See See by Ceci

In this episode of See See by Ceci, Paul Thagard, one of the most influential thinkers at the crossroads of philosophy, psychology, and artificial intelligence, takes us on a journey through the architecture of thought, emotion, and coherence that defines the human mind.

A distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, recipient of the Killam and Molson Prizes, and author of eighteen books, Thagard has spent decades asking the hardest questions about intelligence: what it is, where it comes from, and whether machines will ever truly share it with us. His pioneering theory of explanatory coherence reimagines the brain not as a logic machine but as a coherence engine, a system that makes sense of the world by satisfying countless constraints simultaneously, weaving perception, reasoning, and emotion into a single fabric.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Thagard reflects on the difference between intelligence and consciousness; on the devastating role of social media in the spread of misinformation; on the power of analogy as a tool of creativity, from Darwin's theory of natural selection to the everyday act of reading a stranger's gesture. And on why computers, despite their cognitive capacities, remain fundamentally psychopathic. "They are highly intelligent," he says, "but they lack empathy and are therefore incapable of caring."

That incapacity sits at the heart of the episode's most urgent theme: the alarming rise of human-AI relationships, and what we risk losing when we mistake imitation for intimacy.

Drawing on his recent book Dreams, Jokes, and Songs: How Brains Build Consciousness and the forthcoming AI Boom or Doom?, Thagard offers a remarkably clear-eyed view of minds both human and artificial, one that is at once scientifically rigorous and deeply humane.

This is an episode about the mind as a coherence engine: hot and cold, rational and emotional, individual and social. About how neurons firing together can produce something as extraordinary as humor, as mysterious as dreams, and as dangerous as political delusion. And about the light, and the peril, that lies ahead as human and artificial intelligence continue to converge.

Links & Info

Paul Thagard, [email protected]

Academic webpage: https://uwaterloo.ca/complexity-innovation/profiles/paul-thagard

Others:

In this episode you heard as background for the Marina Viotti’s excerpt: Music: Antonio Vivaldi, “Armatae face et anguibus” from Juditha Triumphans (RV 644). Marina Viotti, mezzo-soprano; Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal; Andrés Gabetta, conductor. From the album Prime Donne (Château de Versailles Spectacles, 2026).

Most useful links for Thagard's ECHO model:

Cambridge Core — the original published article: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/explanatory-coherence/E05CB61CD64C26138E794BC601CC9D7A

PhilPapers — with commentary and citations: https://philpapers.org/rec/THAECP

What happens when a photographer trades the vast clarity of Mediterranean ruins for the darkness of a prehistoric cave?

LINKS & INFO:

Let yourself be drawn into the world of one of the most prolific, shape- shifting presences in 21st century music. Vijay Iyer is a Grammy-nominated composer, pianist, bandleader, and the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University. He is a MacArthur Fellow, described by The New York Times as “a social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway.”

In a profound conversation, Vijay Iyer takes us on a journey of discovery, into what embodied cognition truly means and where music begins. He invites us to explore the extraordinary phenomenon of synchrony: how musicians lock into pulse together, and how an entire audience can exhale as one at the close of a performance.

Iyer speaks of live music as a form of ritual, a collective agreement to step out of everyday life and into something else, together. He also reflects with great warmth on his collaborations with artists such as the drummer Tyshawn Sorey and the legendary trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, describing the deep listening, humility, and compassion that make their music possible. He opens our eyes to think deeply about jazz, “not as style of music but an act of freedom.” Music, he insists, should truly be listened to as a human action, asking ourselves who made it, where they were, and how they found each other.

This episode is a powerful and loving reminder that music is, first and foremost, a live, shared, visceral, mutually embodied experience, and that within it lies the recognition of a deep longing we carry always: to come back to the experience of that timeless space where two souls meet in the act of listening.

LINKS & INFO:

https://vijay-iyer.com

In this episode you heard Vijay Iyer’s music from his albums “Compassion”, “Defiant Life” and briefly “Thereupon”

WHERE CAN I GET VIJAY IYER'S MUSIC?

https://linktr.ee/vijayiyer

MUSIC COPYRIGHTS AND CREDITS

Album: “Compassion” by Vijay Iyer Trio: Vijay Iyer, Linda May-Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey (ECM Records, 2024) © ECM Records GmbH, Under exclusive license to Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music.

Tracks from the Album Compassion© featured in this episode:

Overjoyed by Vijay Iyer Trio: Vijay Iyer, Linda May-Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey (ECM Records, 2024). © ECM Records GmbH, Under exclusive license to Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music.

It Goes; by Vijay Iyer Trio: Vijay Iyer, Linda May-Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey (ECM Records, 2024). © ECM Records GmbH, Under exclusive license to Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music.

Ghostrumental; by Vijay Iyer Trio: Vijay Iyer, Linda May-Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey (ECM Records, 2024). © ECM Records GmbH, Under exclusive license to Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music.

Free Spirits/Drummers Song by Vijay Iyer Trio: Vijay Iyer, Linda May-Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey (ECM Records, 2024). © ECM Records GmbH, Under exclusive license to Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music.

Album: “Defiant Life” by Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith

Tracks from the album “Defiant Life”© featured in this episode:

Sumud by Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith

Floating River Requiem (for Patrice Lumumba) by Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith

Procession: Defiant Life by Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith

Embracing Difference from the Album “Thereupon” by Fieldwork: Steve Lehman, Vijay Iyer & Tyshawn Sorey. (PI Recordings, 2025). © Pi Recordings

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

https://music.fas.harvard.edu/people/vijay-iyer

Article mentioned in our conversation: Embodied Mind, Situated Cognition, and Expressive Microtiming in African-American Music

In this episode of See See by Ceci, we journey hundreds of thousands of years into the past, to the flickering firelight and painted depths of Ice Age caves.

What did it mean to live embedded in the landscape, wearing it “like a big cape”? How did the mastery of fire reshape not only our bodies but our minds? And what can we learn from the haunting images left deep within caves—some meant to be seen, others engraved in darkness, never intended for any eye but the spirit world?

In conversation with Paul Bahn one of the world’s leading authorities on prehistoric rock art, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and author of over one hundred publications including the award-winning Images of the Ice Age, and Elle Clifford, psychologist and researcher specializing in Ice Age life whose work on cave art and mythological worlds illuminates the social and psychological dimensions of our earliest ancestors. Co-hosted by acclaimed Italian landscape photographer Domingo Milella, this episode invites us to stand face to face with those who came before, and to see ourselves reflected in the first marks they left behind.

Everyday Life:

Living in the Ice Age:

Making Art in the Ice Age:

Cave Art: A Guide to the Ice Age Decorated Caves of Europe:

Images of the Ice Age:

Andante Travels:

Martin Randall Travel:

Archaeological Institute of America tours:

In this episode you heard as background music for Vijay Iyer’s excerpt:

What is the mind? Where does it begin, and where does it end?Season IV of See See by Ceci takes you on a 16-episode journey through the mysteries of consciousness: from the first spark of awareness in prehistoric caves to the frontiers of AI and the future of human identity.Featuring Harvard neuroscientist Rudolph Tanzi on Alzheimer’s and the self, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist on the divided brain, Pulitzer finalist Andrew Solomon on the shadows of the mind, global mental health pioneer Vikram Patel, and trauma specialist Richard Mollica on invisible wounds and healing. We explore intelligence beyond the human: Toby Kiers reveals the hidden networks of fungal intelligence, Carl Safina takes us into the beautiful wild minds of animals. Jazz visionary Vijay Iyer shows us the music within embodied cognition, while four-time Grammy winning drummer, producer and conceptualist Terri Lyne Carrington explores rhythm as the mind’s ancestral gatekeeper. Philosopher Katherine Hayles traces the posthuman mind from bacteria to AI, Stephen Cave examines intelligence and immortality, and neurosurgeon Eben Alexander shares what lies beyond, when the mind becomes unbound. From choreographer Alexander Whitley on digital bodies to photographer Domingo Milella on caves as timeless mind spaces, and archaeologists Paul Bahn and Elle Clifford on humanity’s first leap to consciousness. At a moment when technology is reshaping who we are, when mental health has become a global reckoning, and when the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence blur, we ask: what awaits our species? And what kind of mind will carry us forward?

In this final episode of our third season GUTS, we dive deep into the mysterious world of parapsychology with one of the field’s foremost experts, Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and Associated Distinguished Professor of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Known for his pioneering work on real magic and mind-matter interactions, Dr. Radin explains what real magic truly is and why psi phenomena—like telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition—continue to occur in our everyday lives, yet remain taboo subjects in modern science. He shares how his fascination with these phenomena developed and how he’s approached them through rigorous scientific study.

Also in this episode, Dr. Dean brilliantly explains the idea of a multi-dimensional reality within the framework of quantum mechanics, shedding light on how parapsychological phenomena fit into a new understanding of the universe. Dr. Radin also gives us an inside look into the StarGate Program—a classified program by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency that took place during and after the Cold War- while letting us glance an eye into the exploration of real psychic abilities and the delving into the issue of whether psi skills are inherited or can be cultivated through training.

During a fascinating conversation, Dr. Radin also discusses his lab’s groundbreaking experiments, like the intriguing gut feelings experiment dubbed “Telly-Belly”, or those exploring psi genetic characteristics, including those performed through CRISPR and RNA technology for gene editing.

Join us in this fantastic closing episode in a mind-expanding conversation with Dean Radin through which he helps us uncover the science behind the seemingly impossible and challenge our understanding of reality and ourselves.

*Dr Dean Radin is a leading expert in the field of parapsychology. His research has included studies of individual and collective mind-matter interactions, precognition, clairvoyance, distant healing, and telepathy. He served five times as President of the Parapsychological Association, an elected affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and was co-editor-in-chief for the Elsevier journal Explore, from 2009 to 2022.

https://www.deanradin.com

https://noetic.org/profile/dean-radin/

https://thevisioneers.ca/visionary-leaders-2/leaders/dr-dean-radin

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/2925230.Dean_Radin

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In this episode, we have an in-depth conversation with Andrei Ioniță, the prodigious Romanian cellist and winner of the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition. We explore the emotional profundities and rich spectrum of colors that the cello can evoke, and how it reflects the subtleties of human emotion. Andrei shares his thoughts on playing Bach, discussing the personal connection he has with his instrument and his journey as a musician.

He also reflects on the nuances of gut strings, the importance of good posture for a cellist, the physical sensation of the cello resting against his body, and how this intimate embrace influences emotional expression and depth of sound, particularly in the intense, low register passages. In this episode dedicated to music, Andrei also discusses his Romanian heritage and how the voice of Romania speaks through his bow, offering a personal insight into his cultural identity. In this episode, he takes us inside his experience during the 15th Tchaikovsky Competition and talks about his most difficult decisions as a musician.

Most powerfully, Andrei opens up about how he conveys his whole soul through his music, sharing the courage it takes to be vulnerable and break through at the highest emotional peaks, only to let go and invite the listener into a shared human experience through his playing. This episode is a real treat for the ears and the heart! Andrei Ioniță's carrier it's a journey of emotional reflection and artistic courage – You’ll understand what it is meant to “play from the gut”.

Website:

This episode’s Playlist and Playlist’s credits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6dyn2LRxVo

· Brett, Dean. 11 Oblique Strategies No. 1. Listen to the Quiet Voice. Performed by Andrei Ioniță. On Oblique Strategies. Orchid Classics ORC100096, 2019. CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzaCNTlJciI

· Dmitri Shostakovich. Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107 with the Draft. Performed by Andrei Ionuț Ioniță Orchestra of the Shostakovich State Academic Saint Petersburg Philharmonic conducted by Nikolai Alexeev. Cello: Final Round - Candidate #2 - First Prize - Recorded at the Grand Hall of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia, on June 28, 2015, 7:45 p.m.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfkQt0gSiJI

· Rachmaninoff, Sergei: Sonata -Moll OP 19. Lento- Allegro moderato. 2. Allegro scherzando. 3 Andante. 4 Allegro mosso. Performed by Andrei Ioniță and Andrei Ioniță (Violoncello), Catalin Serban (Piano). Kammermusik am Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung in Zusammenarbeit mit Konzertleben e.V. January 17th, 2024.

Albums: Available in all Platforms

Join us for a cool, bold and inspiring episode for food lovers, where fine dining meets fearless creativity. Our guest, Chef René Frank, takes us back to the heart of his childhood kitchen, where aromas, flavors and memories first ignited his passion for food. Amid the clatter of pots and the warmth of home-cooked meals, his journey is one that would take courage, vision, and relentless curiosity to transform him into one of the world's most groundbreaking pastry chefs.

https://www.rene-frank.de

*This episode is cohosted by European interior designer Petra van Veelen

Why is the fight for better food, at its heart, a fight for social justice? 

Blog: 

Have you ever pondered the potential of psychology to facilitate the apprehension of serial killers and rapists? Or the manner in which behavioral patterns exhibited by criminals can serve as crucial evidence that leads investigators to the perpetrator's doorstep? In today's episode, we are delighted to have the privilege of hosting Professor David Canter, a globally renowned applied social psychologist and the pioneering figure behind the field of investigative psychology.

This episode promises a deep dive into the mind of a criminal, the psychology behind some of the world's most notorious cases. So, grab a pen, your notebook and follow Professor David Canter through the dark alleys of the minds of serial offenders as he sheds light on how their behavior is mapped and tracked. We'll go back in time to the streets of London as we examine famous cases such as Jack the Ripper, and travel back to the 1980s to learn about Operation Hart, the Metropolitan Police's investigation into the infamous 'Railway Rapist', which Professor Canter played a key role in solving.

We will delve into the heart of criminal behavior as we learn about Quantico and the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, and the truth about criminal profiling. We'll also talk about his revolutionary development of geographical profiling, the study of criminal behavior patterns across locations, the importance of information classification and investigative methods that lead to an arrest, and how these pieces of the puzzle led to the creation of his software, DRAGNETK.

But that's not all - Prof Canter will also share his thoughts on why the United States has such a high incidence of brutal shootings and serial killings compared to other nations, and what happens when crime goes unpunished.

A pioneer and creator of investigative psychology, Professor Canter is Emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool and a visiting professor at Liverpool Hope University and Bucks New University. He's also the man responsible for introducing environmental psychology to the UK and Europe in the 1960s, studying how spaces such as offices, schools and hospitals affect our behavior.  Professor Canter recently completed a PhD in Music composition.

https://www.davidcanter.com