Explore every episode of the podcast Thing in itself

Luiz Pessoa is a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Maryland and director of the Maryland Neuroimaging Center. Dr. Pessoa uses behavioural and functional MRI methods to study cognition and emotion (as manipulated, for instance, via the threat of shock), with an emphasis on the interactions between cognitive and emotional brain systems.

Michael Graziano is professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University and creator of the attention schema theory.

Katharina Pistor is professor of comparative law at Columbia Law School and a leading scholar and writer on corporate governance, money and finance, property rights, and comparative law and legal institutions.

Richard Brown is a philosopher at the City University of New York. His work is focused on the philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, and the foundations of cognitive science and he has done significant work on higher order thought theories of consciousness.

Alex Rosenberg is professor of Philosophy at Duke University and has made several important contributions to the philosophy of science, biology, and social science.

Nicolas Gisin is a physicist at the University of Geneva working on the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum information and communication.

Sheldon Solomon is an American social psychologist at Skidmore College. He is known for developing terror management theory, along with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, which is concerned with how humans deal with their own sense of mortality.

Dean Rickles is professor of history and philosophy of modern physics at the University of Sydney. He has written on quantum gravity, string theory, symmetries, spacetime, and dual aspect monism.

Justin is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He writes on the philosophy of madness, evolution of the mind, and purpose in nature.

Lee Cronin is the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and the originator of assembly theory.

Anthony Chemero is professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Cincinnati. His research interests include nonlinear dynamical modeling, ecological psychology, complex systems, phenomenology, and social cognition.

Fred Cummins is a cognitive scientist from UC Dublin who among other things works on joint speech.

"Joint Speech is speech produced when one or more people say the same thing at the same time. This kind of speaking is commonly found in practices of prayer, in protest, and on the terraces of football matches. It is found in classrooms and courtrooms. To those who take part, it is a very important kind of activity. Yet it has hardly been studied from a scientific or empirical point of view at all."

Robert Sternberg, psychologist at Cornell, has contributed several influential theories related to creativity, wisdom, thinking styles, love, hate, and leadership.

David Christian is a scholar of Russian history and proponent of the big history discipline. Big history is a framework that borrows from fields across the sciences and humanities to build a consilient picture of history from the big bang to the present.

Donald Hoffman is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Some of his research interests include visual perception, evolutionary psychology, and the problem of consciousness.

Karl Friston is a theoretical neuroscientist at University College London, authority on brain imaging, and proponent of the free energy principle.

Michael Strevens is professor of philosophy at NYU working in the philosophy of science. His research interests include explanation, complex systems, probability, confirmation, and the social structure of science and its role in science’s success; the psychology of concepts; and the philosophical applications of cognitive science, including philosophical methodology.

Michael Levin is a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of biology.

Professor Raymond Tallis is a philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic and was until recently a physician and clinical scientist. In the Economist's Intelligent Life Magazine (Autumn 2009) he was listed as one of the top living polymaths in the world. He has written extensively on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art and cultural criticism, fiction, and poetry.

John Stewart is an Australian evolutionary theorist and core member of the Evolution, Complexity, and Cognition research group at the Free University of Brussels.

Jean Bricmont is a Belgian theoretical physicist and professor at UCLouvain. He has worked extensively on the De Broglie–Bohm theory. Here, we talk about Bohmian mechanics, philosophy, and his work in the classic 1997 book Fashionable Nonsense.

Craig Callender is professor of philosophy at UC San Diego and co-director of the Institute for Practical Ethics. His work focuses on the philosophy of science, with special emphasis on physics, time, and the environment.

Gregg Henriques is a professor of psychology at James Madison University and the creator of the unified theory of knowledge (UTOK) system. UTOK is a system of eight key ideas that interconnect to solve "the problem of psychology" and offer a new theory of reality, the human condition, and our scientific knowledge of both.

Iris Berent is professor of cognitive psychology at Northeastern University and the director of the Language and Mind Lab. Her work explores generative linguistics, phonology, and the psychology of human nature.

Gualtiero Piccinini is professor of philosophy at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. His work focuses on computation, cognitive science, and the study of the mind. He is widely known for his work on a mechanistic account of physical computation.

Paul Thagard is a philosopher specializing in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science and medicine. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Waterloo. He has made important contributions in understanding cognition, coherence, creativity, and the role of emotions in cognition.

Herbert Gintis is an economist and behavioural scientist who has made important contributions to socio-biology, economics, and more. He has strongly stressed the importance of integration between the behavioural sciences (economics, psychology, sociology, political science, and anthropology). We talk about topics across those disciplines in this conversation.

Tim Maudlin is professor of philosophy at NYU and founder of the John Bell Institute for Foundations of Physics. We talk about time, quantum mechanics, metaphysics, non-locality, and a range of problems in physics and philosophy.

James Robert Brown is professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, focusing on mathematics and philosophy of science. We talk about mathematics, platonism, thought experiments, the experience of doing science, social problems in the development of science, and more.