Nine Questions with Eric Oliver

Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. He was recently an Engagement Fellow with the Wellcome Trust. His new book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness is a Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller, a New Statesman Book of the Year, an Economist Book of the Year, a Bloomberg Business Book of the Year, a Guardian Book of the Week , an El Pais Book of the Week, and a Guardian and Financial Times Science Book of the Year.  His 2017 main-stage TED talk  has more than 14 million views and is one of TED’s most popular science talks.Support the show

Former Congressman Steve Israel left Capitol Hill – unindicted and undefeated – to pursue a career as a writer. He heads the non-partisan Cornell University Institute of Politics and Global Affairs in New York City.Israel was a Member of Congress for sixteen years. He left in 2017, having served as House Democrats chief political strategist between 2011-2015 as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. President Bill Clinton called him “one of the most thoughtful Members of Congress.” Which, Israel states, isn’t really saying much at all.Israel is a regular political commentator on MSNBC. His insights appear regularly in the New York Times, The Atlantic Magazine, as well as The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.- - - - - - - - - - - - -Tim Ryan is an American politician who served as a U.S. representative for Ohio from 2003 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Ohio's 13th congressional district from 2013 to 2023. Ryan's district included a large swath of northeastern Ohio, from Youngstown to Akron. He was the Democratic nominee in the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio.In March 2012, Hay House published Ryan's A Mindful Nation, a book about the practice of mindfulness in both private and public life. In October 2014, the same publisher published Ryan's The Real Food Revolution.Support the show

Eric Oliver is  Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.  He studies American politics, public opinion, political psychology, local politics, racial attitudes, the politics of science, and the self.Recent research papers examine why Americans believe in conspiracy theories, how credulous Americans are about misinformation, why 2016 was a populist election, and why liberals and conservatives name their children differently.His most recent book, Enchanted America argues that the major political divisions in this country are not simply defined by party, ideology, or race but by worldview.  The gap between “intuitionists” and “rationalists” can account for much of what is bizarre and troubling about American politics today.He is currently working on a new book called The Intelligible Self.Support the show

Amy Owen is a birth doula, meditation teacher, and yoga instructor in Chicago.  She started her career in the 1980s as a fashion model and began practicing mediation in her early 20s. A few years later she learned yoga and has been teaching yoga since 2008.  She created the outreach prenatal yoga program serving Northwestern Hospital’s ambulatory care patients and piloted the Yoga For Recovery BAMS program bringing prenatal yoga to expectant inmates at Cook County Jail. Support the show

Tom Turcich is a writer, motivational speaker, and adventurer.  After the early death of a close friend, he decided to walk around the entire globe.  He spent several years planning this journey and seven years actually doing it.  Along the way he faced sickness, theft and other numerous challenges.  But he also met incredible people and discovered how people all over the world are coming up with local solutions to problems ranging from climate change to social justice.Support the show

Susan Goldin-Meadow is the Beardsley Rumi Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Human Development, and the Committee on Education at the University of Chicago.  She has won numerous awards and written several books on language and gesture including her latest book: Thinking With Your Hands: The Surprising Science Behind How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts, that just came out this year.Support the show

Alan Lightman is a professor of humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In addition to publishing numerous scientific papers in physics on the nature of gravity, he has published the best selling novels Einstein’s Dreams and The Diagnosis, which was a finalist for a national book award.  He recently hosted the tv series “Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science” which aired on PBS earlier this year.Support the show

Rama Ranganathan, M.D. Ph.D. is a Joseph Regenstein Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. Rama’s research has focused the atomic and cellular structure, function, and evolution in biological systems. His work has led to new models for the architecture of natural proteins. He is also the director of BioCARS beamline, a national user facility for structural biology at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.For more info on Rama's work please go here.Support the show

Richard Lang is Co-ordinator of the Shollond Trust, the UK charity set up in 1996 to help share the Headless Way as widely as possible in the world. He first saw who he really was when he attended a workshop with Douglas Harding in 1970. He is committed to making this Vision as widely available as possible.  He has written two books, Seeing Who You Really Are in 2003 and Open to the Source - Selected Teachings of Douglas Harding in 2005.  He has also produced many videos which are available on the Headless Way YouTube channel.Support the show

Stephanie Arnold is an American producer and author. In 2013, she was clinically dead for 37 seconds after suffering an amniotic fluid embolism immediately after giving birth to her second child. In her book, 37 Seconds, she recounts this event and her life afterwards. It was said that she predicted her flatlining and details of how it would happen before it happened and stunned doctors with how, during her time clinically dead, she was able to tell them exact details about what was happening around her, when she was resuscitated.Support the show