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Big Think
By bigthinkEducation
Big Think episodes
- How psychedelics work, explained in under 6 minutes | Matthew Johnson
How psychedelics work, explained by Johns Hopkins professor Matthew Johnson.
Humans have been consuming psychedelic substances for millennia, but only in the past century have we made significant progress in understanding how they affect the brain and our psychology.We have learned, for example, that psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT cause psychedelic experiences primarily by affecting a particular type of serotonin receptor, while other drugs like ketamine and PCP primarily affect the glutamate system.But there remain open questions about how these biological effects contribute to profound psychological changes in people who take psychedelics. One answer seems to center on how the drugs spark communication between different brain regions. What’s more, psychedelics seem to encourage greater neuroplasticity, meaning the brain becomes primed to learn new things in the wake of a psychedelic experience.Check out this Big Think interview with Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University who explains how psychedelics work, and what researchers hope to uncover about the substances in the future.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Matthew Johnson:Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D., 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. In 2021 he received as principal investigator the first grant in 50 years from the US government for a treatment study with a classic psychedelic, specifically psilocybin in treatment of tobacco addiction. He is also known for his expertise in behavioral economics, addiction, sexual risk behavior, and research with a wide variety of drug classes. He’s been Interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, NPR, Fox News, Fox Business News, BBC and in Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06:30-17
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9 min - What the Navy’s TOPGUN program really teaches you | Guy Snodgrass
TOPGUN fighter pilot Guy Snodgrass shares his 3 key leadership lessons from the cockpit.
Commander Guy Snodgrass is a retired fighter pilot.His intense training and experience in the cockpit helped him craft 10 skills for leadership and personal performance.These lessons apply to everyone from medical doctors to social media influencers.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Guy Snodgrass:Guy Snodgrass is the CEO of Defense Analytics, a national security and foreign policy strategic advisory firm specializing in strategy development, government policy, and technology adoption. Recognized as an influential national security and foreign policy expert, Snodgrass recently published his first book, _Holding the Line_, to incredibly positive reviews. Snodgrass appears as a commentator on CNN, FOX, and multiple international outlets; an opinion contributor to _The Washington Post_, _USA Today_, and other national security outlets; and a prominent commentator to publications such as _Politico_, _The New York Times_, _The Washington Post_, and _Bloomberg_. A career Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot, Commander Snodgrass led combat missions in support of forces on the ground in the Middle East. Subsequently selected as a TOPGUN instructor, he served as the US Navy and Marine Corps expert in air-to-air combat and tactics development.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06:30-17Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
8 min - How to heal trauma without medication | Dr. Essam Daod
The groundbreaking approach to stopping PTSD before it happens.
Bandages, gauze, sterile eye dressings — these are some standard supplies you can expect to find in a first aid kit. But what about tools to help mend the mental and emotional wounds people suffer during traumatic experiences?After traveling to Greece to help Syrian refugees during the height of the refugee crisis, child psychiatrist Essam Daod came to the realization that, just as it’s important to treat physical wounds as quickly as possible, tending to psychic injuries is also an urgent matter.“I think that we have this very short window of opportunity — what I call the “golden hour” — that we can really do the intervention before the, you know, [traumatic] experience can be stored and imprinted in the brain, especially for kids.”In 2015, Daod and his wife started Humanity Crew, an organization that has so far provided more than 32,000 hours of free mental health services to refugees in the Mediterranean. The organization does its best to reframe traumatic experiences for people when it makes sense to do so — for example, helping a young refugee boy who survived a dangerous ocean journey to see himself as a strong and capable hero. This can nudge the mind to store memories as positive experiences instead of traumatic ones.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Dr. Essam Daod:Essam is a psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who grew up in Israel in a small Arab Palestinian village in the Galilee. He specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry and graduated from psychoanalytic school. In 2015, he flew to Greece for a humanitarian rescue mission where he co-founded Humanity Crew and has been working with refugees ever since. Humanity Crew specializes in the provision of psychological aid to refugees and people in crises, working to deploy mental health and psycho social support to displaced populations in order to improve their wellbeing, to restore order in their lives, and to prevent further psychological escalation. Currently, he is an avid refugee mental health activist and researcher who has spoken at countless conferences and media outlets all over the world advocating for the importance of mental health support for refugees. In 2016 Essam and Humanity Crew were awarded "The Defenders of Refugee Rights Award" at the 4th Edition of Cities Defending Human Rights in Barcelona. In 2018, he became a WHO mental health expert team member, and a TED Fellow.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06:30-17
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8 min - Why geniuses hunt demons for sport | Jimena Canales
Jimena Canales shares the “demons” that shaped computer science.
Just like the mailer demons you may have seen pop up on an undelivered email, there are hundreds of other software “demons” that live inside your computer.Whenever a computer completes an automated task, they are said to be done by computer demons.These demons are anthropomorphized figures that help computer scientists understand complicated processes, which in turn drives AI forward.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Jimena Canales:Jimena Canales is an expert in 19th and 20th century history of the physical sciences, working for a better understanding of science and technology in relation to the arts and humanities.She received an M.A. And Ph.D. From Harvard University in the History of Science and a BSc in Engineering Physics from the Tecnológico de Monterrey. Her first book, A Tenth of a Second: A History explored the relation between science and history as one of the central intellectual problems of modern times. Her widely-acclaimed second book, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time has been translated in Chinese, Greek, Spanish and excerpted in other languages. Her third book Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science, covering four-centuries of scientific discovery, is now available.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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9 min - Does free will violate the laws of physics? | Sean Carroll
Sean Carroll: We might solve free will one day. But here’s why I doubt it.
Debates about the existence of free will have traditionally been fought by two competing camps: those who believe in free will and those who don’t because they believe the Universe is deterministic.Determinism is the thesis that every event — from when a volcano erupts to what cereal you buy at the supermarket — is a theoretically predictable result of the long chain of events that came before it. Free will, it was long thought, cannot exist in a world where all events are already causally determined.But free will and determinism aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. As physicist Sean Carroll told Big Think, the compatibilist conception of free will argues that it makes sense to conceptualize ourselves as able to make free decisions, regardless of whether the Universe is deterministic or indeterministic.Why? The main argument centers on the phenomenon of emergence.0:00 Free will vs. Determinism0:27 Determinism0:51 The biggest mistake in the free will debate1:07 Libertarian free will2:39 Compatibilist free will4:01 Objection to compatibilism5:06 The experience of free will----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Sean Carroll:Dr. Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy — in effect, a joint appointment between physics and philosophy — at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Most of his career has been spent doing research on cosmology, field theory, and gravitation, looking at topics such as dark matter and dark energy, modified gravity, topological defects, extra dimensions, and violations of fundamental symmetries. These days, his focus has shifted to more foundational questions, both in quantum mechanics (origin of probability, emergence of space and time) and statistical mechanics (entropy and the arrow of time, emergence and causation, dynamics of complexity), bringing a more philosophical dimension to his work.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06:30-17
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11 min - Is the Metaverse a dystopian nightmare? | Matthew Ball
Two-thirds of our days are spent alone. The Metaverse will bring us together, argues leading Metaverse thinker Matthew Ball.
Will the metaverse lean more toward dystopia or utopia? If you base your answer solely on Hollywood’s vision of the future, you might say the former, considering that blockbusters like “The Matrix” and “Blade Runner” paint an ominous future where technology has helped fuel massive inequality and human suffering.But that’s just one vision. In many ways, humans have been exploring metaverse-like worlds for decades, through text-based role-playing games to “Second Life” to the consumer-grade VR systems that have become popular over the past decade — and we’ve done it all without ushering in a dystopia.The metaverse will soon enable immersive, collaborative, and social experiences that could change not only leisure, but also learning. For young students, the technology could replace paper mache models of volcanoes with something very much like “The Magic School Bus.”That’s not to say there aren’t legitimate concerns about the metaverse, especially when it comes to questions about who owns what in this emerging world. Matthew Ball, author of “The Metaverse,” explains more in this interview with Big Think.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Matthew Ball:Matthew Ball is the CEO of Epyllion, a diversified holding company which makes angel investments, provides advisory services, and produces television, films, and video games. Ball is also a Venture Partner at Makers Fund, Senior Advisor to KKR, Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, and sits on the board of numerous start-ups. His first book, “The Metaverse and How it Will Revolutionize Everything”, was published in July 2022 and became an instant national and international bestseller. Ball is also an “Occasional Contributor” to The Economist, holds bylines at Bloomberg, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and wrote the August 8, 2022 cover story for Time Magazine.--------------------------------------------------06:30-17
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9 min - Future thinking: End the war between you and yourself | Ari Wallach
Futurist Ari Wallach shares how to become future-conscious.
Futurist Ari Wallach knows it can be very difficult, but he's going to need you to think about yourself. Not yourself right now — that's easy to do. You're already doing it! He means thinking about yourself in the future.Keeping what may lie ahead in mind — being future-conscious — makes you more likely to eat right and exercise; more likely to plan ahead financially; more likely to forge strong, healthy relationships and treat people right.Researchers have found we see our future selves like celebrities, like some vaguely knowable figure. And when that extends society-wide, we make decisions that may not benefit us, like spending recklessly or harming the climate for quick gain.Wallach is the founder and executive director of Longpath, an initiative that wants to foster being future-conscious. If you can keep tomorrow in mind, it can be possible to have a better today.0:00 Meet the two yous1:01 The Matt Damon experiment2:41 The 'longpath' mindset----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Ari Wallach:Ari Wallach is an applied futurist and Executive Director of Longpath Labs. He is the author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs by HarperCollins and the creator and host of the forthcoming series on PBS A Brief History of the Future, which is being executive produced by Kathryn Murdoch and Drake. He has been a strategy and foresight advisor to Fortune 100 companies, the US Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the UN Refugee Agency, the RacialEquity 2030 Challenge and Politico’s Long Game Forum. As adjunct associate professor at Columbia University he lectured on innovation, AI, and the future of public policy. Wallach's TED talk on Longpath has been viewed 2.6 million times and translated into 21 languages. Ari was the co-creator of 2008's pro-Obama The Great Schlep with Sarah Silverman. He has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, Vox, and more. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley with his wife, three children and wonderdog Ozzie. More at https://www.longpath.org/---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06:30-17
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8 min - 1 in 3 people cheat. Here’s what to do if you’re the 1 | Michael Slepian
33% of people cheat, and 77% of people want to know about their partner’s infidelity. Would you tell your partner? Michael Slepian, an expert on secrecy, explains how.
About one-third of people have committed infidelity at some point in their lives. If you're one of them, should you confess it to your romantic partner?One way to answer the question is to consider whether you would want to know if your partner had cheated on you: Surveys show that 77% of people would want to know, but that still leaves about a quarter of us who'd prefer ignorance. It's also worth questioning your own motives: Maybe you only want to get the secret off your chest to make yourself feel better.It's a difficult dilemma with no one-size-fits-all solution. But fortunately, as psychologist Michael Slepian explained to Big Think, recent research has been revealing insights on the nature of secrets, what happens when we harbor them, and how and when we should consider getting them off our chest.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Michael Slepian:Michael Slepian is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. He previously was a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and received his Ph.D. From Tufts University. He is an elected fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, has received the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, and received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06:30-17
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8 min - Shortcuts are killing humanity. It’s time to meet the alternative. | Ari Wallach
Short-term thinkers take shortcuts. Take the longpath instead, explains futurist Ari Wallach.
Long-term planning is tough. With all of the pressures and distractions of daily life, it’s often a hassle to stop and consider whether what we’re doing at any given moment is putting us on track toward our future goals. And if the answer is no, it often takes even more effort to consciously change course and sacrifice immediate gratification for long-term gain.Long-term thinking is difficult for anyone, but especially for those living paycheck to paycheck. Does that mean “longtermism” is only for the privileged? The answer is no, according to the futurist Ari Wallach, author of "Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs."Although it might be harder for some people to consider how our current actions will affect the future, it’s a moral question that we all should ask ourselves.Chapters:
0:00 What is ‘longpath’ thinking?
1:33 Take the pause2:16 Who is taking shortcuts?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Ari Wallach:Ari Wallach is an applied futurist and Executive Director of Longpath Labs. He is the author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs by HarperCollins and the creator and host of the forthcoming series on PBS A Brief History of the Future, which is being executive produced by Kathryn Murdoch and Drake. He has been a strategy and foresight advisor to Fortune 100 companies, the US Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the UN Refugee Agency, the RacialEquity 2030 Challenge and Politico’s Long Game Forum. As adjunct associate professor at Columbia University he lectured on innovation, AI, and the future of public policy. Wallach's TED talk on Longpath has been viewed 2.6 million times and translated into 21 languages. Ari was the co-creator of 2008's pro-Obama The Great Schlep with Sarah Silverman. He has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, Vox, and more. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley with his wife, three children and wonderdog Ozzie. More at https://www.longpath.org/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06:30-17
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7 min - Your life’s most important moments are flukes, not fate | Brian Klaas
“When you start to accept that you have profound influence on the world, but very limited control, you start to see the world differently.”
We like to believe that everything happens for a reason. But what if that belief is a comforting illusion? Political scientist Brian Klaas argues that randomness, not reason, drives much of human life.The stories we tell ourselves about cause and effect aren’t reflections of truth, rather, they’re coping mechanisms to make chaos feel like order.0:00 The limits of control0:30 Does everything happen for a reason?1:58 Science and chaos2:27 Religion and the scientific revolution4:23 Making sense of patterns6:56 “The delusion of individualism”----------------------------------------------------------------------------------About Brian Klaas:Dr. Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London, an affiliate researcher at the University of Oxford, and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is also the author five books, including Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (2024) and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us (2021). Klaas writes the popular The Garden of Forking Paths Substack and created the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, which has been downloaded roughly three million times.Klaas is an expert on democracy, authoritarianism, American politics, political violence, elections, and the nature of power. Additionally, his research interests include contingency, chaos theory, evolutionary biology, the philosophy of science and social science, and complex systems. In addition to Fluke and Corruptible, Klaas authored three earlier books: The Despot's Apprentice: Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy (Hurst & Co, 2017); The Despot's Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy, (Oxford University Press, 2016) and How to Rig an Election (Yale University Press, co-authored with Professor Nic Cheeseman; 2018).-----------------------------------------06:30-17
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