Both a recap and extensive update of last summer's conversation about neuroscience, consciousness, and the medical potential of video games.

Did the product of an alien intelligence make a near-Earth approach last fall? Harvard Astronomy Department Chair Avi Loeb believes this is possible.

Amazing work at Stanford could restore vision to the blind. Then later become a gateway some mind-blowing neural augmentation! We discuss the astounding neuroscience and engineering behind all this, with the professor who's making it happen.

This spring, Yale evolutionary psychologist Laurie Santos debuted a course about happiness, almost as an experiment. It became the most popular course in the university's 300+ year history. Listen carefully, because this episode could make you happier!

Can humankind survive this century? Great Britain’s Astronomer Royal Martin Rees shares some of his profoundly original thinking on this fraught question.

Dark matter, dark energy, and black holes are the universe's three most massive mysteries. Literally! Yale astrophysicist Priya Natarajan takes us on a fascinating tour of them all. 

Andrew Youn's One Acre Found is bringing food security to hundreds of thousands of families throughout Central Africa. Now THAT'S an inspiring startup!

The genetic code of Neanderthals, archaic humans, and other elders is reconfiguring much of our understanding of human history. And it could just save hundreds of thousands of modern human lives per year.

A bold and brilliant refutation of the common wisdom about sexual attraction, aesthetics, and more. Rick Prum is an evolutionary heretic. And the wellspring of his unorthodox ideas is ... Charles Darwin himself.

The full lowdown on where this podcast is going from here.