Anil Seth:
We need to realize that we're in one to start with. It's like any kind of echo chamber. You can't get out of an echo chamber unless to start with you know that you are inside such a chamber.
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 Dr. Anil Seth. As Anil explores, perception isn't passive. It's closer to a controlled hallucination shaped by prediction and interpretation. What feels real and certain isn't reality itself, but our brain's best guess, which raises a deeper question. If we're always living inside this construction, how much of what we take as truth is something we've learned to see?
Heather Berlin:
To start, we want to interrogate how we define consciousness. So Christof, how do you define consciousness?
Christof Koch:
Any subjective feeling, pain, pleasure, dreaming, imagining, dreading, hoping. Those are all conscious experiences.
Heather Berlin:
So those are just some examples, but how would you define it?
Christof Koch:
You would have to describe the universe of all possible conscious experiences.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Again, not a definition, but how about this? How about subjective first person experience? Any experience? The feeling of pain?
Christof Koch:
Yes.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. You don't need language for it.
Christof Koch:
Correct.
Heather Berlin:
You don't need a sense of self for it.
Christof Koch:
Correct.
Heather Berlin:
Meta awareness, awareness of just pure feeling, pure sensation.
Christof Koch:
You don't need to be intelligent about it.
Heather Berlin:
Nope. No intelligence. Okay. So pure subjective experience, but it's first person. Only you know you have it.
Christof Koch:
It's only you. Yes. You can lie, of course.
Heather Berlin:
Well, yeah, I could say I'm conscious. How would you know?
Christof Koch:
Well, more relevant, you can say, "I love you," but you don't love me. Or you could say, "I'm in pain," while you're not in pain, right?
Heather Berlin:
Right, right. Only you know.
Christof Koch:
Only I know.
Heather Berlin:
You can report it.
Christof Koch:
Only I have access.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. Right. You can report to other people about it, but only you actually have access to the feeling. It's interesting because to differentiate things that are happening in a very complex level unconsciously within us that are guiding our behavior versus things that we have subjective awareness of that's happening in our brain.
Christof Koch:
Most of the things in our brain are probably unconscious.
Heather Berlin:
Right.
Christof Koch:
Right?
Heather Berlin:
I agree. Yeah. Well, on that note, I'd like to welcome our guest, Anil Seth. Welcome to the show.
Anil Seth:
Hello, Heather. Hello, Christof.
Heather Berlin:
Hello.
Christof Koch:
Hello, Anil. Thanks for joining.
Anil Seth:
It's a pleasure.
Heather Berlin:
So great to have you here. Not only are you an esteemed colleague, but you're a friend of both of us for many years. So what is your definition of consciousness?
Anil Seth:
It's much the same. I think we tend to overstress definitions a bit. I mean, they usually come at the end of our scientific journey of understanding of a phenomenon, not at the start. And the utility is more to make sure we're not talking about completely different things.
So I kind of agree with Christof that the minimal definition that we're after should be just this notion of experience. There was a good example I was reading yesterday in a paper by Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at LSE, and he said, "A child throws a ball across a field and then runs after it." Now the ball just flies through the air. There is nothing it is like for the ball to fly through the air. It's just an object that follows the laws of physics. The child runs after the ball and is also, there is something it is like for the child to be the child running after the ball. That's the difference. It's any kind of experience whatsoever.
And the key thing, as Christof says, is to avoid at the beginning building in confounds with other things, whether it's language, whether it's intelligence, whether it's metacognition, and even actually whether it's first person. I think first person is dangerous here because yes, it's true that a conscious experience exists for the thing that has it, but it doesn't necessarily have to have a first person perspective like the world as seen from behind my eyes. That is also maybe a contingent feature of consciousness in humans and other animals. It's really any kind of experience whatsoever.
Heather Berlin:
So it could happen without any sort of self-awareness that you're having this conscious experience or an organism is having this experience. Do you think that you don't need self-awareness knowing that I am the organism having this experience?
Anil Seth:
That's right. I think conceptually that makes sense. We can conceive of experience without the sense of a self reflecting on that experience. But I think there's also empirical evidence that this can happen. You can talk to monks who have thousands of hours of meditative experience and they can report states of what sometimes is called pure awareness. So complete ego dissolution, experience without an experiencer. And if you don't want to spend 10,000 hours in a cave in the Himalayas, you can also access these states to some extent through pharmacology, through certain psychedelic.
Heather Berlin:
But there's still a physical being who's having the experience.
Anil Seth:
That's right. There's a physical system, which is the basis of that experience, the locus of that experience.
Christof Koch:
In fact, Thomas Metzinger calls his type of pure awareness experience also zero-person experience because he makes a point that you make, there may not be anyone behind there that's looking out at awareness. It's just a state of being aware.
Heather Berlin:
So you can have pure perception, but just because subjectively it feels like it's sort of disembodied doesn't mean that you don't need a physical organism, let's call it creating that experience.
Christof Koch:
You need a substrate. Is that what you're saying?
Heather Berlin:
Right. Yes.
Christof Koch:
A brain.
Anil Seth:
No, I think you do. I think there has to be a physical system, and this is betraying my metaphysical cards, put them on the table, of broadly speaking, materialism. So I like to try to understand. I don't know if materialism is true, but materialism is the perspective that conscious experiences are a property of physical stuff doing something or arranged in a particular way.
So the basic starting point is that yes, there has to be a physical system, a brain, maybe something else, but we know embedded brains are sufficient for this because we are all conscious. That has to be in place. But then the nature of the experience that entailed by this physical system, that's where I think we have to be very careful not to build too much in. I really like the zero person perspective because it's far too easy to assume that features of consciousness as they unfold for most of us most of the time just have to be there by definition, but they really don't.
Christof Koch:
Because they're so prevalent in us, and particularly in people who write about, who are highly literary, who think about themselves obsessively, who've write books about consciousness. They reify the self.
Anil Seth:
Yeah. And of course, a lot of the early ideas about what consciousness fundamentally is emphasize things like that, emphasize language, emphasize rational thought. I mean, this takes us back to Descartes. It's what Alison Gopnik might call professor consciousness. But there's a more basic commonality of conscious experiences. I mean, we all experience the world in some way, not exactly the same way as I'm sure we'll talk about.
But if we're trying to understand the phenomenon itself, the trick is we have to start somewhere and human experience is a stable starting point because we know we are conscious, but we must be careful of assuming that contingent features of consciousness for humans and other animals are there by definition. This is kind of easy to see for something like colors. We sort of know that people see colors differently and we can maybe appreciate that colors are not intrinsically part of the universe. But when we have something like first person perspective, because we're so familiar with it can be hard to realize that that too is part of what needs to be explained, not something that can be taken for granted.
Christof Koch:
As we know from babies or little kids, right, who don't have a lot of self.
Heather Berlin:
But even if, let's say we take the self out of it and just thinking about this pure experience, as we understand it from neuroscience, we're creating this experience. We're creating our own reality. You've called it control to hallucination. Can you talk a little bit about that? It's sort of like we're creating from the inside out versus the outside in. And how do you bring in this kind of idea of being a prediction machine?
Anil Seth:
I think it's a very old idea really about how brains and bodies and living systems interact with the world. It goes right back as really to Plato in Western philosophy, but we won't retrace the whole history. For me, a good starting point-
Christof Koch:
You mean the cave, the allegory of the-
Anil Seth:
Yeah, the allegory of the cave. So yeah, since we mentioned it, I mean in the allegory of the cave, you have prisoners who are inside this cave, they're chained up in there. All they can see are shadows that are cast on the walls of the cave by a fire. And for the prisoners in the cave, these shadows are taken to be reality because that's all they have access to. In fact, the real world is outside the cave. So one intuition towards the ideas of perceptions of controlled hallucination is that instead of prisoners trapped inside a cave, think of your own brain trapped inside the cave, the bony vault of the skull, trying to figure out what's happening in the world.
Instead of shadows cast by firelight, we have the electrical chemical signals produced by our senses. And the brain interprets these in various ways. And a picture, a world appears. Is that the same thing as objective reality? No, there's a level of indirectness there. And I think it's a similar indirectness to prisoners within the cave. The only difference is the prisoners are people with brains and perceptual systems themselves. When it comes to our conscious experience, there are no little people inside the skull trying to figure out what's going on.
Christof Koch:
No homunculus.
Anil Seth:
Yeah, no homunculus. The experience of being a self is part of the interpretation, part of the controlled hallucination itself. There's no mini me inside my head that's trying to figure out what's going on.
Heather Berlin:
But that's the only access we have given these kind of, in some ways, feeble pieces of matter that we are given to construct our sense of what's out there with, but we're so fooled by it. Most of the day we're thinking what we are perceiving is reality.
Anil Seth:
Well, for good reason. I mean, perception, like everything in else, biology is shaped by evolution. And it wouldn't be very useful if evolution had designed our brains so that we perceived the world to be a kind of construction. I think perceptual systems generally work when we experience things as if they exist because our perceptual experiences are not unrelated to what's that. They're very closely related towards that.
Heather Berlin:
So it's almost like an adaptive illusion that we have that our perception is reality.
Anil Seth:
That's right. I'm always a little careful with illusion because it sort of suggests that there would be a better way, a more veridical way of experiencing things. I think it's actually very good for us that we experience things as if they exist because there is a very tight relationship. If a car is coming across the road, then there is really something going on in physical reality that my brain is keeping track of. But the way I experience the car coming and the road and everything else going on, that's a construction. That's not a direct importing of objective reality into subjective experience.
Christof Koch:
So that's what we call the perception box. And of course we are never totally aware of things, of the true nature of things.
Anil Seth:
This is very clear when we do science because we know that we don't have perceptual access to things. So we need all these complex instruments. We need telescopes, we need microscopes and so on.
Christof Koch:
I mean even in vision, we only have a tiny access to the total spectrum. We don't see UV and above. We don't see an IR and below. And some of us don't even see all with the normal colors.
Anil Seth:
That's right. And I think vision is such a good place to start, although it's not everything as some consciousness researchers pretend.
Christof Koch:
But it's a lot.
Anil Seth:
It's quite a lot. But it's not that what we perceive is this restricted subset of objective reality. So you're absolutely right to point out that the cells in our retinas are sensitive to, for most of us, three wavelengths. And that thin slice of reality, if we're only thinking about electromagnetic radiation now, that thin slice of reality is where we live.
But our visual experience isn't just sort of three things, three colors. We experience millions of distinctive colors. This, I think, makes the point nicely that our conscious experience, our controlled hallucination is simultaneously less than what's really there, less than the thing itself, because we only sample a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. But it's also more than what's there because we experience millions of colors rather than three wavelengths, which are not in themselves colored. They're just different wavelengths of radiation.
Christof Koch:
Yeah, because we keep on having to emphasize that there is no color out there in the world. What there are photons with a specific wavelength that get reflected into my eyes that then can passes in different bands that my brain then constructs to call it white, right?
Anil Seth:
Correct.
Christof Koch:
It's a construction of our brain.
Anil Seth:
Yeah. And this is why I think the language of illusion can sometimes mislead us because if you take that book outside and now we're inside, the ambient light has a particular color balance. The people videoing this notice very well, that's part of the job. If you go outside, it's a sunny day, there'll be a lot of bluish ambient light, yet that cover of the book will still look white. So you could say that our visual system is doing a terrible job because the light coming into our eyes has changed from the book has changed, but yet we still see it to be the same color.
Heather Berlin:
It's amazing though, because it adapts to keep consistency.
Christof Koch:
Yes.
Anil Seth:
That's right.
Heather Berlin:
The color of the book doesn't change depending on the lighting. But then there's these sort of cracks in the matrix like with the dress, where it was ambiguous and then some people saw it as black and blue, and others as white and gold because some corrected for blue light, another corrected for yellow light. So there are these subtleties where we find the crack in the matrix, but overall, our brains do an amazing job of keeping consistent. I would say our brains evolved for survival, not for truth. But given that, as a society, we run up against problems. Can we ever actually get to truth and reality given these cognitive biases that we have?
Anil Seth:
There's just no way that our perceptual systems will access reality as it is. I mean, no matter how hard we try, we can't-
Heather Berlin:
Well, maybe we think we need things in place to work against our natural inclinations or biases to get to some other objective reality.
Anil Seth:
Maybe the way towards that, and this is why I like the concept of perception box is very consonant with the general view that I've been working with for years, is that we need to realize that we're in one to start with. It's like any kind of echo chamber. You can't get out of an echo chamber unless to start with you know that you are inside such a chamber. And just recognizing that the world that we experience, the world that appears for us is not the world as it is and that it might appear differently, but not arbitrarily differently for each of us.
Christof Koch:
Okay. So when it comes to social events, which the perception bark also includes, it's not just the reality, the physical reality as it were what colors is, but also who caused what, who's responsible for what? Then it becomes incredibly important. It is a well-posed question, although the methods we have are very weak to try to get at what actually happened at any one particular historical or social event.
Anil Seth:
That's right. I think that in this case, the example of perception can be very useful because you're completely right that looking at things that happen in society, so these kinds of beliefs about social events or historical events that are very influenced by the media that we access and so on, but people can be as convinced that their version of events is the right one in just the same way that those people who saw the dress as white and gold are convinced that they're right and they can't imagine how it's possible for other people to experience something differently.
This is why things like the dress and other studies of perception are so useful because it's a relatively unthreatening context. And I think if you can have people realize that, oh look, even for something as simple and as politically non-threatening as a dress can engender these two very different experiences, I think that can help cultivate a bit of humility for these larger questions where the entrenched differences of opinion really do matter.
Heather Berlin:
But there's still a difference between differences at the perceptual level and differences at the sort of higher, let's say, cognitive level of belief systems, right?
Christof Koch:
I think it's a smooth transition. Yeah, clearly there's a difference, but it's still a perception. Who I believe is responsible and why and what feelings I have about that.
Heather Berlin:
It makes you question your own sort of beliefs at some level.
Christof Koch:
We all know from our own experience, from clinical experience that people who hallucinate. How do you think about when we all believe, well, he is totally hallucinating? What does it mean in your terms?
Anil Seth:
Just as I like to describe perception as a controlled hallucination, we can think about hallucination as a kind of uncontrolled form of perception, uncontrolled by causes in the real world. So just as you said, there's a continuum from perception to belief. I think there's also a continuum of perception that's very tightly controlled by things in the environment, whether it's how a book reflects light or some other feature of objective reality. And to what extent are perceptual inferences become less controlled by these causes?
And as you move along that scale, you get closer to what colloquially we call hallucination. People like Chris Frith long ago started to talk about hallucination this way as what happens when our perceptual best guesses lose their grip on reality. You can think of it in a way as a sort of extension of a phenomenon we're all familiar with, which is pareidolia. And we've all had this experience of walking out on a day when there's fluffy clouds. And if you look at clouds in the sky, sometimes you can see faces in these clouds.
Christof Koch:
Dogs.
Anil Seth:
We all see dogs. Most of us. Some people see cats, other people see faces.
Heather Berlin:
They're Usually informed by our biases and our expectations.
Anil Seth:
And the phenomenology of this, I think, is very interesting because we know there's no face there, but what we're experiencing is some kind of statistical shadow of a face, an echo of a perceptual prediction that doesn't quite grip. And you can imagine if you turn a dial on that further and further, then you actually see faces in clouds.
And if you turn it even further, then not only do people see faces, but they believe the faces are actually there. And I think a lot of cases of hallucination lie along the spectrum and can be usefully differentiated. And given actually mechanistic basis, we can start to think about what's happening in the brain that accounts for different kinds of hallucinations. And this is something we've been doing in my group. We've been trying to build computational models of visual hallucinations in different conditions in Parkinson's disease, in psychedelics, in another condition, Charles Bonnet syndrome.
Heather Berlin:
Not speaking from experience, but if anybody has ever had a psychedelic experience, it really does look like that, what you've simulated in many ways of what it is in some ways to be-
Anil Seth:
In some ways. I wouldn't over-egg the similarity, but I think it certainly captures a feature of some psychedelic experiences which have this pareidolic quality that we see patterns in things. The face in the cloud becomes Oprah Winfrey marching across the sky followed by a load of dinosaurs, that kind of thing.
Heather Berlin:
Right. Right. Your book talks a lot about the self. What is the self? Is there a self? What is it? How do you define it?
Anil Seth:
This is another area where I think we get misled by confusing how things seem with how things are. So in perception in general, it seems as though the world is just there and we open our eyes and have direct access to it as we've just been discussing. How things are is likely very different. It seems as though the self is this essence of you or me that's somewhere maybe in the head that is receiving all these perceptions and then figuring out what to do next and then making some action and-
Christof Koch:
Here. It's exactly here.
Anil Seth:
Yeah, it's there. It's there. And it's the locus of all your memories, all your plans, all your experiences.
Christof Koch:
Your will. Your control.
Anil Seth:
Your emotions, the source of your agency, the author of your thoughts. All of these things bundle together somewhere as an essence of you in there that maybe, depending on your religious beliefs, will survive the death of your brain and reappear in another body somewhere. That's the manifest image of the self, what the self seems like for most of us most of the time.
But I think it's a bit like color. There's a utility in the brain creating an experience of the self that has this feeling of being real, of being in essence, being a stable quality. But it doesn't mean that that's actually what's going on at all. I think the self is a kind of perception. It's not the thing that does the perceiving. It's a bundle of perceptual inferences. But instead of being about how light bounces off a book, the self for me anyway, starts with the body. So the more basic levels of self are things like emotion, mood, which are well understood. And I think this is a tradition in psychology going hundreds of years back, that emotions are well understood as perceptions of changes in the physiological condition of the body. You say perception is for survival and this is nowhere more clear in how we experience the state of our own living bodies. We perceive the body as an object in the world. I know this is my hand. I experience it as my hand. That's also a perceptual inference.
Christof Koch:
So I'm afraid because I see myself running and I sweat and my blood pressure goes up. And then I have the emotion of fear.
Anil Seth:
Right. Right. So an emotion is a response to the change in physiological condition. Actually, it can be a very closely coupled thing. Can also generate those changes. I think the really challenging thing about the self is you can, just like when you start with color and then you try and go to more challenging aspects of our experience of the world outside, like the flow of time or the structure of space around us, which seem harder to account for, but I think you still can. It's the same with the self.
The self as an object in the world, you might say, okay, that I can get on board with as the brain making a best guess. But what about free will? What about mood? What about my sense of personal identity? Why am I Anil and not Heather or Christof? Those I think are more challenging, but I do also think they can be accounted for by the same story.
Christof Koch:
So in principle, it's another form of controlled hallucination.
Anil Seth:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
It's another perception. And it-
Christof Koch:
It's not an illusion though, right? I mean, it's much an illusion as seeing color is.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. Yes.
Anil Seth:
Exactly. This is why I got a bit grumpy when you said illusion to start with, because illusion sort of suggests that we would do better if we saw things or experienced things more accurately. And people say, many people have said the self is an illusion. And I probably said it, you'll probably point out that I'm contradicting myself now. But today, because the self is not one thing. So me now doesn't have to agree with the me that wrote the book. That's correct. I think illusion is the wrong word for it. The parallel with color is very useful. The experience of self is a very adaptive form of perception that helps the organism get along.
Heather Berlin:
It's a very creative perception that the brain can put together such a thing that is consistent. It's also built up on your memories. When people lose their memories, they lose their sense of self and their identity.
Anil Seth:
Well, not all of it. I mean, you'll know this better than either of us working with patients all the time as you do, but there are famous examples of people who have complete loss of autobiographical memory, famous neurological patients.
Christof Koch:
Clive Wearing.
Anil Seth:
Clive Wearing.
Heather Berlin:
Wearing, yes.
Anil Seth:
I talk about him in the book, other ones. HM is another good example. Yes, they lose an aspect of self, but what's interesting, at least to me, is that most aspects of their selfhood are preserved. Their first person perspective on the world is preserved. Their emotions are preserved. They typically don't have an issue with knowing what their body is and is not. It's just this selective disruption of self as personal identity. But that's only one part of what a human self is.
Christof Koch:
You discuss this remarkable case in this book of Clive Wearing, this music conductor in England who had an encephalitis and then has one of the deepest, most profound amnesia. He doesn't remember anything going back and going forward. Yet what's so remarkable, and you point this out, when he meets his wife who he married just a year before he had the encephalitis, he's overwhelmed by enthusiasm and by love for her. So his love is somehow still has survived his loss of his personal-
Heather Berlin:
The other thing is that-
Christof Koch:
Quite remarkable.
Heather Berlin:
It's an amazing case because it's like you keep pressing the refresh button. So he keeps saying, he writes this journal, "I am just now first conscious for the very first time." And then a minute later, "I'm now just first conscious." Because he doesn't have that consistency of continuity.
Christof Koch:
The continuity, yeah.
Heather Berlin:
The continuity. The other thing that's really interesting about that case is that because these subcortical parts of the brain, like the basal ganglion and parts that had to do with sort of muscle memory, are still intact. So he could play, if he started to play a piece, he could suddenly get and play the entire piece.
Christof Koch:
Or conduct. Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
Yeah.
Anil Seth:
The ability to think of ourselves in the future is an enormously adaptive feature. And to think of that future in terms of a continuity of self is very, very adaptive. But it's also come with the cost that we can conceive of our own death. And that's not something that I doubt evolution selected for our ability to conceive our own death, but it did select for our ability to plan for the future organized around ourself. So yeah, it's a price we pay. There's a trade-off.
Heather Berlin:
I mean, the whole reason I became a neuroscientist to study conscious is because I want to figure out how to continue my consciousness after I don't have a body.
Christof Koch:
Uploading.
Anil Seth:
Really?
Heather Berlin:
Yes, because of a fear of death.
Anil Seth:
Okay. Well, I think that it's the oldest challenge in the book. Whether it's religion or the new religion of tech and mind uploading, ultimately there's a lot of human motivation in trying to deal with the prospect of death. And I'm not saying that I've got my head around it at all. Hopefully it's still a long way away, but I rather suspect the best strategy instead of trying to live forever, whether it's in a biological form or in some silicon cloud, is actually to just get our heads around that not existing is okay.
Heather Berlin:
No. I'm not okay with-
Christof Koch:
And being in the here. So this is where the self can also be dysfunctional because as you said, we always project ourselves in the future. Either we live in the past, what I should have said and why did she do this to me? Or we project ourselves in the future. And what Buddhism tells us that, by the way, of course, also denials the reality of self as usually constructed, that is really important Welcome to be in the here and now, not in the past, not in the future, but now.
Heather Berlin:
All we have is this moment. I think my fear of death has ultimately led me to this concept of really appreciating and being aware of every moment of the taste of food and the here and now. Being present, it's actually made me much more present.
Anil Seth:
While still planning for the future a little bit.
Heather Berlin:
A little bit. A little bit, yes.
Anil Seth:
I mean, this is the thing. The present is a nice place to visit, but it's not a great place to hang out forever. We do still need to worry about the future.
Heather Berlin:
True.
Anil Seth:
So there is a lot of resonance with Buddhism actually in all of these views about perception as construction, but especially the nature of the self. There's so many resonances. I think the challenge is in accepting and learning from those resonances, but in the real world, we can't live completely in the present all the time.
Heather Berlin:
It's a balance.
Anil Seth:
We can appreciate it.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. I mean, if you sit there meditating all day, you'll go hungry, you won't have water. I mean, so there is a balance.
Christof Koch:
But there is still books, I can show you if invited many of these famous monk, you still have to plan a year ahead to get them to come to talk.
Anil Seth:
Exactly. Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
So speaking of the future, I did want to get into just finally AI and the future. Now you've mentioned this mind uploading. I don't think that that is a way to survive death or to keep conscious, because even if you can copy every connection in my brain and you put it in silicon, it might have consciousness, like a neuromorphic computer. It's based on my brain, but it wouldn't be me. It would be a different thing or else I'd suddenly be uploaded into it. If you created it right now based on my brain, it would be something else maybe sort of like me, but it wouldn't be this consciousness, right?
Anil Seth:
What do you mean by this consciousness?
Heather Berlin:
The one that's in this physical, biological. Well, let me ask you a question.
Anil Seth:
But why would that matter?
Heather Berlin:
Does it matter? Do you think that the substrate that consciousness is instantiated in matters?
Anil Seth:
I want to be careful to pull apart two things.
Christof Koch:
Those are two separate questions.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Two separate questions.
Anil Seth:
The first one is really, it's the subject of a very famous thought experiment by Derek Parfit, the teletransporter thought experiment. So forget about uploading to a computer at the moment. Just imagine that I have the technology to recreate the exact physical structure of your brain somewhere else, maybe in London.
Christof Koch:
Star Trek. Beam me up.
Anil Seth:
Yeah, it's that. So now we don't have to worry about whether computers are sufficiently similar. I'm going to recreate you down to the molecular atomic quantum level.
Heather Berlin:
Okay.
Anil Seth:
Now, it would be very hard to deny that if I do that, the Heather that's recreated somewhere else, I mean that Heather will be you. There'll be something there that will experience being Heather Berlin, that will have the same memories, the same plans for the future. Might be slightly surprised to be in London rather than New York. So you'll start to diverge. But at the moment of creation, there'll be another Heather that will feel exactly like you. And so the question is, which is the real Heather? And the answer is, well, they're both real Heathers.
Christof Koch:
Real.
Anil Seth:
And neither are the real Heather. It's a process which has diverged. And as time goes by, the Heathers will diverge. So that's one of the topics. The other one is I think the question that's facing us with much more urgency now, because we can't build these teletransporters, but people are already wondering whether artificial intelligence systems, AIs can be not only smart, but also conscious. And if that's the case, if consciousness is the kind of thing that AI is made out of silicon can have, one of the consequences of that is the idea of mind uploading, even though it's still not practical now, becomes at least conceptually possible.
Christof Koch:
Anil, can you distinguish for the audience between intelligence and consciousness?
Anil Seth:
Very different things. I mean, I think this is a super important distinction. I think we probably all on board with making this distinction. One of the problems in all these debates about AI is that we tend to conflate the two concepts. Intelligence is very broadly about doing the right thing at the right time. Not the morally right thing, but the appropriate thing to fulfill a goal. So it's doing, it's behaving. It's doing, it's behaving, it's external behavior manifest in some way solving a problem. That's intelligence. Consciousness is fundamentally about being.
I think our colleague and friend Giulio Tononi puts it like this, consciousness going back right to the beginning of our conversation is any kind of experience at all. There are many ways to be conscious without doing anything especially smart at the time. We already distinguished between consciousness and language and so on. So they are fundamentally different things. Now that doesn't mean that unrelated in living systems, evolved systems, it looks like there's a very close relationship. To have certain kinds of conscious experience, you need to have certain kinds of cognitive capability. I can't experience regret unless I have the cognitive infrastructure to imagine alternative actions.
Christof Koch:
But they're also much more basic like toothache.
Anil Seth:
Yeah.
Christof Koch:
When you have a God awful toothache, there's nothing smart or intelligent about a really molar pounding away, yet it fills your entire mental life.
Anil Seth:
Absolutely. Yeah, so they're very different. So the one problem is if we think that consciousness and intelligence are somehow so intimately bound that you can't have one with the other, then it becomes natural to think that as AI systems get smarter, that at some point the inner lights come on and they become conscious as well. But I think that's an insight into our own psychological biases and not an insight into things as they are.
Heather Berlin:
We anthropomorphize, right? And because it acts and sounds as if it's conscious, we assume it is, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is. I've used this term like I'm a bio-chauvinist. You don't like this term because it has a negative connotation, but I think we're on the same page of that there's something in particular about being a biological being embodied that is tied in with being conscious. Do you think that these AI systems could be conscious? What would it take to get them to be conscious?
Anil Seth:
So I share with you, not the chauvinism. I don't like chauvinism because it sort of connects a belief that you have that you don't have a good reason for having.
Heather Berlin:
What did you call it? Biological naturalism?
Anil Seth:
The term in philosophy that it's been around for a long time. I think John Searle was the person who first used it in the sense that we now think of it as biological naturalism. And this is the claim, and it's only a claim that properties of living systems are necessary, but may not be sufficient for consciousness. And I do think this really is kind of key question for our time because the metaphor of the brain as a computer has been so powerful, so influential, and it's led to a lot of insights. All models can be useful, but it's become somehow rarefied. So many people think implicitly or explicitly that the computer is not only a good model for aspects of the brain, but that the brain literally is a computer.
Christof Koch:
Particularly of young people have these very emotional, intimate relationships, whether that's with a robotic therapist, ChatGPT, or with romantic friends. There are all these services where you can also subscribe where in some sense you say it doesn't matter whether academics like us discuss are they really conscious or not. They behave increasingly, they interact with them and they increasingly, they say it's easier to interact with my ChatGPT therapist than with an actual person. I have more friends in my ChatGPT or club or whatever friend. He understands me better than any human does.
Anil Seth:
Yeah. So Heather will be out of a job soon.
Heather Berlin:
That's dangerous. Not really, because I mean, I'm not even getting into it, but there's a lot of problems with relying on these AI systems for psychological health. They don't feel. They might give you-
Anil Seth:
That's the question, right?
Heather Berlin:
Well-
Christof Koch:
Do they or do they not?
Heather Berlin:
They could give you the most rational ... I'll just give you one very quick example. I have a patient, he's a perfectionist and wants to get straight A's, whatever. So he said, "I asked ChatGPT what should be my schedule, my study schedule to be most efficient to do well on my finals?" And it gave this ridiculous schedule. And then he was so anxious if he diverged from that.
But the problem, it didn't take into account that a human brain needs rest for psychological wellbeing. And you know what? Some days you have really good days and some days you wake up, you don't feel so good, you're not as sharp, you can't do as much. So the most rational, logical schedule of studying doesn't make sense with a human feeling-
Christof Koch:
Oh, so it's a bad therapist.
Heather Berlin:
Maybe you are hungover from the night before.
Christof Koch:
So it's a bad therapist, but the fact is more and more people are using it as therapists.
Heather Berlin:
It can be dangerous.
Anil Seth:
You're absolutely right. But I think what this highlights is the importance of separating two issues. So one issue is very hard to decide on, which is, is it even possible that AI systems could be conscious? Now my suspicion is not, and that the more we realize the differences between brains and computers, you pointed out that if you look at a brain, you don't see anything like the clean separation between hardware and software that's absolutely foundational to how computers work. So my suspicion is that in fact, you won't find consciousness as a point in the space of possibility for silicon-based AI.
But we don't know for sure, and opinions can reasonably differ on this. But then that's very separate from this other problem that regardless of what academics natter on about, people will project consciousness into these things and they have a real social impact. There's a design question here. Regardless of the actual facts of the matter, should we be developing systems that encourage their users to believe that they are conscious? Now, it's like all such questions, it's not super simple. There may be some use cases where it's no bad thing. It encourages a fluency of interaction. But I think as an overall strategy, it's very, very dangerous.
Christof Koch:
It may not matter. Do you remember? Well, you talk about the movie Ex Machina, right? Where the idea is, you know this robot looks like a robot. She has a beautiful face, but her body's a robotic body, but it still doesn't matter, right?
Heather Berlin:
Well, just like the illusion-
Christof Koch:
She still convinces.
Heather Berlin:
Listen, just like the illusion we have with there's two different colored gray squares on this checkerboard illusion, and we see them as different, but they're exactly the same.
Christof Koch:
That's right. Yep.
Heather Berlin:
Even though you know consciously that they are the same, you can't get over your illusion.
Christof Koch:
And so you still fall in love.
Heather Berlin:
So you still fall in love.
At the end of every episode, we ask a Perception Box question of our guests. This week, Christof is going to ask the question of us. So what is the question?
Christof Koch:
Anil and Heather, so that's a skill that we all have that we learn early on called mind reading. So I infer that maybe because the way you look at me or smile at me when I say something, you like me and you think I'm a reasonable person to converse with. Have there been noticeable situation where you just totally misread in some dramatic way what you assumed another person for good or for bad had assumed about you? Because this happens very often that we assume she probably thinks this about me, but in fact, she thinks the very opposite.
Anil Seth:
And maybe happening right now, such an example.
Christof Koch:
Oh, that's very meta. That's very she-she.
Heather Berlin:
You thought I liked you, Christof, this whole time.
Christof Koch:
Yes. Little do you know.
Anil Seth:
It is a tough one. It's a tough one. I think it's very plausible. I'm trying to think of examples which remain-
Christof Koch:
I mean, examples that I have, which we all must have, someone doesn't, you text and they don't text for half an hour, and then you go into these loops. Oh, they don't like me anymore. Oh, there's something happened. They've cut me off. I mean, all sorts of things.
Anil Seth:
I'll tell you, it's not a specific individual because I wouldn't want to do that, but I had the kind of experience like this when I moved to California in the early 2000s. And I remember living there and going shopping, and everyone wishes you a lovely day and asks you what plans you have for the weekend. And as a Brit, I found this extremely awkward. I'm like, "I don't know. How are you? I'm fine." And I was trying to figure out what they really meant. And it's not that I completely misread them. It's just that I didn't really know. In fact, I assumed they didn't really care, and it was just something that Californians said.
Christof Koch:
A habit.
Anil Seth:
As a habit, just as a complete habit. But the longer I lived there, I realized that they kind of do care. It's not that they really care. You don't need to tell them all the details of what you have in mind, but it's not that they don't care. So I think that was a calibration towards a middle ground, which is one reason I'm very fond of California. I don't know about New York though. I don't think they care so much. Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
We are just more pragmatic. If you ask for help, we'll give it to you. We're kind. We're just not going to waste our time with, how are you doing? We don't have enough time to spare, but that doesn't mean you don't care.
Christof Koch:
I'm always surprised how polite people are in New York. Just walking around, they hold open the door and say thank you and please. It surprises me because the image of New York is they're all hustle.
Heather Berlin:
No. We don't want to waste time, but that doesn't mean that we're not kind. We're just efficient. It makes sense. Trust me. So, thank you. It's been a pleasure to have you, as always. Great conversation.
Anil Seth:
Thank you.
Christof Koch:
Thank you, Anil.
Anil Seth:
Thanks, Christof.
Christof Koch:
It was enjoyable.
Heather Berlin:
I want to thank Anil Seth for joining us today. 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 guest, 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 partnership with Pod People. I'm Dr. Heather Berlin.
Christof Koch:
And I'm Dr. Christof Koch. Thank you.
Your Brain Lies to You (And That's a Good Thing): Anil Seth on Consciousness
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
Anil Seth:
We need to realize that we're in one to start with. It's like any kind of echo chamber. You can't get out of an echo chamber unless to start with you know that you are inside such a chamber.
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 Dr. Anil Seth. As Anil explores, perception isn't passive. It's closer to a controlled hallucination shaped by prediction and interpretation. What feels real and certain isn't reality itself, but our brain's best guess, which raises a deeper question. If we're always living inside this construction, how much of what we take as truth is something we've learned to see?
Heather Berlin:
To start, we want to interrogate how we define consciousness. So Christof, how do you define consciousness?
Christof Koch:
Any subjective feeling, pain, pleasure, dreaming, imagining, dreading, hoping. Those are all conscious experiences.
Heather Berlin:
So those are just some examples, but how would you define it?
Christof Koch:
You would have to describe the universe of all possible conscious experiences.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Again, not a definition, but how about this? How about subjective first person experience? Any experience? The feeling of pain?
Christof Koch:
Yes.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. You don't need language for it.
Christof Koch:
Correct.
Heather Berlin:
You don't need a sense of self for it.
Christof Koch:
Correct.
Heather Berlin:
Meta awareness, awareness of just pure feeling, pure sensation.
Christof Koch:
You don't need to be intelligent about it.
Heather Berlin:
Nope. No intelligence. Okay. So pure subjective experience, but it's first person. Only you know you have it.
Christof Koch:
It's only you. Yes. You can lie, of course.
Heather Berlin:
Well, yeah, I could say I'm conscious. How would you know?
Christof Koch:
Well, more relevant, you can say, "I love you," but you don't love me. Or you could say, "I'm in pain," while you're not in pain, right?
Heather Berlin:
Right, right. Only you know.
Christof Koch:
Only I know.
Heather Berlin:
You can report it.
Christof Koch:
Only I have access.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. Right. You can report to other people about it, but only you actually have access to the feeling. It's interesting because to differentiate things that are happening in a very complex level unconsciously within us that are guiding our behavior versus things that we have subjective awareness of that's happening in our brain.
Christof Koch:
Most of the things in our brain are probably unconscious.
Heather Berlin:
Right.
Christof Koch:
Right?
Heather Berlin:
I agree. Yeah. Well, on that note, I'd like to welcome our guest, Anil Seth. Welcome to the show.
Anil Seth:
Hello, Heather. Hello, Christof.
Heather Berlin:
Hello.
Christof Koch:
Hello, Anil. Thanks for joining.
Anil Seth:
It's a pleasure.
Heather Berlin:
So great to have you here. Not only are you an esteemed colleague, but you're a friend of both of us for many years. So what is your definition of consciousness?
Anil Seth:
It's much the same. I think we tend to overstress definitions a bit. I mean, they usually come at the end of our scientific journey of understanding of a phenomenon, not at the start. And the utility is more to make sure we're not talking about completely different things.
So I kind of agree with Christof that the minimal definition that we're after should be just this notion of experience. There was a good example I was reading yesterday in a paper by Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at LSE, and he said, "A child throws a ball across a field and then runs after it." Now the ball just flies through the air. There is nothing it is like for the ball to fly through the air. It's just an object that follows the laws of physics. The child runs after the ball and is also, there is something it is like for the child to be the child running after the ball. That's the difference. It's any kind of experience whatsoever.
And the key thing, as Christof says, is to avoid at the beginning building in confounds with other things, whether it's language, whether it's intelligence, whether it's metacognition, and even actually whether it's first person. I think first person is dangerous here because yes, it's true that a conscious experience exists for the thing that has it, but it doesn't necessarily have to have a first person perspective like the world as seen from behind my eyes. That is also maybe a contingent feature of consciousness in humans and other animals. It's really any kind of experience whatsoever.
Heather Berlin:
So it could happen without any sort of self-awareness that you're having this conscious experience or an organism is having this experience. Do you think that you don't need self-awareness knowing that I am the organism having this experience?
Anil Seth:
That's right. I think conceptually that makes sense. We can conceive of experience without the sense of a self reflecting on that experience. But I think there's also empirical evidence that this can happen. You can talk to monks who have thousands of hours of meditative experience and they can report states of what sometimes is called pure awareness. So complete ego dissolution, experience without an experiencer. And if you don't want to spend 10,000 hours in a cave in the Himalayas, you can also access these states to some extent through pharmacology, through certain psychedelic.
Heather Berlin:
But there's still a physical being who's having the experience.
Anil Seth:
That's right. There's a physical system, which is the basis of that experience, the locus of that experience.
Christof Koch:
In fact, Thomas Metzinger calls his type of pure awareness experience also zero-person experience because he makes a point that you make, there may not be anyone behind there that's looking out at awareness. It's just a state of being aware.
Heather Berlin:
So you can have pure perception, but just because subjectively it feels like it's sort of disembodied doesn't mean that you don't need a physical organism, let's call it creating that experience.
Christof Koch:
You need a substrate. Is that what you're saying?
Heather Berlin:
Right. Yes.
Christof Koch:
A brain.
Anil Seth:
No, I think you do. I think there has to be a physical system, and this is betraying my metaphysical cards, put them on the table, of broadly speaking, materialism. So I like to try to understand. I don't know if materialism is true, but materialism is the perspective that conscious experiences are a property of physical stuff doing something or arranged in a particular way.
So the basic starting point is that yes, there has to be a physical system, a brain, maybe something else, but we know embedded brains are sufficient for this because we are all conscious. That has to be in place. But then the nature of the experience that entailed by this physical system, that's where I think we have to be very careful not to build too much in. I really like the zero person perspective because it's far too easy to assume that features of consciousness as they unfold for most of us most of the time just have to be there by definition, but they really don't.
Christof Koch:
Because they're so prevalent in us, and particularly in people who write about, who are highly literary, who think about themselves obsessively, who've write books about consciousness. They reify the self.
Anil Seth:
Yeah. And of course, a lot of the early ideas about what consciousness fundamentally is emphasize things like that, emphasize language, emphasize rational thought. I mean, this takes us back to Descartes. It's what Alison Gopnik might call professor consciousness. But there's a more basic commonality of conscious experiences. I mean, we all experience the world in some way, not exactly the same way as I'm sure we'll talk about.
But if we're trying to understand the phenomenon itself, the trick is we have to start somewhere and human experience is a stable starting point because we know we are conscious, but we must be careful of assuming that contingent features of consciousness for humans and other animals are there by definition. This is kind of easy to see for something like colors. We sort of know that people see colors differently and we can maybe appreciate that colors are not intrinsically part of the universe. But when we have something like first person perspective, because we're so familiar with it can be hard to realize that that too is part of what needs to be explained, not something that can be taken for granted.
Christof Koch:
As we know from babies or little kids, right, who don't have a lot of self.
Heather Berlin:
But even if, let's say we take the self out of it and just thinking about this pure experience, as we understand it from neuroscience, we're creating this experience. We're creating our own reality. You've called it control to hallucination. Can you talk a little bit about that? It's sort of like we're creating from the inside out versus the outside in. And how do you bring in this kind of idea of being a prediction machine?
Anil Seth:
I think it's a very old idea really about how brains and bodies and living systems interact with the world. It goes right back as really to Plato in Western philosophy, but we won't retrace the whole history. For me, a good starting point-
Christof Koch:
You mean the cave, the allegory of the-
Anil Seth:
Yeah, the allegory of the cave. So yeah, since we mentioned it, I mean in the allegory of the cave, you have prisoners who are inside this cave, they're chained up in there. All they can see are shadows that are cast on the walls of the cave by a fire. And for the prisoners in the cave, these shadows are taken to be reality because that's all they have access to. In fact, the real world is outside the cave. So one intuition towards the ideas of perceptions of controlled hallucination is that instead of prisoners trapped inside a cave, think of your own brain trapped inside the cave, the bony vault of the skull, trying to figure out what's happening in the world.
Instead of shadows cast by firelight, we have the electrical chemical signals produced by our senses. And the brain interprets these in various ways. And a picture, a world appears. Is that the same thing as objective reality? No, there's a level of indirectness there. And I think it's a similar indirectness to prisoners within the cave. The only difference is the prisoners are people with brains and perceptual systems themselves. When it comes to our conscious experience, there are no little people inside the skull trying to figure out what's going on.
Christof Koch:
No homunculus.
Anil Seth:
Yeah, no homunculus. The experience of being a self is part of the interpretation, part of the controlled hallucination itself. There's no mini me inside my head that's trying to figure out what's going on.
Heather Berlin:
But that's the only access we have given these kind of, in some ways, feeble pieces of matter that we are given to construct our sense of what's out there with, but we're so fooled by it. Most of the day we're thinking what we are perceiving is reality.
Anil Seth:
Well, for good reason. I mean, perception, like everything in else, biology is shaped by evolution. And it wouldn't be very useful if evolution had designed our brains so that we perceived the world to be a kind of construction. I think perceptual systems generally work when we experience things as if they exist because our perceptual experiences are not unrelated to what's that. They're very closely related towards that.
Heather Berlin:
So it's almost like an adaptive illusion that we have that our perception is reality.
Anil Seth:
That's right. I'm always a little careful with illusion because it sort of suggests that there would be a better way, a more veridical way of experiencing things. I think it's actually very good for us that we experience things as if they exist because there is a very tight relationship. If a car is coming across the road, then there is really something going on in physical reality that my brain is keeping track of. But the way I experience the car coming and the road and everything else going on, that's a construction. That's not a direct importing of objective reality into subjective experience.
Christof Koch:
So that's what we call the perception box. And of course we are never totally aware of things, of the true nature of things.
Anil Seth:
This is very clear when we do science because we know that we don't have perceptual access to things. So we need all these complex instruments. We need telescopes, we need microscopes and so on.
Christof Koch:
I mean even in vision, we only have a tiny access to the total spectrum. We don't see UV and above. We don't see an IR and below. And some of us don't even see all with the normal colors.
Anil Seth:
That's right. And I think vision is such a good place to start, although it's not everything as some consciousness researchers pretend.
Christof Koch:
But it's a lot.
Anil Seth:
It's quite a lot. But it's not that what we perceive is this restricted subset of objective reality. So you're absolutely right to point out that the cells in our retinas are sensitive to, for most of us, three wavelengths. And that thin slice of reality, if we're only thinking about electromagnetic radiation now, that thin slice of reality is where we live.
But our visual experience isn't just sort of three things, three colors. We experience millions of distinctive colors. This, I think, makes the point nicely that our conscious experience, our controlled hallucination is simultaneously less than what's really there, less than the thing itself, because we only sample a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. But it's also more than what's there because we experience millions of colors rather than three wavelengths, which are not in themselves colored. They're just different wavelengths of radiation.
Christof Koch:
Yeah, because we keep on having to emphasize that there is no color out there in the world. What there are photons with a specific wavelength that get reflected into my eyes that then can passes in different bands that my brain then constructs to call it white, right?
Anil Seth:
Correct.
Christof Koch:
It's a construction of our brain.
Anil Seth:
Yeah. And this is why I think the language of illusion can sometimes mislead us because if you take that book outside and now we're inside, the ambient light has a particular color balance. The people videoing this notice very well, that's part of the job. If you go outside, it's a sunny day, there'll be a lot of bluish ambient light, yet that cover of the book will still look white. So you could say that our visual system is doing a terrible job because the light coming into our eyes has changed from the book has changed, but yet we still see it to be the same color.
Heather Berlin:
It's amazing though, because it adapts to keep consistency.
Christof Koch:
Yes.
Anil Seth:
That's right.
Heather Berlin:
The color of the book doesn't change depending on the lighting. But then there's these sort of cracks in the matrix like with the dress, where it was ambiguous and then some people saw it as black and blue, and others as white and gold because some corrected for blue light, another corrected for yellow light. So there are these subtleties where we find the crack in the matrix, but overall, our brains do an amazing job of keeping consistent. I would say our brains evolved for survival, not for truth. But given that, as a society, we run up against problems. Can we ever actually get to truth and reality given these cognitive biases that we have?
Anil Seth:
There's just no way that our perceptual systems will access reality as it is. I mean, no matter how hard we try, we can't-
Heather Berlin:
Well, maybe we think we need things in place to work against our natural inclinations or biases to get to some other objective reality.
Anil Seth:
Maybe the way towards that, and this is why I like the concept of perception box is very consonant with the general view that I've been working with for years, is that we need to realize that we're in one to start with. It's like any kind of echo chamber. You can't get out of an echo chamber unless to start with you know that you are inside such a chamber. And just recognizing that the world that we experience, the world that appears for us is not the world as it is and that it might appear differently, but not arbitrarily differently for each of us.
Christof Koch:
Okay. So when it comes to social events, which the perception bark also includes, it's not just the reality, the physical reality as it were what colors is, but also who caused what, who's responsible for what? Then it becomes incredibly important. It is a well-posed question, although the methods we have are very weak to try to get at what actually happened at any one particular historical or social event.
Anil Seth:
That's right. I think that in this case, the example of perception can be very useful because you're completely right that looking at things that happen in society, so these kinds of beliefs about social events or historical events that are very influenced by the media that we access and so on, but people can be as convinced that their version of events is the right one in just the same way that those people who saw the dress as white and gold are convinced that they're right and they can't imagine how it's possible for other people to experience something differently.
This is why things like the dress and other studies of perception are so useful because it's a relatively unthreatening context. And I think if you can have people realize that, oh look, even for something as simple and as politically non-threatening as a dress can engender these two very different experiences, I think that can help cultivate a bit of humility for these larger questions where the entrenched differences of opinion really do matter.
Heather Berlin:
But there's still a difference between differences at the perceptual level and differences at the sort of higher, let's say, cognitive level of belief systems, right?
Christof Koch:
I think it's a smooth transition. Yeah, clearly there's a difference, but it's still a perception. Who I believe is responsible and why and what feelings I have about that.
Heather Berlin:
It makes you question your own sort of beliefs at some level.
Christof Koch:
We all know from our own experience, from clinical experience that people who hallucinate. How do you think about when we all believe, well, he is totally hallucinating? What does it mean in your terms?
Anil Seth:
Just as I like to describe perception as a controlled hallucination, we can think about hallucination as a kind of uncontrolled form of perception, uncontrolled by causes in the real world. So just as you said, there's a continuum from perception to belief. I think there's also a continuum of perception that's very tightly controlled by things in the environment, whether it's how a book reflects light or some other feature of objective reality. And to what extent are perceptual inferences become less controlled by these causes?
And as you move along that scale, you get closer to what colloquially we call hallucination. People like Chris Frith long ago started to talk about hallucination this way as what happens when our perceptual best guesses lose their grip on reality. You can think of it in a way as a sort of extension of a phenomenon we're all familiar with, which is pareidolia. And we've all had this experience of walking out on a day when there's fluffy clouds. And if you look at clouds in the sky, sometimes you can see faces in these clouds.
Christof Koch:
Dogs.
Anil Seth:
We all see dogs. Most of us. Some people see cats, other people see faces.
Heather Berlin:
They're Usually informed by our biases and our expectations.
Anil Seth:
And the phenomenology of this, I think, is very interesting because we know there's no face there, but what we're experiencing is some kind of statistical shadow of a face, an echo of a perceptual prediction that doesn't quite grip. And you can imagine if you turn a dial on that further and further, then you actually see faces in clouds.
And if you turn it even further, then not only do people see faces, but they believe the faces are actually there. And I think a lot of cases of hallucination lie along the spectrum and can be usefully differentiated. And given actually mechanistic basis, we can start to think about what's happening in the brain that accounts for different kinds of hallucinations. And this is something we've been doing in my group. We've been trying to build computational models of visual hallucinations in different conditions in Parkinson's disease, in psychedelics, in another condition, Charles Bonnet syndrome.
Heather Berlin:
Not speaking from experience, but if anybody has ever had a psychedelic experience, it really does look like that, what you've simulated in many ways of what it is in some ways to be-
Anil Seth:
In some ways. I wouldn't over-egg the similarity, but I think it certainly captures a feature of some psychedelic experiences which have this pareidolic quality that we see patterns in things. The face in the cloud becomes Oprah Winfrey marching across the sky followed by a load of dinosaurs, that kind of thing.
Heather Berlin:
Right. Right. Your book talks a lot about the self. What is the self? Is there a self? What is it? How do you define it?
Anil Seth:
This is another area where I think we get misled by confusing how things seem with how things are. So in perception in general, it seems as though the world is just there and we open our eyes and have direct access to it as we've just been discussing. How things are is likely very different. It seems as though the self is this essence of you or me that's somewhere maybe in the head that is receiving all these perceptions and then figuring out what to do next and then making some action and-
Christof Koch:
Here. It's exactly here.
Anil Seth:
Yeah, it's there. It's there. And it's the locus of all your memories, all your plans, all your experiences.
Christof Koch:
Your will. Your control.
Anil Seth:
Your emotions, the source of your agency, the author of your thoughts. All of these things bundle together somewhere as an essence of you in there that maybe, depending on your religious beliefs, will survive the death of your brain and reappear in another body somewhere. That's the manifest image of the self, what the self seems like for most of us most of the time.
But I think it's a bit like color. There's a utility in the brain creating an experience of the self that has this feeling of being real, of being in essence, being a stable quality. But it doesn't mean that that's actually what's going on at all. I think the self is a kind of perception. It's not the thing that does the perceiving. It's a bundle of perceptual inferences. But instead of being about how light bounces off a book, the self for me anyway, starts with the body. So the more basic levels of self are things like emotion, mood, which are well understood. And I think this is a tradition in psychology going hundreds of years back, that emotions are well understood as perceptions of changes in the physiological condition of the body. You say perception is for survival and this is nowhere more clear in how we experience the state of our own living bodies. We perceive the body as an object in the world. I know this is my hand. I experience it as my hand. That's also a perceptual inference.
Christof Koch:
So I'm afraid because I see myself running and I sweat and my blood pressure goes up. And then I have the emotion of fear.
Anil Seth:
Right. Right. So an emotion is a response to the change in physiological condition. Actually, it can be a very closely coupled thing. Can also generate those changes. I think the really challenging thing about the self is you can, just like when you start with color and then you try and go to more challenging aspects of our experience of the world outside, like the flow of time or the structure of space around us, which seem harder to account for, but I think you still can. It's the same with the self.
The self as an object in the world, you might say, okay, that I can get on board with as the brain making a best guess. But what about free will? What about mood? What about my sense of personal identity? Why am I Anil and not Heather or Christof? Those I think are more challenging, but I do also think they can be accounted for by the same story.
Christof Koch:
So in principle, it's another form of controlled hallucination.
Anil Seth:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
It's another perception. And it-
Christof Koch:
It's not an illusion though, right? I mean, it's much an illusion as seeing color is.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. Yes.
Anil Seth:
Exactly. This is why I got a bit grumpy when you said illusion to start with, because illusion sort of suggests that we would do better if we saw things or experienced things more accurately. And people say, many people have said the self is an illusion. And I probably said it, you'll probably point out that I'm contradicting myself now. But today, because the self is not one thing. So me now doesn't have to agree with the me that wrote the book. That's correct. I think illusion is the wrong word for it. The parallel with color is very useful. The experience of self is a very adaptive form of perception that helps the organism get along.
Heather Berlin:
It's a very creative perception that the brain can put together such a thing that is consistent. It's also built up on your memories. When people lose their memories, they lose their sense of self and their identity.
Anil Seth:
Well, not all of it. I mean, you'll know this better than either of us working with patients all the time as you do, but there are famous examples of people who have complete loss of autobiographical memory, famous neurological patients.
Christof Koch:
Clive Wearing.
Anil Seth:
Clive Wearing.
Heather Berlin:
Wearing, yes.
Anil Seth:
I talk about him in the book, other ones. HM is another good example. Yes, they lose an aspect of self, but what's interesting, at least to me, is that most aspects of their selfhood are preserved. Their first person perspective on the world is preserved. Their emotions are preserved. They typically don't have an issue with knowing what their body is and is not. It's just this selective disruption of self as personal identity. But that's only one part of what a human self is.
Christof Koch:
You discuss this remarkable case in this book of Clive Wearing, this music conductor in England who had an encephalitis and then has one of the deepest, most profound amnesia. He doesn't remember anything going back and going forward. Yet what's so remarkable, and you point this out, when he meets his wife who he married just a year before he had the encephalitis, he's overwhelmed by enthusiasm and by love for her. So his love is somehow still has survived his loss of his personal-
Heather Berlin:
The other thing is that-
Christof Koch:
Quite remarkable.
Heather Berlin:
It's an amazing case because it's like you keep pressing the refresh button. So he keeps saying, he writes this journal, "I am just now first conscious for the very first time." And then a minute later, "I'm now just first conscious." Because he doesn't have that consistency of continuity.
Christof Koch:
The continuity, yeah.
Heather Berlin:
The continuity. The other thing that's really interesting about that case is that because these subcortical parts of the brain, like the basal ganglion and parts that had to do with sort of muscle memory, are still intact. So he could play, if he started to play a piece, he could suddenly get and play the entire piece.
Christof Koch:
Or conduct. Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
Yeah.
Anil Seth:
The ability to think of ourselves in the future is an enormously adaptive feature. And to think of that future in terms of a continuity of self is very, very adaptive. But it's also come with the cost that we can conceive of our own death. And that's not something that I doubt evolution selected for our ability to conceive our own death, but it did select for our ability to plan for the future organized around ourself. So yeah, it's a price we pay. There's a trade-off.
Heather Berlin:
I mean, the whole reason I became a neuroscientist to study conscious is because I want to figure out how to continue my consciousness after I don't have a body.
Christof Koch:
Uploading.
Anil Seth:
Really?
Heather Berlin:
Yes, because of a fear of death.
Anil Seth:
Okay. Well, I think that it's the oldest challenge in the book. Whether it's religion or the new religion of tech and mind uploading, ultimately there's a lot of human motivation in trying to deal with the prospect of death. And I'm not saying that I've got my head around it at all. Hopefully it's still a long way away, but I rather suspect the best strategy instead of trying to live forever, whether it's in a biological form or in some silicon cloud, is actually to just get our heads around that not existing is okay.
Heather Berlin:
No. I'm not okay with-
Christof Koch:
And being in the here. So this is where the self can also be dysfunctional because as you said, we always project ourselves in the future. Either we live in the past, what I should have said and why did she do this to me? Or we project ourselves in the future. And what Buddhism tells us that, by the way, of course, also denials the reality of self as usually constructed, that is really important Welcome to be in the here and now, not in the past, not in the future, but now.
Heather Berlin:
All we have is this moment. I think my fear of death has ultimately led me to this concept of really appreciating and being aware of every moment of the taste of food and the here and now. Being present, it's actually made me much more present.
Anil Seth:
While still planning for the future a little bit.
Heather Berlin:
A little bit. A little bit, yes.
Anil Seth:
I mean, this is the thing. The present is a nice place to visit, but it's not a great place to hang out forever. We do still need to worry about the future.
Heather Berlin:
True.
Anil Seth:
So there is a lot of resonance with Buddhism actually in all of these views about perception as construction, but especially the nature of the self. There's so many resonances. I think the challenge is in accepting and learning from those resonances, but in the real world, we can't live completely in the present all the time.
Heather Berlin:
It's a balance.
Anil Seth:
We can appreciate it.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. I mean, if you sit there meditating all day, you'll go hungry, you won't have water. I mean, so there is a balance.
Christof Koch:
But there is still books, I can show you if invited many of these famous monk, you still have to plan a year ahead to get them to come to talk.
Anil Seth:
Exactly. Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
So speaking of the future, I did want to get into just finally AI and the future. Now you've mentioned this mind uploading. I don't think that that is a way to survive death or to keep conscious, because even if you can copy every connection in my brain and you put it in silicon, it might have consciousness, like a neuromorphic computer. It's based on my brain, but it wouldn't be me. It would be a different thing or else I'd suddenly be uploaded into it. If you created it right now based on my brain, it would be something else maybe sort of like me, but it wouldn't be this consciousness, right?
Anil Seth:
What do you mean by this consciousness?
Heather Berlin:
The one that's in this physical, biological. Well, let me ask you a question.
Anil Seth:
But why would that matter?
Heather Berlin:
Does it matter? Do you think that the substrate that consciousness is instantiated in matters?
Anil Seth:
I want to be careful to pull apart two things.
Christof Koch:
Those are two separate questions.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Two separate questions.
Anil Seth:
The first one is really, it's the subject of a very famous thought experiment by Derek Parfit, the teletransporter thought experiment. So forget about uploading to a computer at the moment. Just imagine that I have the technology to recreate the exact physical structure of your brain somewhere else, maybe in London.
Christof Koch:
Star Trek. Beam me up.
Anil Seth:
Yeah, it's that. So now we don't have to worry about whether computers are sufficiently similar. I'm going to recreate you down to the molecular atomic quantum level.
Heather Berlin:
Okay.
Anil Seth:
Now, it would be very hard to deny that if I do that, the Heather that's recreated somewhere else, I mean that Heather will be you. There'll be something there that will experience being Heather Berlin, that will have the same memories, the same plans for the future. Might be slightly surprised to be in London rather than New York. So you'll start to diverge. But at the moment of creation, there'll be another Heather that will feel exactly like you. And so the question is, which is the real Heather? And the answer is, well, they're both real Heathers.
Christof Koch:
Real.
Anil Seth:
And neither are the real Heather. It's a process which has diverged. And as time goes by, the Heathers will diverge. So that's one of the topics. The other one is I think the question that's facing us with much more urgency now, because we can't build these teletransporters, but people are already wondering whether artificial intelligence systems, AIs can be not only smart, but also conscious. And if that's the case, if consciousness is the kind of thing that AI is made out of silicon can have, one of the consequences of that is the idea of mind uploading, even though it's still not practical now, becomes at least conceptually possible.
Christof Koch:
Anil, can you distinguish for the audience between intelligence and consciousness?
Anil Seth:
Very different things. I mean, I think this is a super important distinction. I think we probably all on board with making this distinction. One of the problems in all these debates about AI is that we tend to conflate the two concepts. Intelligence is very broadly about doing the right thing at the right time. Not the morally right thing, but the appropriate thing to fulfill a goal. So it's doing, it's behaving. It's doing, it's behaving, it's external behavior manifest in some way solving a problem. That's intelligence. Consciousness is fundamentally about being.
I think our colleague and friend Giulio Tononi puts it like this, consciousness going back right to the beginning of our conversation is any kind of experience at all. There are many ways to be conscious without doing anything especially smart at the time. We already distinguished between consciousness and language and so on. So they are fundamentally different things. Now that doesn't mean that unrelated in living systems, evolved systems, it looks like there's a very close relationship. To have certain kinds of conscious experience, you need to have certain kinds of cognitive capability. I can't experience regret unless I have the cognitive infrastructure to imagine alternative actions.
Christof Koch:
But they're also much more basic like toothache.
Anil Seth:
Yeah.
Christof Koch:
When you have a God awful toothache, there's nothing smart or intelligent about a really molar pounding away, yet it fills your entire mental life.
Anil Seth:
Absolutely. Yeah, so they're very different. So the one problem is if we think that consciousness and intelligence are somehow so intimately bound that you can't have one with the other, then it becomes natural to think that as AI systems get smarter, that at some point the inner lights come on and they become conscious as well. But I think that's an insight into our own psychological biases and not an insight into things as they are.
Heather Berlin:
We anthropomorphize, right? And because it acts and sounds as if it's conscious, we assume it is, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is. I've used this term like I'm a bio-chauvinist. You don't like this term because it has a negative connotation, but I think we're on the same page of that there's something in particular about being a biological being embodied that is tied in with being conscious. Do you think that these AI systems could be conscious? What would it take to get them to be conscious?
Anil Seth:
So I share with you, not the chauvinism. I don't like chauvinism because it sort of connects a belief that you have that you don't have a good reason for having.
Heather Berlin:
What did you call it? Biological naturalism?
Anil Seth:
The term in philosophy that it's been around for a long time. I think John Searle was the person who first used it in the sense that we now think of it as biological naturalism. And this is the claim, and it's only a claim that properties of living systems are necessary, but may not be sufficient for consciousness. And I do think this really is kind of key question for our time because the metaphor of the brain as a computer has been so powerful, so influential, and it's led to a lot of insights. All models can be useful, but it's become somehow rarefied. So many people think implicitly or explicitly that the computer is not only a good model for aspects of the brain, but that the brain literally is a computer.
Christof Koch:
Particularly of young people have these very emotional, intimate relationships, whether that's with a robotic therapist, ChatGPT, or with romantic friends. There are all these services where you can also subscribe where in some sense you say it doesn't matter whether academics like us discuss are they really conscious or not. They behave increasingly, they interact with them and they increasingly, they say it's easier to interact with my ChatGPT therapist than with an actual person. I have more friends in my ChatGPT or club or whatever friend. He understands me better than any human does.
Anil Seth:
Yeah. So Heather will be out of a job soon.
Heather Berlin:
That's dangerous. Not really, because I mean, I'm not even getting into it, but there's a lot of problems with relying on these AI systems for psychological health. They don't feel. They might give you-
Anil Seth:
That's the question, right?
Heather Berlin:
Well-
Christof Koch:
Do they or do they not?
Heather Berlin:
They could give you the most rational ... I'll just give you one very quick example. I have a patient, he's a perfectionist and wants to get straight A's, whatever. So he said, "I asked ChatGPT what should be my schedule, my study schedule to be most efficient to do well on my finals?" And it gave this ridiculous schedule. And then he was so anxious if he diverged from that.
But the problem, it didn't take into account that a human brain needs rest for psychological wellbeing. And you know what? Some days you have really good days and some days you wake up, you don't feel so good, you're not as sharp, you can't do as much. So the most rational, logical schedule of studying doesn't make sense with a human feeling-
Christof Koch:
Oh, so it's a bad therapist.
Heather Berlin:
Maybe you are hungover from the night before.
Christof Koch:
So it's a bad therapist, but the fact is more and more people are using it as therapists.
Heather Berlin:
It can be dangerous.
Anil Seth:
You're absolutely right. But I think what this highlights is the importance of separating two issues. So one issue is very hard to decide on, which is, is it even possible that AI systems could be conscious? Now my suspicion is not, and that the more we realize the differences between brains and computers, you pointed out that if you look at a brain, you don't see anything like the clean separation between hardware and software that's absolutely foundational to how computers work. So my suspicion is that in fact, you won't find consciousness as a point in the space of possibility for silicon-based AI.
But we don't know for sure, and opinions can reasonably differ on this. But then that's very separate from this other problem that regardless of what academics natter on about, people will project consciousness into these things and they have a real social impact. There's a design question here. Regardless of the actual facts of the matter, should we be developing systems that encourage their users to believe that they are conscious? Now, it's like all such questions, it's not super simple. There may be some use cases where it's no bad thing. It encourages a fluency of interaction. But I think as an overall strategy, it's very, very dangerous.
Christof Koch:
It may not matter. Do you remember? Well, you talk about the movie Ex Machina, right? Where the idea is, you know this robot looks like a robot. She has a beautiful face, but her body's a robotic body, but it still doesn't matter, right?
Heather Berlin:
Well, just like the illusion-
Christof Koch:
She still convinces.
Heather Berlin:
Listen, just like the illusion we have with there's two different colored gray squares on this checkerboard illusion, and we see them as different, but they're exactly the same.
Christof Koch:
That's right. Yep.
Heather Berlin:
Even though you know consciously that they are the same, you can't get over your illusion.
Christof Koch:
And so you still fall in love.
Heather Berlin:
So you still fall in love.
At the end of every episode, we ask a Perception Box question of our guests. This week, Christof is going to ask the question of us. So what is the question?
Christof Koch:
Anil and Heather, so that's a skill that we all have that we learn early on called mind reading. So I infer that maybe because the way you look at me or smile at me when I say something, you like me and you think I'm a reasonable person to converse with. Have there been noticeable situation where you just totally misread in some dramatic way what you assumed another person for good or for bad had assumed about you? Because this happens very often that we assume she probably thinks this about me, but in fact, she thinks the very opposite.
Anil Seth:
And maybe happening right now, such an example.
Christof Koch:
Oh, that's very meta. That's very she-she.
Heather Berlin:
You thought I liked you, Christof, this whole time.
Christof Koch:
Yes. Little do you know.
Anil Seth:
It is a tough one. It's a tough one. I think it's very plausible. I'm trying to think of examples which remain-
Christof Koch:
I mean, examples that I have, which we all must have, someone doesn't, you text and they don't text for half an hour, and then you go into these loops. Oh, they don't like me anymore. Oh, there's something happened. They've cut me off. I mean, all sorts of things.
Anil Seth:
I'll tell you, it's not a specific individual because I wouldn't want to do that, but I had the kind of experience like this when I moved to California in the early 2000s. And I remember living there and going shopping, and everyone wishes you a lovely day and asks you what plans you have for the weekend. And as a Brit, I found this extremely awkward. I'm like, "I don't know. How are you? I'm fine." And I was trying to figure out what they really meant. And it's not that I completely misread them. It's just that I didn't really know. In fact, I assumed they didn't really care, and it was just something that Californians said.
Christof Koch:
A habit.
Anil Seth:
As a habit, just as a complete habit. But the longer I lived there, I realized that they kind of do care. It's not that they really care. You don't need to tell them all the details of what you have in mind, but it's not that they don't care. So I think that was a calibration towards a middle ground, which is one reason I'm very fond of California. I don't know about New York though. I don't think they care so much. Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
We are just more pragmatic. If you ask for help, we'll give it to you. We're kind. We're just not going to waste our time with, how are you doing? We don't have enough time to spare, but that doesn't mean you don't care.
Christof Koch:
I'm always surprised how polite people are in New York. Just walking around, they hold open the door and say thank you and please. It surprises me because the image of New York is they're all hustle.
Heather Berlin:
No. We don't want to waste time, but that doesn't mean that we're not kind. We're just efficient. It makes sense. Trust me. So, thank you. It's been a pleasure to have you, as always. Great conversation.
Anil Seth:
Thank you.
Christof Koch:
Thank you, Anil.
Anil Seth:
Thanks, Christof.
Christof Koch:
It was enjoyable.
Heather Berlin:
I want to thank Anil Seth for joining us today. 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 guest, 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 partnership with Pod People. I'm Dr. Heather Berlin.
Christof Koch:
And I'm Dr. Christof Koch. Thank you.
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.
Carrie Berk reveals how she transformed her struggle with anxiety and internet fame by changing her perception and finding her true voice as a writer.
Carrie Berk, author, journalist, and social media influencer with nearly 4 million TikTok followers, shares her journey through anxiety, internet fame, and personal growth.
Amid the pandemic and sudden online fame, Carrie faced intense anxiety, receiving harmful threats from strangers and grappling with the pressures of social media. Sharing her most vulnerable moments, including her first heartbreak at sixteen, Carrie emphasizes the importance of authenticity. Through therapy and self-discovery, she learned that while she couldn’t switch off her anxiety, she could change her response to it.
Carrie’s story is a perfect example of the resilience it takes to be a young person in today’s social climate, and proves how powerful self-confidence and inner strength can be.
This group of people who have experienced homelessness were asked the Perception Box question, "In moments of deep solitude, what major concerns and questions about YOU tend to dominate your thoughts?" Their honest answers were deeply moving and insightful.
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.
In this episode, a group of formerly incarcerated individuals was asked the Perception Box question, "What are you most afraid is true about you?" Their candid responses were incredibly moving and thought-provoking.
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.
Jewel says denying the truth cost her years of her life. This is how she shifted her perception to see truth more clearly and regain her strength.
“My number one job was to be a happy, whole human — not a human full of holes.” Jewel Kilcher, singer-songwriter, and visual artist, opens up about her childhood, the start of her career, and what makes Jewel, Jewel.
After being discovered during a coffee shop gig in the 1990’s, folk singer Jewel began the life-long endeavor of being a performer. Jewel went on to gain worldwide recognition for her talent and creativity. But who is she at her core? What are her greatest fears, her deepest aspirations?
In this interview, Jewel shares the personal struggles and triumphs that have shaped her, the importance of truth on her life and well-being, and the lessons she's learned along the way. Through this conversation, Jewel offers an up-close look into her journey, revealing the experiences and hard-won insights that have shaped her as both an artist and a person.
Experience Jewel’s latest exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel ► https://crystalbridges.org/calendar/the-portal-an-art-experience-by-jewel/
About Jewel:
Jewel Kilcher, known mononymously as Jewel, embodies the quintessential story of resilience and artistic integrity. From her humble beginnings in the rugged landscapes of Alaska to her rise as a multi-platinum recording artist, Jewel's journey is a testament to the transformative power of art. Homeless at 18, she honed her craft performing in coffee shops, blending folk, pop, and country influences with her ethereal voice and introspective songwriting.
Her debut album, "Pieces of You," captured hearts worldwide, achieving remarkable commercial success while delivering profound, soul-stirring messages. Beyond music, Jewel's talents extend to poetry and acting, with her literary works and performances reflecting her deep empathy and authenticity.
Jewel's commitment to social causes, including mental health advocacy and her foundation, the Inspiring Children Foundation, underscores her dedication to making a positive impact. In a world often dominated by transient fame, Jewel stands out as a beacon of enduring creativity and compassionate leadership.
Alyssa and her ex-boyfriend Trey have successfully transitioned from lovers to best friends. But can she recreate that same dynamic with her most recent ex, Adal? Alyssa, Trey, and Adal dive deep into their pasts and their relationships with each other by answering a series of thought-provoking Perception Box questions. Watch their honest reflections, uncover their perspectives on love and friendship, and discover what the future holds for this unique trio.
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