The Wonderstruck Podcast with Elizabeth Rovere

The Forgotten Wisdom of Dreams with Dreamworker Toko-pa Turner

25 views · 2h ago · 1:14:57

Guest: Dreamworker Toko-pa Turner

Every night, you make images as surely as you breathe. Dream worker, author and mystic Toko-pa Turner believes those images are anything but random. She sees dreaming as the psyche’s way of healing itself, much as skin quietly knits back together after a cut. Even nightmares may be a sign that something is ready to come into consciousness.

Topics: Dreaming of the Hypogeum Before I Knew It Existed · The Symbolism of the Spider · Why Nightmares Are the Most Powerful · We Are Nature: Dreams and Self-Healing · How Rationalism Made Us Dismiss Dreams · Living With a "Second Attention"

We All Walk Anticlockwise, and Nobody Knows Why. Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe

379 views · 1d ago · 5:37

People who are told to just walk tend to drift leftward. The tendency is so reliable that track races are run anticlockwise, but nobody is sure why. Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe thinks science has been looking in the wrong place. In this clip, he argues the body can’t be separated from its movement or from the moving world around it.

What Happens When Reality Cracks? An Address by Bayo Akomolafe

1.3K views · 1w ago · 44:30

In this talk, post-activist philosopher and poet Bayo Akomolafe draws on Yoruba cosmology, Black Studies and his experience raising his autistic son to argue that the cracks in our models of reality are not sites to smooth over. They are invitations to meet the world differently.

Topics: Tectopoetics and Unstable Ground · Yoruba Cosmology, Eshu and the Cracks · Why Do Humans Walk Counterclockwise? · What My Autistic Son Taught Me · Accommodations and Forgetting · The Paraterranean

We Can Never Know If We See The Same World with Donald Hoffman

1.7K views · 1w ago · 9:13

Guest: Donald Hoffman

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman explains why he has no way of knowing whether your experience of the world is anything like his, why language only ever captures structure and never experience itself, and why he believes that, among all possible observers, having a body may be the rare exception rather than the rule.

Why Science and Spirituality Need Each Other with Donald Hoffman and John Vervaeke

769 views · 2w ago · 6:28

Guests: Donald Hoffman, John Vervaeke

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman explains why every scientific theory rests on assumptions it cannot prove, why he thinks science and spirituality each hold half of the picture, and why physicists increasingly suspect that space and time, the bedrock of physics for a century, are not fundamental. In conversation with John Vervaeke.

“Science Will Never Be Anywhere Near the Truth”: Donald Hoffman with John Vervaeke

25K views · 3w ago · 56:01

Guest: John Vervaeke

Cognitive scientists Donald Hoffman and John Vervaeke explore the relationship between consciousness, perception and reality. Hoffman argues that perception is an interface, like a virtual reality headset we put on that presents us with a simplified version of reality, showing us what we need to navigate the world rather than revealing it as it is. The reality behind this interface, he suggests, may be utterly unlike anything we perceive in objective reality.

Topics: Interface Theory of Perception explained · Fitness vs truth: what evolution shaped us to see · Vervaeke on relevance realization · Why there’s no scientific theory of everything · Science and the wisdom traditions · Collective intelligence and Michael Levin

Uncertainty Is A Path Towards Truth with Dr. Iain McGilchrist

1.6K views · 3w ago · 10:27

Guest: Dr. Iain McGilchrist

In an age of polarisation, where one side must be right and the other wrong, Dr. Iain McGilchrist makes the case for uncertainty, always staying open to what we might be missing, and learning through the process of living. In this clip, he explores these ideas in conversation with philosopher Nigel Warburton.

Dr. Iain McGilchrist on Imagining Our Way Into Reality

21K views · 4w ago · 3:44

World-renowned psychiatrist and philosopher Dr. Iain McGilchrist explores how we can cultivate a different way of attending to the world by making space for uncertainty, stillness and imagination. In this clip, he considers how practices such as meditation, prayer and time in nature can help us move beyond what we think we know and become more receptive to reality.

Your Brain Shows You Two Versions of Reality. Dr. Iain McGilchrist with Nigel Warburton

8.4K views · 1mo ago · 10:50

Guest: Nigel Warburton

In this clip, psychiatrist and philosopher Dr. Iain McGilchrist explains why the brain's two hemispheres evolved to solve two different problems, each needing its own kind of attention, and why that means how you pay attention to the world actually changes what you see.