Mind & Matter

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to physicist and neuroscientist Dr. Michael Crair. Michael runs a lab at Yale University studying mechanisms of brain development. He discussed research related to neural plasticity, learning & memory, sensory maps, and critical periods of plasticity. Dr. Crair also described recent findings from his lab show that parts of the developing brain can simulate future se...

Send us Fan Mail Applying evolutionary principles to navigate modern challenges like health, culture, and society. Not medical advice. TOPICS DISCUSSED: Human niche as niche-switching: Humans uniquely adapt by changing behaviors and environments, enabling survival across diverse conditions, unlike specialized animals. Culture vs. consciousness: Culture encodes efficient, habitual behaviors passed...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to Stanford psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Karl Deisseroth. They discuss a range of topics about the brain, including autism, depression, bipolar disorder, dissociation, and more. They also talk about optogenetics, a technique Karl co-developed which uses light to control specific neurons in the brain, allowing neuroscientists to turn circuits in the brain on and o...

Send us Fan Mail Nick to talks to psychology student Rob Henderson about social status, social signaling, luxury beliefs, and related topics in social psychology and human behavior. *Not medical advice. Support the show Support my work: Good Chemistry : Science-based health consulting AquaTru : Water filtration devices that remove microplastics, metals, bacteria, and more from your drinking water....

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to medicinal chemist Dr. David Nichols, who has spent decades studying the chemistry and pharmacology of psychedelics. Dr. Nichols shared his knowledge of psychedelic tryptamines, including LSD and DMT, as well as phenethylamines, such as mescaline and MDMA. He also discussed his relationship with the late Dr. Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin and how his thoughts on...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks with evolutionary biologist Dr. Sarah Otto about the evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2, the emergence of new variants, whether she thinks we will need shots every year (like with the flu), mRNA vaccines, and more. *Not medical advice. Support the show Support my work: Good Chemistry : Science-based health consulting AquaTru : Water filtration devices that remove micro...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to neuroscientist Dr. Aaron Gruber about topics related to cognition and learning in the brain, including what we know about how the brain detects salience and assigns value, makes decisions, and constructs flexible models of the world, sometimes called ‘schemas.’ They also discuss how neuropsychiatric disorders like depression can influence the brain’s schemas, as well...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to applied physicist and neuroscientist, Dr. Alex Kwan. His lab studies how neuropsychiatric drugs, such as psilocybin and ketamine, affect neural circuits in the brain’s of mice. They discuss how his lab actually conducts this research, what they have discovered so far, and look at some real data, images and movies of neurons in the brain, which you can see for yoursel...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Monteggia about research on psychiatric disorders of the brain. Lisa described how psychiatric disorders like depression manifest in the brain, how traditional anti-depressant drugs like SSRIs work in the brain, and her research on how the drug ketamine can have rapid depressant effects in treatment-resistant patients. *Not medical advice. Sup...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to chemist Dr. Lee Cronin about life: how it originated on Earth, how we might detect signs of alien life in the universe, whether it can be created in the lab, and related topics. Lee talked about his work on "assembly theory," which provides a framework for thinking about these questions and providing an unbiased way to detect signatures of life in the unive...

Send us Fan Mail Harvard-MIT geneticist George Church, PhD talks about advances in genome sequencing and editing technologies, interesting biotech startups using CRISPR genome editing to tackle human disease, and interesting areas in synthetic biology. Dr. Church also discussed how he has coped with both narcolepsy and dyslexia throughout his life, and became a successful scientist despite have th...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to Dr. Berra Yazar-Klosinski, the Chief Science Officer for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies  (MAPS). Berra talked about the results of MAPS' recent Phase III clinical trials for treating severe PTSD, how these studies are conducted, and what we know about the underlying biology of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the drug MDMA.  ...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to neuroscientist & psychologist, Dr. Chris Timmermann, a scientist at the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London. Chris led the first neuroimaging studies on the effects of the potent tryptamine psychedelic DMT on the brain. They discussed DMT and related psychedelics, including how DMT is normally consumed in both recreational and laboratory co...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to gastroenterologist and neuroscientist, Dr. Emeran Mayer. Emeran is a distinguished professor at UCLA and an expert in gut health and the microbiome. His last book was titled, “The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Health.” His latest book builds on this, and is titled, “The Gut-Immune Connection....

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to Jon Kostakopoulos, an early participant in an NYU study looking at psilocybin for the treatment of alcoholism. Jon went through psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy over the course of many weeks for this study, which included three separate days of psilocybin administration. He talked about his battle with alcoholism leading up to the study, how he was recruited to the...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to neuroscientist and machine learning engineer, Alex Wiltschko, PhD. Alex is a senior scientist at Google Brain, where he leads the digital olfaction group, where are working to build machines with a sense of smell. Alex received a PhD in neurobiology from Harvard, where he developed sophisticated machine vision and machine learning techniques to study animal behavior....

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to science writer and NYT columnist Carl Zimmer about his new book, "Life's Edge: The Search For What It Means To Be Alive." They discuss the scientific quest to understand life: what is it, how does it arise, and how might scientists identify it elsewhere in the universe? They also discuss Carl's approach to science writing, including where he draws...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to biological anthropologist and cognitive scientist, Terrence Deacon. The conversation focuses on ideas from Terrence's book, "The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain." They spend nearly three hours talking about the origins of language. Topics include: what is language and how does it differ from animal communication? How do chi...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to Dr. Yasmin Hurd, a neuroscientist studying medical cannabis, CBD, and opioid addiction. Dr. Hurd is investigating the ability of CBD to help treat withdrawal symptoms and prevent relapse in opioid-addicted individuals. *Not medical advice. Support the show Support my work: Good Chemistry : Science-based health consulting AquaTru : Water filtration devices that remove...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to genetic engineer Alina Chan, PhD. She is working on engineering new forms of gene therapy using viral vectors to target diverse patient populations. In addition to her core scientific focus, Alina has recently investigated genomic data related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID19 pandemic. They discuss the basics of virus biology, including what kind...

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to Dr. Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC-Berkeley and editor-in-chief for eLife, a non-profit open access science journal. Throughout his career, Dr. Eisen has been an advocate of open science, the free release of the results of scientific research, and has been critical of traditional forms of scientific publishing, which often place scientific results behind a paywall....

Send us Fan Mail Nick talks to Dr. Bob Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist and sleep expert. Dr. Stickgold is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and has been studying sleep, dreams, and memory for over 25 years.  They discuss a variety of sleep topics, included sleep architecture and why there are different stages of sleep; the relationship between sleep stages and memory; how d...

Send us Fan Mail This bonus episode is a lecture given by mushroom expert Dr. Michael Beug (probably from the 1980s). Professor Beug describes the results of his work analyzing the chemical contents of various psilocybin-containing ("magic") mushrooms native to the Pacific Northwest. You'll learn some interesting observations about different Psilocybe mushrooms, including how psiloc...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Ziva Cooper, Director of the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative, discusses the latest medical cannabis research. She goes into everything from the potential interactive of effects of cannabinoids and terpenes, to the efficacy of cannabidiol (CBD), to sex- and age-dependent differences in how cannabinoids affect the body.  *Not medical advice. Support the show Support my work: G...

Send us Fan Mail Nick Jikomes talks to Jeff Ubersax, PhD, CEO of the biotechnology company Demetrix (who supported this episode). Jeff discussed the science behind how Demetrix is engineering baker's yeast to produce cannabinoids at an industrial scale, with a focus on making rare cannabinoids other than THC and CBD. Jeff also discussed how he transitioned from academic science to running his...