Could today’s AIs already be conscious? Before you say no, let’s look at what “consciousness” really means – and why machines may already qualify.
In this episode of What is Mind?, William Gadea looks at:
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In this episode of What Is Mind?, I speak with Dr. Swayam Bagaria, Assistant Professor of Hindu Studies at Harvard Divinity School. Trained as an anthropologist at Johns Hopkins, Bagaria explores how religion, cognition, and technology intertwine in shaping human experience. We discuss Hinduism’s pluralistic and decentralized nature, how seekers find their spiritual paths, and why Hinduism both frees and binds through its deeply woven traditions.
The conversation also ranges into mental health and religion, the intersection of spirituality and technology, and how AI and neuroscience are challenging traditional ideas of identity and consciousness.
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In this episode, I talk with Dr. Theodore H. Schwartz, neurosurgeon at Weill Cornell Medicine and author of Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery. We discuss what it’s like to operate under extreme pressure, the controversial legacy of Dr. William Scoville (the surgeon who operated on H.M. — and on my father), and what modern neuroscience tells us about free will, brain-computer interfaces, and the mystery of consciousness itself. Does a purely physical view of the mind make our experience less sacred — or more profound?
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I was named after the neurosurgeon who operated on H.M., history’s most famous amnesiac. In this episode, I trace Henry Molaison’s case, the discoveries it unlocked about memory, and a parallel story from my own family that began in the same Hartford hospital.
What you’ll learn (without spoilers):
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What if the “Self” you take for granted isn’t what it seems? Neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy suggest that some of our deepest assumptions about who we are might be illusions. In this video, we’ll look at three powerful ways our sense of self misleads us—and why seeing through these illusions can change how we live, think, and connect with others. Along the way, we’ll explore groundbreaking experiments and ideas that challenge our everyday experience of being “me.”
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Is religion a cultural parasite, a spandrel, an evolutionary adaptation – or evidence of God? In this video, we explore the main scientific and philosophical theories about the origins of religion.
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In this episode, I’m joined by futurist and author Richard Yonck. We talk about his new sci-fi novel Mindstock, and how fiction can help us imagine the future of human and machine minds. We also dive into his earlier work on emotions and machines—a topic at the frontier of AI, robotics, and human–computer interaction.
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Is the brain a single, unified system—or a collection of specialized parts working in concert? In this episode, William Gadea explores the case for modularity of mind, from Paul Broca’s 19th-century discovery in a patient named Louis Victor Leborgne, to the insights of modern neuroimaging.
What does it mean that speech, memory, face recognition, and even morality may live in different parts of the brain? And how does this relate to our experience of the self?
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This is a solo episode.
Philosopher David Chalmers is the leading advocate of modern dualism. He thinks we should face the fact that consciousness is a hard problem. I summarize and take a critical look at his views.
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