Mind & Matter

Jonathan has a PhD in clinical psychology and he is currently a research psychologist at the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development. His research focuses largely on the relationship between people’s environments that influence their mental health. He has conducted a number of longitudinal studies using cohorts of identical and fraternal twins, which allow him to tease apart the rol...

* Download .wav audio version * Watch video version * Show notes & episode transcripts Nick Jikomes talks to Sam Wang, PhD professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. Dr. Wong’s lab investigates how brains learn from sensory experience, in adulthood and development, with relevance for autism. A lot of their work focuses on a part of the brain called the cerebellum. They talk about the cereb...

Nick Jikomes talks to Dr. Nathan Price, who has a PhD is in bioengineering and has been faculty at the University of Washington and the Institute of Systems Biology. He was also CEO of a health intelligence startup called Onegevity, which recently merged with Thorne HealthTech, which he is Chief Science Officer of. Nathan and Nick discussed various topics in the realm of personalized medicine, dig...

Short Summary: The science of psychedelics and neuroplasticity with Dr. David Olson. About the guest: David Olson, PhD is a chemist and associate professor at UC Davis. His lab pioneers research on advancing non-hallucinogenic psychedelic analogs for therapeutic use. Note: Podcast episodes are fully available to paid subscribers on the M&M Substack and everyone on YouTube . Partial versions are av...

Nick Jikomes talks to genetic engineer Dr. Alina Chan about the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss Alina's new book, "Viral: The Search For the Origin of COVID-19," which she co-wrote with Matt Ridley. The book thoroughly documents the events & people relevant to COVID's origins. They discuss everything from the original SARS-1 epidemic in China, wi...

Nick talks to writer and science journalist Nicholas Wade about the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic. Nicholas describes how this story has evolved since the start of the pandemic, and contrasts the the two main hypotheses for the origins of COVID: wildlife spillover vs. lab leak. He describes how viruses in the past (e.g. SARS1) emerged, peculiarities of the SARS2 genome,...

Nick talks to paleoanthropologist Dr. Lee Berger about human evolution. Dr. Berger is a professor of anthropology in South Africa, explorer-in-residence for National Geographic, and author of, "Becoming Human." Lee's team has mapped and explored caves all over South Africa, discovering a treasure trove of ancient human fossils. This includes the discovery of Homo naledi, an ancient...

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 sensory experiences...

Nick talks to evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying about using evolutionary thinking to understand humanity's predicaments in the 21st century. They discuss a variety of topics related to their new book, "A Hunter Gatherers Guide to the 21st Century," including modern medicine, dieting & health, sleep & light, dating & mating systems, and questions...

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 off to reveal how...

Nick to talks to psychologist Rob Henderson about social status, social signaling, luxury beliefs, and related topics in social psychology and human behavior. Connect with Rob Henderson: https://twitter.com/robkhenderson SUPPORT Download the podcast & follow Nick at his website [ www.nickjikomes.com ] Support the show on Patreon & get early access to episodes [ https://www.patreon.com/nick...

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 tryptamine, 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 companies trying to m...

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. SUPPORT Download the podcast & follow Nick at his website [ www.nickjikomes.com ] Support the show on Patreon & get early access to episodes [ https://www.patreon.c...

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 as how they can...

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 yourself in the video ve...

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. USEFUL LINKS: Download the podcast &...

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 universe. They also di...

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 we has cope with both narcolepsy and dyslexia throughout his life, and became a successful scientist despite have these brain disorder...

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.  USEFUL LINKS: Down...

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 contexts, how peopl...

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.” USEFUL LINKS: D...

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 study, and what h...

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. They discussed A...

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 inspiration and...

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 children acquire lan...