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Adam Bulli is a psychologist who recently collaborated with two other psychologists, Thomas Sootendorf and Jonathan Redshaw, on a book called The Invention of Tomorrow. They talk about how the ability to mentally time travel evolved over evolution and what role it's played in human history. In another part of this episode, Sean Carroll explains why he thinks we are uniquely able to imagine ourselves at different moments of time in different situations.

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that haven’t yet happened. This simple ability underlies our capability to organize socially and make contracts with other people. Today’s guest, psychologist Adam Bulley, argues that it’s the primary feature that makes us recognizably human, as he argues in the new book The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight (with Thomas Suddendorf and Jonathan Redshaw).

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Adam Bulley received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Queensland. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, and the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

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