Change My Mind

US citizens spend double per capita than most of the Europeans do on healthcare. Far from being due to the inherent nature of free markets and the corruptness of capitalism, this is due to unfair privileges given to pharmaceutical companies by the regulators and the externalization of costs and the internalization of benefits (like overeating when splitting the bill on a group). Robert Yoho, autho...

Steve Braker is an author of a series of 5 books, was born in the United Kingdom but his desire for adventure drove him 20 years ago to Mombasa, Kenya. We discuss the differences between western and central african countries, from the economy, safety nets, police, corruption, infrastructure, to governance. Steve’s Web Page Buy Steve’s Books Follow Steve on Instagram

Paul Matt Sutter is an Astrophysicist, podcast host and science communicator. The universe is big, but how big? Well... how does 8.8×10^26 m in diameter feel? Alienating? Good! That's why I am today accompanied by Sutter to put into perspective how bizarre the universe is. In this conversation we cover the cosmic microwave background and how the big bang theory of the universe is derived from...

Avigail Gimpel is an author, mother of six and special educator. She has examined the current research relating to ADHD and has conducted 25 years of her own research, culminating in her book ''HyperHealing: The Empowered Parent’s Complete Guide to Raising a Healthy Child with ADHD Symptoms'' We discuss parenting, how on many occasions medical prescriptions are not wisely done due to ineptitude, w...

Terry Tucker has been a SWAT Hostage Negotiator and Hospital administrator, he is currently an author, father of 2 and as he likes calling it a ''Cancer Warrior''. There is much more nuance in life than we would like to admit, in this conversation Terry and I go through a wide range of topics, from endurance to meaning to conflict of interests in politics to escaping mediocrity. Check Terry´s book...

Noah Healy is a recreational mathematician that has developed CDM(Coordinated Discovery Markets), this new method has the potential to substantially reduce the cost overheads of commodity trading in the market, he is the first person in centuries to offer an alternative to the system which rules large-scale markets, in this episode we discuss the features of CDM, the potential it has to reduce cos...

What is it that makes something good or bad? Are we all condemned to interpret our intuitive perceptions (built through natural selection)of what ought to be done as either Good or Evil? In this episode Baer joins me to reflect over what the origin of our moral perceptions is. We talk about the morality in relationship to determinism and how being considerate to our fellow terrestrial cohabitants...

We all know that state in which time seems to fly by while you are achieving at the highest rate, that is Flow State and it has a lot to do with not being aware of being aware of what you are doing, it's just doing in the purest form, 0 abstractions from what you are doing. The State of Flow is highly joyful and makes what you are doing seem really meaningful. The opposite would be to be constantl...

Modifying your speech deliberately in order to conceal a deeper intent, to gather further information about the state of other people or to adapt the message to the intended purpose is a widely used technique that is mainly used implicitly, in this episode Baer and Alex discuss the topic with a critical perspective. There are situations in which the existence of a conflict of interests leads us to...

Do beauty standards vary with time? If this is the case… What is the standard that encompasses all of them? Baer and I present here a theory that makes sense of the subjective sense of beauty, social trends and the status signaling through an evolutionary lens relating to the seeking of fitness maximization. Even if this is in the expense of collective fitness as long as it gives the individual mo...

Why is it that we develop imposter syndrome? Why would nature equip us with the common feeling that we are not well prepared to deal with the situation we are facing? In this conversation with life coach Denise Garrett we discuss the origin of feeling inadequate, how society expects us to be consistent with previous performance, generating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which mediocrity is promoted...

Robert Boog, is the author of 7 books among which ''Shakey's Madness: Does a Mental Disorder Reveal the "Real" William Shakespeare?'' is located, he bravely posits the thesis that Shakespeare was only a pen name to avoid backlash from contemporary royalty, backed by rigorous evidence gathered by the aforementioned author. Boog started considering the story of Shakespeare as flawed by a diverse set...

Germinal G. Van is an author, economist, political scientist, and scholar. He is a member of the National Association of Business Economics and the Economic History Association. His works mainly focus on Public Choice Theory, Economic History, Econometrics, Statistics, and Mathematical Economics. He has written more than a dozen books in Economic History, Political Economy, Development Economics,...

I am accompanied by Phil Ladbrook on this occasion, he is a professional English teacher with experience in marketing, he has resided in the Basque Country for 20 years. We discuss: The process of skill acquisition , how engagement is vital for it, what hinders and what helps the process backed by prolonged experience in english teaching from the part of Landbrook Demographic expectations modifyin...

Does karma exist? Is Moral Nihilism true? Is dogmatism always something bad? Alex Buxeda and Emilio discuss in this episode the existence of karma, the surprising rigor of moral nihilism, what it leads to, its unlivableness and dogma as the antidote to the perpetual skepticism, itself an antidote to moral nihilism.

Brad Seeman is a PhD in philosophy and an associate professor at Taylor university. Seeman’s own areas of research include metaethical questions about the ways in which God grounds moral obligations, difficulties facing Materialists who seek to ground objective moral obligations in a world without God, and how Christians can respond to the tough questions people ask Christians about their faith in...

In this episode I am accompanied by Patric Schiess in order to discuss the meaning of failure and how this is a relative perception of the accomplishment of one's ambitions which are highly influenced by our social environment and to what we (as a social animal) perceive will contribute status to our inner out of phase ancestral 24h-status-counter, making us feel realized due to evolutionary reaso...

When it comes to approaching problems we tend to dogmatically assume that either empiricism or rationalism is the proper way to go, I question this natural bipartisan assumption in order to favor staying alert for nuances that will favor one system vs the other depending on the situation, requiring criteria in order to distinguish successfully what the kind of problem you are facing is. The idea o...

What can be attributed to our general inadequacy when it comes to do the ''right'' things and avoid doing the ''bad'' things?  In this episode my friend Emilio and I do a deep dive into how the lack of complex and intangible concepts in the evolutionary process leading to us caused our current incapacity to do the things we know are good but require insight, rationality and long term dedicati...

Me and my friend Emilio argue about the third category that most things fall into when it comes to judging things in terms of Fairness, this third option is non-intuitive due to our predisposition to judge things as being binary(as in fair or unfair). The third category: the lack of fairness or unfairness(or extrajudicial), takes into account that many things in life come given to us (us not havin...

Are atheists left without meaning by ditching the meaning-building machine of religion? Does life have any ultimate value? Is the scientific method the way to go in order to defeat our biases and achieve truth? Can we create our own meaning out of the apparent meaninglessness of life? What is the value standard from which we start for judging things in life? This and much more is discussed in this...

In this episode my friend Baer and I talked about what rationality is, the impossibility of  being rational without taking into account other people's irrationality in order to achieve your goals, how the ego is detrimental to your long term flourishing and how it is correlated with the influence the instinct has in our lives and our willingness to perpetuate our genes (ensuring survival).

The existence of altruism as doing something selflessly is discussed deeply in this episode by my good friend Baer and me. Our theses are not too misaligned as we both agree on most of the nuances, but we came to new conclusions and were able to distill the essence of the debate.