What do the National Institutes of Health (NIH) do, and who works there? Rolf and Joe talk to Dr. Bradley Cooke, who works at the NIH as a Program Director in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases (located within the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases). Dr. Cooke talks about the research he conducted when he was in the academic world, including work on the biology of attraction and sex differences in the brain, and then discusses how the NIH monitors and guides the national research agenda, some of the essential and groundbreaking research the NIH has funded, as well as exciting research trends coming our way.

Fresh from Psychedelic Science 2025, Dr. Steve Levine, the chief patient officer at Compass Pathways, talks to us about new Phase 3 results for psilocybin in treating depression.

Joe reports back from the Psychedelic Science conference held recently again in Denver, Colorado. After some discussion about the conference, Joe speaks with Balasz Szigeti (who was on the podcast in 2023) about his recent work on the "Placebo Suppression Effect" in psychedelic research.

Joe and Rolf talk to blind activist and friend of the show Josh Miele.  Josh, a MacArthur Genuis Award winner and prodigious sushi eater, has just come out with a new autobiographical book called "Connecting Dots: A Blind Life".   We talk about his life growing up  in Park Slope, his freewheeling youth, the dog vs. cane debate, and his career as a blind accessibility scientist and inventor.

Rolf and Joe talk to NYU philosopher Jeff Sebo about his new book "The Moral Circle", which makes the case for expanding our circle of who is deserving of ethical consideration to nonhuman animals, insects, plants, and AI systems.

Rolf and Joe wrap up their 3-part series on dreaming with Finnish neuroscientist and philosopher Antti Revonsuo. Dr. Revonsuo is the originator of the Threat Simulation theory of dreams, which suggests that dreams are simulated worlds in which we may practice threatening situations. Topics include the history and methodology in dream research, how our brains create simulated worlds, the particular nature of the simulated dream world, and how this applies to waking consciousness. We base our discussion on three forthcoming papers:

Revonsuo, A. (in press) Toward a Metaphysics of Consciousness: Science and the Fundamental Nature of Subjective Experience. To appear in The Scientific Study of Consciousness: Experimental and Theoretical Approaches. (Springer Nature).

Revonsuo, A. & Tuominen, J. (in press) The Concept of Dreaming as a World. To appear in Threshold Worlds (Oxford University Press).

Revonsuo, A., Valli, K., & Tuominen, J. (in preparation) Evolutionary Simulation Theories of Dreaming.

In their second episode in a series on dreaming, Joe and Rolf are joined by Dr. Pilleriin Sikka, a Stanford neuroscientist who is currently studying the therapeutic value of dreams under anesthesia. 

Hack, L. M., Sikka, P., Zhou, K., Kawai, M., Chow, H. S., & Heifets, B. (2024). Reduction in Trauma-Related Symptoms After Anesthetic-Induced Intra-Operative Dreaming. American Journal of Psychiatry, 181(6), 563-564.

https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230698

Why do we dream, and what is the meaning of our dreams? Rolf and Joe talk about several ideas about dreaming, including a new theory by David Eagleman called the "defensive activation theory", which proposes that dreams are like a screen saver to keep the visual parts of the brain from being overtaken by other senses.

Eagleman, D. M., & Vaughn, D. A. (2020). The Defensive Activation theory: dreaming as a mechanism to prevent takeover of the visual cortex. bioRxiv, 2020-07.

Daniel Dennett, who passed away on April 19th at the age of 82, was one of the great philosophers of our time. Rolf and Joe discuss his ideas and his influence on the field of philosophy, including (especially) bringing consciousness back as a topic of serious study with his book "Consciousness Explained", as well as his work on free will, evolution, religion, and constructing a convincing argument.

What can neuroscience teach us about AI, and vice versa, what can AI teach us about our own intelligence?

Joe and Rolf talk to returning guest Daniel Sternberg about advances in AI over the past year. Topics include using the methods of cognitive psychology to understand AI; representation in artificial intelligence; what current large language models  (LLMs) are good at and not good at; sentience in AI; the future of humanity; and other important stuff.

Natural and Artificial Intelligence: A brief introduction to the interplay between AI and neuroscience research (Macpherson, et al., 2021)

Can AI language models replace human participants? (Dillion, et al., 2023)

Language models show human-like content effects on reasoning (Dasgupta et al., 2022)