The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Technical and general information from the podcast's RSS feed.

The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott

Al Scott

Society & Culture

Science

Technology

Frequency: 1 episode/8d. Total Eps: 200

Physicist Dr. Al Scott addresses politically and socially divisive issues with insightful evidence-based analysis of the facts. Learn to apply the tools of science to discover the most rational path to an optimistic vision of the future. https://www.therationalview.ca

Recent rankings

Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.

Apple Podcasts

🇨🇦 Canada - documentary
31/08/2025
#94
🇨🇦 Canada - documentary
12/11/2024
#85
🇫🇷 France - documentary
07/09/2024
#75

Spotify

No recent rankings available

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Links found in episode descriptions and other podcasts that share them.

See all

https://therationalview.podbean.com
79 shares
http://www.therationalview.ca
32 shares
https://therationalview.podbean.com/
28 shares

https://facebook.com/groups/therationalview
52 shares
https://facebook.com/AlScottRational
37 shares
https://www.facebook.com/groups/therationalview
6 shares

https://www.instagram.com/the_rational_view
58 shares
https://www.instagram.com/the-Rational_view
2 shares

RSS feed quality and score

Technical evaluation of the podcast's RSS feed quality and structure.

See all

RSS feed quality

To improve

Score global : 47%

Publication history

Monthly episode publishing history over the past years.

Year

Latest published episodes

Recent episodes with titles, durations, and descriptions.

See all

Dr. Michael Walker on the evolution of mind

Episode 209

Sunday, September 1, 2024 • Duration 33:22

In this episode I’m continuing to look at consciousness and cognition and the working memory that sets humans apart from all other animals. Human working memory can be roughly quantified to hold about 7 items at once in a sequence and allow conscious manipulation, consideration, and attention to about 4 of them at a time. These numbers are surprisingly consistent across all humans. The size of working memory in humans is much larger than in our nearest relatives the great apes. The ability to remember sequence information also seems to be unique.

Today I’m interviewing a researcher who studies the evolution of the human capacity for cognition. His vocabulary and working memory are both immense. I need to stretch my working memory to the limit just to parse some of his most elegant utterances. For example, in a recent exchange he opined the following gem: “However, as Karl Friston reminded us, the mathematical itinerancy of stochastic genetical and epigenetical mechanisms in ergodic systems can explain the appearances, disappearances, and reappearances of some technological outcomes of Early Pleistocene human behaviours from a far more rational scientific basis than can any self-justifying assertion that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.”

Professor emeritus Michael Walker is a paleoanthropologist with degrees in Medicine, Physiology, and Prehistoric Archaeology from Oxford University including his doctorate on the prehistoric physical anthropology and archaeology of the southeastern Spanish region of Murcia. He established systematic two important Palaeolithic excavation sites, one with fossil remains of fourteen Neanderthals in deep sediments with dates from 130,000 to 40,000 years ago, and a very much older site dating to between 900,000 and 772,000 years ago where he discovered burning in the cave, as well as abundant stone artefcts among which is the earliest stone hand-axe from Europe. The unique hand-axe reawakened Dr. Walker’s interest in neuroscience and, in particular, about how cognition might lead to surprising manual behaviour that was not passed on culturally. This hypothesis, based on the Free Energy Principle, has implications on the evolution of human cognition and calls into question time-honoured interpretations by anthropologists about human cultural transmission.

Add your two cents on Facebook @TheRationalView

The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other62

Facebook4

Instagram2

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other62

Facebook4

Instagram2