Beautiful Illusions

By Darron Vigliotti, Jeffrey Horton

Jeff & Darron ponder the intersection of reality, consciousness, and culture. These conversations comprise an ongoing attempt to construct meaning by exploring art and science, developing understa... more

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FAQs about Beautiful Illusions:

How many episodes does Beautiful Illusions have?

The podcast currently has 41 episodes available.

Beautiful Illusions episodes:

February 01, 2026EP 40 - Beautiful Confusion
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
4:37 - See more on Daniel Kahneman, “The Father of Behavioral Science,” at The Decision Lab

6:31 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

6:44 - In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a partnership between separate but connected entities using the metaphor of the rider and the elephant - the rider represents all that is conscious and is the director of actions and executor of thought and long term goals, while the elephant represents all that is automatic, and often acts independently of conscious thought.

8:10 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March, 2021

9:19 - Philosophize This!

17:19 - The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

21:43 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 340 - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on What Matters and Why It Matters

28:40 - See “Each Shuffle of a Deck of Cards is Probably Unique in History”
This episode was recorded in January 2026
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
37min
November 09, 2025EP 39 - Catching Up On Lost Time
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
8:56 - At 4,975 feet above sea level Black Mesa is the highest point in Oklahoma
17:00 - See the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list (Rolling Stone, 2023)
18:58 - Listen to “Just Breathe” by Pearl Jam (YouTube)
20:38 - See the Hollow Knight: Silksong Wikipedia entry and read “Silksong Broke Me - Then It Got Good” (Polygon, 2025)
32:26 - See “The Dopamine Cycle: Impacts of Excessive Screen Time” (The Jacob’s Ladder Group, 2025)
37:08 - The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
44:40 - Watch bats swarming out of a cave entrance at Carlsbad Caverns (YouTube)
49:00 - The Arthur Schopenhauer quote “we do not feel the health of our entire body but only the small place where the shoe pinches” via the article “The Semi-Satisfied Life” (Aeon Magazine)
49:50 - Read “How do our memories differ from our experiences?” for more on the peak-end rule and the remembering self versus the experiencing self (The Decision Lab)
This episode was recorded in September 2025
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
53min
March 23, 2025EP 38 - It's About Time
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
3:00 - Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson
7:32 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 300 - Solo: Does Time Exist? from January, 2025
7:36 - From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll
7:38 - The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
12:58 - Read Nature and Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
20:28 - “Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years” is an idea popularized most recently by Bill Gates and sometimes referred to as Gates’ Law.
21:42 - Derek Jeter played in 20 major league seasons starting in 1995 and retiring after the 2014 season
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 37 - Memento Mori from February, 2025
26:05 - Rickey Henderson played in 25 major league seasons from 1979 to 2003. He passed away on December 20, 2004 and is remembered as one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. See “Rickey Henderson, 'greatest of all time,' dies at 65” (ESPN.com)
29:34 - Read “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything” by Linda Holmes (NPR, 2011)
31:10 - See the “Great American Novel” Wikipedia entry
32:51 - Listen to the “Songs About Time” Spotify playlist
36:05 - See “What Is Memento Mori?” (Daily Stoic)
38:45 - The 2006 Adam Sandler movie Click is about “a workaholic architect [who] finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.”
40:40 - See “Eternal Recurrence: What Did Nietzsche Really Mean?” (Philosophy Break) and “The Eternal Return: Nietzsche’s Brilliant Thought Experiment Illustrating the Key to Existential Contentment” from The Marginalian
46:14 - Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli
56:22 - Listen to Richard Feynman’s “Ode To A Flower” (YouTube)
57:03 - See the “Deep time” Wikipedia entry and the Deep Time: A History of the Earth interactive infographic
This episode was recorded in February 2025
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
1h
February 16, 2025EP 37 - Memento Mori
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
13:07 - Read “Why I Hope to Die at 75” by Ezekiel J. Emmanuel (The Atlantic, 2014)
15:21 - For more see “'Why I hope to die at 75,' revisited” (Advisory Board, 2019) and the “Dr. Emanuel discusses his personal perspective on aging” page of his personal website.
17:34 - Read “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” by Wallace Stevens
34:03 - Listen to the Brain Science Podcast Episode 194: "The Grieving Brain" with Mary-Frances O'Connor from March, 2022 (YouTube link)
39:20 - The Lifetime Setback Game started at the Phish show on August 14th, 2009 at the Comcast Theatre in Hartford, CT when we Darron & Jeff were in their early 30’s
41:04 - Read “The Tail End” post from 2015 on the Wait But Why blog
54:37 - Listen the Mindscape Episode 10: Megan Rosenbloom on the Death Positive Movement from August, 2018
57:50 - Darron is likely referring to this passage from Seneca: “It is likely that some troubles will befall us; but it is not a present fact. How often has the unexpected happened! How often has the expected never come to pass! And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail to run out to meet your suffering? You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives; so look forward meanwhile to better things. What shall you gain by doing this? Time. There will be many happenings meanwhile which will serve to postpone, or end, or pass on to another person, the trials which are near or even in your very presence. A fire has opened the way to flight. Men have been let down softly by a catastrophe. Sometimes the sword has been checked even at the victim’s throat. Men have survived their own executioners. Even bad fortune is fickle. Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime it is not. So look forward to better things.”
This episode was recorded remotely at the Hunting House in November 2024
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
1h 6min
December 22, 2024EP 36 - Authenticity In The Age Of AI
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 33 - The Post-Entertainment Culture of Addiction from June 2024, in which we discuss issues raised in “The State of the Culture, 2024” by Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker, 2024)
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 34 - Icy Hot Takes on Artificial Intelligence from August 2024
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 35 - The Albums Of Our Lives from September 2024
Listen to ChatEDU Episode 31 - To Tech or Not to Tech - A Conversation with Darron Vigliotti from October 2024
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 19 - How We Learn Like A Scout: Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking from October 2021, in which we discuss How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine...for Now by Stanislas Dehaene
Selfless: The Social Creation of “You” by Brian Lowery
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 21 - The Myth of the Desert Island Self from January 2022
Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson
See “Meta suggests AI Northern Lights pics are as good as the real thing” (The Verge, 2024)
See “AI Art Turing Test” and “How Did You Do On The AI Art Turning Test?” from the Astral Codex Ten blog
NotebookLM
Listen to a “Deep Dive” of Darron’s ChatEDU Notes & Prep
ElevenLabs
Watch the #ProjectPerfectBlend Adobe MAX Sneaks 2024 presentation video
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Read “On Photography” by Susan Sontag
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 17 - BI Book Club 1: The Reality Bubble from August 2021, in which we discuss The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
See Why Don’t Students Like School? (book) and “Why Don’t Students Like School?” (magazine article) by Daniel T. Willingham
Watch “Mister Rogers - attitudes are caught, not taught”
This episode was recorded in October 2024
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
1h 8min
September 29, 2024EP 35 - The Albums Of Our Lives
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 33 - The Post-Entertainment Culture of Addiction from June 2024, in which we discuss issues raised in “The State of the Culture, 2024” by Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker, 2024)
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 34 - Icy Hot Takes on Artificial Intelligence from August 2024, where we discuss, among other things, “The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse” by Rick Beato
Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 31 - Life, Art, & Experience: A Conversation which we recorded in November 2024
This episode was recorded in August 2024
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
2h 39min
August 11, 2024EP 34 - Icy Hot Takes on Artificial Intelligence
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
2:10 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 33 - The Post-Entertainment Culture of Addiction from June 2024, in which Dopamine Nation (2021) by Anna Lembke, MD is referenced and the idea of a “dopamine fast” is discussed.
8:28 - See “The State of the Culture, 2024” by Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker, 2024)
8:56 - According to Russian literary theorist and critic Victor Shklovsky, “Art makes the familiar strange so that it can be freshly perceived. To do this it presents its material in unexpected, even outlandish ways: the shock of the new” and “Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object seen, not as recognized. The technique of art is to make things 'unfamiliar,' to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and the duration of perception.”
10:40 - See “What is AI?” (IBM) for a good general overview
10:55 - See “What Are Large Language Models?” (IBM) and the relevant LLM Wikipedia entry
16:20 - Suno and Udio are two popular generative AI-powered music creation tools that work based on prompting
17:40 - Listen to “Beautiful Illusions” or “Beautiful Illusions” which are two initial alternate song versions created by Suno (in about 1 minute) using the following prompt and no additional iterating beyond the original output: An early 60's style acoustic folk song called Beautiful Illusions with lyrics about how we all live our own perceived reality, solo acoustic, guitar, strumming, harmonica, folk, coffee house
20:30 - See “Detecting AI fingerprints: A guide to watermarking and beyond” (Brookings Institution, 2024)
25:43 - See “Bias against AI art can enhance perceptions of human creativity” (Nature, 2023)
28:10 - See Darron’s “Vonnegut-Style Quotations Challenge,” which was expressly created to test Jeff’s thesis here and see if he can identify genuine Vonnegut quotes versus ones that AI generates
30:58 - See “Humans in the Loop: The Design of Interactive AI Systems” (Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, 2019) and “Artificial Intelligence and Keeping Humans “in the Loop”” (Center for International Governance Innovation, 2020)
31:35 - See “What are AI Agents?” (IBM) and “What is Strong AI?” (IBM) for good overviews
34:46 - See Artistree or MadeMay for examples of online spaces where art can be commissioned directly from artists
36:15 - See “Glue in Pizza? Eat Rocks? Google's AI Search Is Mocked for Bizarre Answers” (CNET, 2024) and “Google Search Is Now a Giant Hallucination” (Gizmodo, 2024) and “What are AI hallucinations?” (Google Cloud)
40:30 - See “In Experiment, AI Successfully Impersonates Famous Philosopher” (Vice, 2022) and “Creating a large language model of a philosopher” (Mind & Language, 2023)
41:18 - See character.ai
42:48 - Read the op-ed “ChatGPT is at odds with what education is for” (The Boston Globe, 2024)
49:31 - Listen to “If I Were A Carpenter” by Tim Hardin
54:41 - Watch “The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse” by Rick Beato
This episode was recorded in June 2024
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
1h 1min
June 23, 2024EP 33 - The Post-Entertainment Culture of Addiction
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
2:25 - “The State of the Culture, 2024” by Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker, 2024)
4:10 - Gioia cites Huxley’s Brave New World, which takes place in a future dystopia where the populace is essentially oppressed by their addiction to amusement, as the more likely outcome than the oppressive government control depicted in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. See “Pleasures” - a 1923 essay by Huxley published in Vanity Fair for more on his thoughts regarding the problematic ease of entertainment in the early 20th century.
6:15 - See Gioia’s “fish” model
8:16 - See “The Tiktokification of Everything” (Single Grain) and “The ‘TikTokification’ of the next generation” (Empoword Journalism, 2023)
11:33 - Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) by Neil Postman
13:06 - “The medium is the message” is a phrase and chapter title that comes from a 1964 book by Marshall McLuhan called Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, and it posits that that a communication medium itself, not the messages it carries, needs to be carefully considered because while the content of the medium is a message that can be easily grasped, the character of the medium is another message which can be easily overlooked, and it is this message that ultimately shapes “the scale and form of human action.”
13:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 32 - We Read So We Can Talk from April 2024
21:53 - Dopamine Nation (2021) by Anna Lembke, MD explores the interconnection of pleasure and pain in the brain and helps explain addictive behaviors — not just to drugs and alcohol, but also to food, sex, and smartphones. For more see “In 'Dopamine Nation,' Overabundance Keeps Us Craving More” (NPR, 2021) and watch Dr. Lembke discuss the science behind the book in a YouTube clip.
22:01 - See the “Anhedonia” Wikipedia entry
23:24 - The Anxious Generation (2024) by Jonathan Haidt
23:38 - Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It (2022) by Richard Reeves
27:53 - See “Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound.” by Maryanne Wolf (The Guardian, 2018) and her book Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
28:10 - Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene
33:04 - See “TikTok’s ‘Roman Empire’ Meme, Explained” (Forbes, 2023)
34:30 - Read “Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot (Poetry Foundation)
34:52 - Watch the “8 Led Zeppelin Songs That 'Rip Off' Other Songs” YouTube video
37:07 - The Righteous Mind (2012) by Jonathan Haidt
37:48 - Ready Player One (book, 2011) by Ernest Cline and movie (2018)
38:14 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 16 - Partisan Pizza from July 2021
41:48 - See “Humans can barely distinguish AI-generated content from human-created content” (The Decoder, 2024)
42:22 - See “Socrates on the Invention of Writing and the Relationship of Writing to Memory” and “Socrates on the Forgetfulness that Comes with Writing”
46:50 - See “Boredom: A History of Western Philosophical Perspectives” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) and “Heidegger’s “Profound Boredom”: using boredom to cultivate the soul” (blog post from Eric Hyde)
This episode was recorded in April 2024
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
56min
April 14, 2024EP 32 - We Read So We Can Talk
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
2:26 - See “Something Went Terribly Wrong With Online Ads” (The Atlantic, 2024) and “Uber’s Ad Network Continues To Grow” (Marketing Brew, 2023)
4:00 - Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom
4:15 - See “The Western Canon” Wikipedia entry
12:10 - See “Shakespeare Contra Nietzsche” (Marginalia, 2016)
16:41 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 29 - Vacation Part 2: It’s A Process from October 2023
22:35 - See the Great American Novel Wikipedia entry and list
22:54 - In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
22:25 - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
25:30 - Sean M. Carroll
25:40 - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
26:10 - Babel and The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F. Kuang
27:55 - Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
31:48 - The Shining novel by Stephen King and The Shining movie directed by Stanley Kubrick
33:20 - One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest novel by Ken Kesey and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest movie
36:15 - The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub
42:40 - The Scream painting by Edvard Munch
43:40 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 15 - The Mind of Gatsby: A Look Through the Cognitive Lens from June 2021
47:25 - Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
55:36 - Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarrantino
58:49 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 31 - Life, Art, & Experience: A Conversation, recorded in November 2023 and released in January 2024
...more
1h 4min
January 14, 2024EP 31 - Life, Art, & Experience: A Conversation
Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode
Selected References:
2:30 - Listen to “Now And Then” by The Beatles (YouTube)
3:24 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 22 - What is Life? from March 2022
6:44 - Bruce Springsteen at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, September 3, 2023
10:57 - boygenius at Westville Music Bowl in New Haven, September 28, 2023
11:05 - boygenius is Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker
12:05 - See “The Infinite Gay Joy of Boygenius” and “Boygenius’ Big, Emotional, Gay-as-Hell Night Out at Madison Square Garden” (this happened to be the next show after the New Haven show)
14:10 - Collective effervescence is a sociological concept coined by Émile Durkheim, read the Wikipedia entry
14:20 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 21 - The Myth of the Desert Island Self from January 2022
16:57 - Writing in The Atlantic about his new book, World Within A Song, Jeff Tweedy says “No matter how many people hear the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” there’s only one version that belongs to you. Our appraisals might align, but I doubt your version includes a memory of waiting for the doors to open at an all-ages Jodie Foster’s Army concert on Laclede’s Landing, in St. Louis, as a flooding Mississippi River rages down Wharf Street and heaves up onto the steps of the Gateway Arch. Your mind melting down on mushrooms, watching a husband-and-wife street-performing duo sing “A Day in the Life” while their toddler does laps around you keeping shockingly good time on a tambourine. It’d be cool if we could see the worlds within the songs inside one another’s heads. But I also love how impenetrable it all is. I love that what’s mine can’t be yours, and we still get to call it ours. Songs are the best way I know to make peace with our lack of a shared consciousness.”
17:55 - Read “Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot (Poetry Foundation)
18:15 - Read “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot (Poetry Foundation)
21:48 - The exact quote comes from chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby - "What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?" "Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."
26:55 - Listen to the 2023 mix of “Love Me Do” and the 2009 remaster of the original mono recording by The Beatles
28:00 - Watch “Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song,” a short film about how the song was made using old recordings, new recordings, and modern technology
44:25 - For (much much) more on Jeff and Darron’s experiences with Bob Dylan listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 2 - Our Back Pages from September 2020
This episode was recorded remotely in November 2023
The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti
...more
48min

FAQs about Beautiful Illusions:

How many episodes does Beautiful Illusions have?

The podcast currently has 41 episodes available.