The Inverse Correlation Between the Longevity of the Paper and the Interesting of the Research

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"I don't really, when I look at the last 20 years, I don't see like a major breakthrough," he says. "There's no breakthrough in the level of the breakthrough that have been present in physics." He thinks we will make inexorable progress toward understanding but wonders if it'll be a linear process or just accumulating more and more data.

While operating on a 16-year-old girl who suffered from severe seizures, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried stumbled on the region of the brain that makes us laugh. To neuroscientist Patrick House, Fried's ability to produce laughter surgically raises deep and disconcerting questions about how the brain works. Join Fried, House, and EconTalk's Russ Roberts for a live broadcast from Jerusalem's Shalem College that is a sequel of sorts to House's earlier appearance on EconTalk. House and Fried discuss the mystery of consciousness and try to square the biological bases for emotions with the circle of our humanity.