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Aug 17, 2023 • 1h 9min

VAMPIRES and SLAVIC FOLKLORE with Prof. Stanley Stepanic

Stanley Stepanic is an Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. To date he has published three textbooks that have been released in recent editions - these are "Dracula or the Timeless Path of the Vampire," "Russian and East European Film", and "Russian Folklore". In addition to such publications, Professor Stepanic has been very active in the public sphere, giving a variety of presentations, primarily concerning the VAMPIRE.We talk about vampire origins, Count Dracula, the Blood Countess, Nosferatu, symbolism, vampire incarnations in pop culture and... Morbius.
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Jul 29, 2023 • 1h 8min

SUPERSTITION and IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOUR with Prof. Stuart Vyse

Stuart Vyse is a behavioral scientist and writer with a PhD in psychology and BA and MA degrees in English Literature. He's a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, as well as a contributing editor for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. His first book, Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. In 2020 he wrote a book called Superstition, published by Oxford press - who also released his latest book, The Uses of Delusion: Why It’s Not Always Rational to be Rational. We talk about black cats, Friday the 13th, Zodiac, delusions, the futility of Twitter debates and my addiction to fortune telling.
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Jul 11, 2023 • 52min

Dreams with Professor Patrick McNamara: Lucid and Demonic, Nightmares, REM Sleep, Sleep Paralysis and Dreams within Dreams

Professor Patrick McNamara has over 15 years of experience working directly on the problem of the nature and function of dreaming. He has been the recipient of grant awards from the National Institutes of Health, to further study sleep and was awarded the Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Boston University. He did a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Aphasia Research Center, Boston VA Medical Center. He has published over 50 scientific papers as well as several books on the neuroscience of dreams. We talk about the neuroscience and evolution of dreaming, but also about REM sleep, the function of nightmares, demonic possession dreams, sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming and dreams within dreams.
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May 18, 2023 • 55min

In the Eye of the Storm: QAnon and (other) conspiracy theories with Mike Rothschild

Mike Rothschild is a journalist and author, focused on the intersections between internet culture and politics as seen through the dark glass of conspiracy theories. Since 2018, he has specialized in examining the QAnon conspiracy cult and is one of the first journalists to reveal its connections to past conspiracy theories. He is the author of the seminal work on QAnon, "The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.""We talk about QAnon's humble beginnings, it's meteoric rise and it's status after the 2020 presidential election... We also discuss conspiracy theories in general, as well as Bill Gates, the Reptoids, JFK, the attempted coup in Germany, the pervasive underlying thread of anti-Semitism, and of course, the infamous "Mattress Conspiracy."
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May 3, 2023 • 51min

"Why We Believe?" with Professor Agustín Fuentes

Agustín Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. His research focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations.He has written many books, but we mostly discuss his latest one, which is called "Why we believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being;" in it Professor Fuentes examines our capacity to believe.We also talk about the effects our minds have on our bodies and health, the genesis of our belief systems, the importance of travelling and education, and the enormous influence of figures, such as Joe Rogan, on public opinion.
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Apr 9, 2023 • 1h 4min

"Is Consciousness a Controlled Hallucination?" With Professor Anil Seth

Anil Seth is a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. His latest 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 and a Guardian Science Book of the Year. His TED talk on consciousness has more than 13 million views and is one of TED’s most popular science talks. We talk about ChatGPT, the possibility of conscious machines, the illusory nature of reality and our ability to perceive it, as well as about his research on (human) consciousness as a controlled hallucination.
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Mar 21, 2023 • 46min

Cannibalism with Professor Bill Schutt

Bill Schutt is Professor Emeritus of biology at LIU Post and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the author of Dark Banquet: Blood and The Curious Lives of the Blood-Feeding Creatures and Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, which is his latest book. In 2017 he published an astonishing book called Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, which is what we discuss in this episode... We also talk about cannibalism's rise in contemporary Hollywood, Christopher Columbus, 2Pac and Keith Richards.Oh, and we can't get past the time Professor Schutt ate a woman's placenta while doing research for his book.
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Mar 2, 2023 • 55min

The Manosphere with dr. Lisa Sugiura

Dr. Lisa Sugiura is a Reader in Cybercrime and Gender at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth, Themes Strategic Innovation Fellow and the Deputy Director of the Cybercrime Awareness Clinic. Her research focuses on online deviance, and technology facilitated gender-based abuse and sexual violence. She has published on topics including the online pharmaceutical trade, online research ethics, and rape culture online. She is the author of the books: Respectable deviance and The incel rebellion: the rise of the manosphere and the virtual war against women.We talk about the Andrew Tate "phenomenon", different Manosphere groups, the Red and Black pill concepts, Incels and the dangers of (self-)indoctrination.
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Feb 2, 2023 • 1h 1min

Human Origins with Chris Stringer

Join Professor Chris Stringer, Research Leader in Human Origins at The Natural History Museum London and Fellow of the Royal Society, as he discusses human evolution, the demise of the Neanderthals, genetic links to addictive behaviors, the challenges faced by early humans, cave paintings, and the positive image of Neanderthals.
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Jan 12, 2023 • 1h 5min

The Scandalous Life of Emperor Augustus' Only Daughter with The Partial Historians

The Partial Historians is a renowned podcast about ancient Roman history, hosted by historians dr. Fiona Radford and dr. Peta Greenfield, who discuss, spar, and laugh their way through different aspects of the Roman world...We talk about the first Roman Emperor's scandalous daughter, Julia the Elder, but also about sassy Roman parties, unforgivable affairs and the endless cycle of the struggle for power.

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