. Judson Brewer, anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, and journalist Michael Pollan, the show explores how the Perception Box expands in states of awe, curiosity, and love, and contracts during fear, anxiety, or anger.
From mindfulness and romantic relationships to psychedelics and human connection, each episode uncovers transformative insights into unlocking greater awareness, fostering curiosity, and reshaping how we perceive the world.
New episodes drop every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow the journey and redefine your reality.
Don’t call yourself “a writer,” just write. Ryan Holiday on how the labels you give yourself can hold you back.
Who would you be without all the labels and identities you’ve collected over the course of your life?
Ego, titles, and societal expectations often shape who we think we are—or who we think we should be. Author, and for simplicity's sake, bookstore owner, Ryan Holiday explains the simple question “What do you do?” can turn into a trap, making us cling to roles that don’t really define us. But what happens when you let go of these labels? What if, instead of focusing on the identity of being a writer, you focused on the act of writing itself?
As Holiday got older, he learned that being busy “doing the verb” is far more valuable than obsessing over the noun. It’s easy to get caught up in trying to fit into the “right” categories and titles, but that often means copying, comparing, and losing sight of what really matters.
About Ryan Holiday: Ryan Holiday is a bestselling author, marketer, and one of today’s leading voices in modern Stoicism. He’s known for taking ancient wisdom and making it relatable and practical for everyday life. Before becoming an author, he led marketing at American Apparel. Now, he writes about strategy, self-discipline, and leadership, weaving history into real-world advice.
When a group of first responders were asked to confront the Perception Box question, "What need inside of yourself have you been neglecting?", their raw and honest responses were deeply moving and sparked profound reflection.
This series (a collaboration with Jubilee Media) is designed for communities with shared experiences to spark deeper self-understanding and connection by sharing their answers to specially selected Perception Box questions. This highlights the power of vulnerability and the importance of creating safe spaces for honest conversations.
“I feel like I had to lose my sight to fully gain my vision.” John Furniss on how becoming blind led him to drug abuse, rehab, woodworking, and finally, to a fulfilling life.
John Furniss, also known as the Blind Woodsman, opens up about his journey from a difficult past to finding peace and purpose. After losing his sight as a teenager, John struggled for years to accept his new reality, battling inner turmoil and substance abuse along the way. It wasn't until he discovered woodworking through a vocational rehab program that he found a way to channel his creativity and start healing.
Woodworking became more than just a skill for John; it allowed him to bring the designs he imagined in his mind to life. This craft also led him to meet his wife, Annie, who has been a constant source of love and support. Through his work and his relationship, John found a sense of belonging and a new way of seeing the world. He reflects on how losing his sight actually helped him gain a clearer vision of who he is and what he’s meant to do, ultimately finding peace in embracing his true self.
About John Furniss:
John Furniss, known professionally as The Blind Woodsman, is a skilled woodworker, author, and disability advocate recognized for his meticulous hand-turned creations. After losing his sight at 16, John faced significant challenges adapting to life with total blindness. In his 20s, he found his passion for woodworking through a class designed for the blind, which led to the development of his unique craft.
Today, John’s work has been featured on platforms such as Good Morning America and The Kelly Clarkson Show. He and his wife, Anni, who is also an artist, use their social media platforms to share their work and raise awareness about disability and mental health. John’s expertise in woodworking and his contributions to the art community have established him as a respected figure in his field.
Kaelynn Partlow shares her story about life with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, and how finding the right diagnosis helped her embrace her neurodivergent identity.
Kaelynn Partlow, an author, autism advocate, and registered behavior technician, shares her own experiences living with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. She talks about how these diagnoses shifted her self-perception from feeling "stupid" to understanding her unique challenges and strengths.
Kaelynn opens up about the misunderstandings neurodivergent people face and the difficulty of connecting in a world that often doesn't accommodate different ways of thinking. She also shares her fears—like wondering if her social difficulties will ever improve—and how she copes with loneliness, especially when not focused on work.
Through it all, Kaelynn emphasizes the value of recognizing your own strengths, even when it’s hard. By taking on challenges and thriving under pressure, she found new opportunities, from public speaking to creative writing. Her story shows that growth often comes from facing fears and redefining success on your own terms.
About Kaelynn Partlow:
In 2015, Kaelynn Partlow joined Project Hope Foundation as a Registered Behavior Technician. She is now a Lead Technician, providing services to middle and high-school-aged clients and contributing to staff training development.
In 2021, Kaelynn was featured on the Netflix series Love On The Spectrum. She has also been a guest on numerous national podcasts and has published several articles, offering insights from an autistic perspective.
With a large following on various social media platforms, Kaelynn uses her reach for autism advocacy, connecting with millions globally. In addition to her online work and role at Project Hope, she is an international public speaker, passionate about sharing tangible strategies for best practices when interacting with individuals on the autism spectrum
Your brain is wired to repeat the familiar. Change this wiring, and it will change your life.
Nicole Vignola, a neuroscientist and organizational psychologist, explains how deeply rooted beliefs can limit our potential and keep us trapped in patterns of thought. These perceptions, often shaped by our upbringing and environment, aren’t necessarily our own—but they can be changed.
Nicole shares how the brain’s natural biases, like negativity bias and confirmation bias, reinforce these limiting beliefs. However, with the right approach, it’s possible to reshape our mental patterns. By practicing metacognition—observing and naming our thoughts—we can start to rewire our perception and create new, empowering narratives.
Our brains are capable of change at any age. By focusing on small wins and challenging automatic thoughts, we can break free from old beliefs and begin using a mindset that better serves ourselves and our futures.
About Nicole Vignola:
Nicole Vignola is a neuroscientist, author and corporate consultant. With a BSc in Neuroscience and an MSc in Organizational Psychology, Nicole works with companies and individuals worldwide, educating them on the science of human optimisation, health and longevity, and how to enable employees to perform better in their daily lives and in turn, bring peak performance to the workplace. Recent clients include Lloyds Bank, Makers Mark and Smeg Ltd.
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Expanding your worldview starts with understanding your brain. Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman explains.
David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford and host of the Inner Cosmos podcast, explores how our brains shape the reality we experience and why we often accept our perceptions as the only truth. From a young age, we develop our understanding of the world based on limited experiences and biases, which can lead us to form narrow views about what's true.
Eagleman explains that our genetics and life experiences wire our brains in unique ways, meaning that each of us sees the world a little differently. He introduces the idea of "perceptual genomics," which looks at how slight genetic differences influence our perception of reality. He also discusses how our brains naturally create in-groups and out-groups, a tendency rooted in evolution that affects how much empathy we feel for others.
To overcome these biases, Eagleman suggests that we start by recognizing our own prejudices, understanding the tactics of dehumanization, and connecting with others through shared interests. This approach helps us appreciate the diverse realities others experience, ultimately contributing to a more empathetic and understanding society.
About David Eagleman:
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University and an internationally bestselling author. He is co-founder of two venture-backed companies, Neosensory and BrainCheck, and he also directs the Center for Science and Law, a national non-profit institute. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw.
Challenging the loneliness stigma can change your life. Here’s how to start.
From a young age, many of us are taught that being alone means something is wrong, leading to negative thought patterns that reinforce feelings of isolation. Kasley Killam, author of The Art and Science of Connection and an expert in social health, explains how these perceptions of loneliness can shape our experiences and influence our lives.
According to Killam, this stigma around loneliness can trigger a stress response in the body, affecting both mental and physical well being. However, by challenging these narratives and reminding ourselves of how much control we really have, it’s possible to redirect our mindsets. It also helps, she says, to understand the difference between individualistic and collectivist cultures, and how each one can influence the way we interpret and discuss our feelings with others.
For those who have struggled with loneliness or felt trapped in a cycle of negative thinking, this perspective can help us break free. By shifting our thought patterns, we can transform our relationships, enhance our sense of connection, and improve our overall well-being.
About Kasley Killam:
Kasley Killam is a social health expert, author, and advocate focused on strengthening connections and enhancing community well-being. With a background in behavioral science and public health from Harvard University, she is a leading voice on the impact of social relationships on mental and physical health.
As the founder of Social Health Labs, Killam collaborates with organizations to develop innovative solutions for combating loneliness and social isolation. Her work has been featured in major publications, and she is a sought-after speaker on the importance of social well-being in creating healthier, more resilient communities.
Ever wonder why your partner goes Tasmanian Devil in traffic jams while you just shrug? Or why you have such a hard time setting boundaries with parents when your sibling has no problem saying "hell no!" Everyone has something that triggers panic or turns their blood cold…and it all starts with the story you made up about yourself when you were too young to know the difference…your Perception Box Seed Story.
A group of LGBTQ+ individuals courageously answered the Perception Box question, "Who or what have you left behind on your journey to become who you are today?" Their honest and insightful responses were deeply moving.
This series (a collaboration with Jubilee Media) is designed for communities with shared experiences to spark deeper self-understanding and connection by sharing their answers to specially selected Perception Box questions. This highlights the power of vulnerability and the importance of creating safe spaces for honest conversations.
How has Kel Mitchell navigated self-doubt, isolation, and the desire to “hit the off button”? He says it’s all faith, community, and personal forgiveness.
After his debut on Nickelodeon, Kel Mitchell began a life-long career as an actor and comedian. He got married, started a family, and basked in professional success. However, behind the scenes, he faced intense personal hardships that pushed him to the brink, testing his resilience and strength in ways he never imagined.
Kel guides us through the lowest points of his life, showing us how faith in himself and his religion helped him rebuild and achieve a fulfilling existence. He reminds us that blessings can often be hidden in hardships and that mistakes play a crucial role in shaping who we are.
By expressing his pain and opening up to others about the things he was struggling with, he was able to find unity, community, and support from those who had experienced similar drawbacks. Mitchell stresses the importance of understanding others, and how deep relationships can change – and even save – lives.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
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Kel Mitchell is a two-time Emmy Award-nominated actor, producer, comedian, and youth pastor hailing from Chicago, Illinois.
Mitchell executive produced and appeared in the new iteration of the beloved Nickelodeon series All That, bringing him full circle to the original award-winning show that was his big break. All That was Nickelodeon's longest-running live-action series, with 171 episodes across ten seasons from 1994 to 2005. The franchise paved the way for a number of successful spin-offs, including Kenan & Kel, The Amanda Show, The Nick Cannon Show, and the feature-length film Good Burger, all of which cemented Mitchell's impact on pop culture.
A two-part visualization to help you gain distance from any overpowering emotion so you can respond to the true need of the moment with something closer to calm.
Harvard physician Aditi Nerukar explains how to rewire your brain’s stress response to live a more resilient life.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “pressure makes diamonds,” this video is for you.
Harvard physician Aditi Nerurkar was working 80 hours a week, and, despite what she was telling herself about resilience, the stress was taking a major toll. She explains how there are two different kinds of stress, aptly named “adaptive” and “maladaptive.” But how can you tell the difference between the two?
Dr. Nerukar explains that healthy, adaptive stress moves your life forward, while unhealthy, maladaptive stress wears you down and diminishes your productivity. When experiencing maladaptive stress, you may find yourself plummeting closer to burnout, or a complete shutdown. To combat these consequences, Dr. Neurkar offers two easily achievable methods for resetting your brain in high-stress situations.
Whether you're navigating a demanding job, balancing multiple life roles, or simply looking to improve your stress management, this information can help you thrive without compromising your well-being. Remember to slow down, take deep breaths, and regularly check in with yourself to ensure your stress remains healthy and manageable!
Neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor explains the 4 key ”characters” of the brain, and how understanding each can expand your perception of yourself, and the world, forever.
At age 37, neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke that would take her eight years to fully recover from. This is how it changed her understanding of the brain.
In this interview, Dr. Jill draws a map of the human brain, explaining how it is comprised of four distinct modules, each serving a unique role in function and personality. This combination of cognitive and emotional components gives rise to the multidimensional characters within each of us.
Are you looking to be more rational, more creative, more forgiving, or perhaps less rigid in your thinking? Dr. Jill suggests that by becoming aware of the four modules of our brains, we can consciously choose to engage specific parts. This awareness allows us to harness the true power of our brains and shape who we want to become, ultimately fostering less anxiety, more inner peace, and a vastly more purposeful life.
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