Enter the Psychosphere

Best-selling author of Being You, superstar neuroscientist Anil Seth in discussion on selfhood, the fundamentals of consciousness and why we should be optimistic about the future of the science.

In the first episode of the new series of Enter the Psychosphere, Melanie talks with award-winning writer and scientist, Gaia Vince, on her book Transcendence and the cultural and cognitive shifts that have made us as transformative as we are.

Neurologist Todd Feinberg guides us through his theories on the origins of consciousness and what we know about the basis of selfhood.

Science writer, Brandon Keim joins Melanie for a discussion of animal personhood and how meeting animals as persons might alter how we behave towards them.

Pioneering neurobiologist Randolf Menzel and I discuss the minds of honeybees and their abilities to dance symbolically and even to dream.

Philosopher David Livingstone Smith joins a discussion on dehumanization, racism, and what we can all do to resist the urge to see one another as less than human.

World-renowned researcher into the behavioural ecology of fishes, Culum Brown, speaks to Melanie about the frontiers of fish intelligence and how we should rethink the lives of one of the most numerous organisms on Earth.

Today's guest is the trans writer and academic, Grace Lavery. Grace is an associate professor in the department of English at the University of Berkeley and General Editor of Transgender Studies Quarterly. Discussions of sex and gender, and the lives of trans individuals, have become controversial and sadly divisive. Miss Minded is an open and exploratory discussion of Grace's personal trans experience.

Harvard Professor of Astronomy Avi Loeb discusses his book Extraterrestrial, the biases and prejudices that can make science resistant to earth-shattering new ideas, and the possibility of advanced alien intelligences.

Renowned neuroscientist and specialist on the minds of dolphins and whales, Lori Marino, speaks to Melanie about her work as a scientist-advocate, and what we can know about the intelligence and psychology of cetaceans.

Neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell, author of the book Innate, talks us through the development of our minds and what we can understand of how living entities come to see value and meaning from simple goals.

Exeter University professor of animal cognition, Dr Alex Thornton chats with me about the minds of meerkats and jackdaws.

Psychologist Charles Fernyhough discusses his research on the phenomenon of "hearing voices", and what the studies can tell us about minds and neurodiversity.

Best-selling author of the book Kindred, archaeologist Rebecca Wragg-Sykes chats with Melanie about the intelligence of Neanderthals and what their skill with technology might reveal about their kind of mind.

Renowned professor of comparative cognition, Nicola Clayton, discusses episodic memory in crows, jays, magpies, and cuttlefish.

A fascinating conversation with Carl Safina on the intelligence and culture of other animals, and how we should think about the rest of the living world.

Best-selling author of The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery talks with Melanie about animal minds and the special species she's connected with over the years.

A discussion of the biological origins of empathy and the cognition of primates with world renowned primatologist Frans de Waal.

A conversation with science writer Philip Ball on the myths of mind that have affected us and how to think about minds in new and revolutionary ways.

Diver and philosopher, Peter Godfrey-Smith, author of Other Minds and Metazoa, among other works, discusses the origins of consciousness deep under the sea...

A provocative discussion with renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett and Professor Michael Levin on their ground-breaking work thinking about agency at the level of the cell and what we can learn about minds from bioelectrics.