The Convergent Science Podcasts on Mind, Brain and Technology

How do you track what an animal's brain is doing when the animal itself is moving through space in complex ways? Neuroscientist Jonathan Whitlock from NTNU Trondheim describes the technical odyssey of building a markerless motion capture pipeline for rats, and explains why simplifying your behavioral paradigm can unlock deeper scientific insights. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Net...

What if the standard anatomical maps of the brain have been wrong for over a century, and the molecular evidence was there all along? Neuroanatomist Luis Puelles from the University of Murcia explains how developmental biology and gene expression mapping overturned the dominant columnar model of brain organization, revealing a segmental architecture that had been proposed and forgotten decades ear...

What happens to the temporary scaffolding cells that help build the brain during development, and could their remnants explain cognitive disorders? Neuroscientist Zoltan Molnar from the University of Oxford returns to the Convergent Science Network podcast after 11 years to discuss how transient cell populations in the subplate regulate cortical circuit formation, and why the prolonged timeline of...

How do adversarial lawyers, disagreeing judges, and competing branches of government collaborate to produce justice? Ernst Numann, recently retired Vice President of the Dutch Supreme Court, reveals the hidden collaborative architecture of the legal system , and why the rule of law is far more fragile than most people believe. Subscribe for more episodes exploring collaboration across institutions...

From a hut on the Arabian Sea to building a 1,500-bed hospital and 100,000 houses for the underserved , Swami Shantamritananda Puri's journey through monastic life, disaster relief, and humanitarian collaboration across every continent reveals what happens when spiritual practice meets large-scale collective action. Subscribe for more episodes on the deepest roots of human collaboration. Swami Sha...

What if everything we think we know about collaboration is based on only 5% of the world's population? Developmental psychologist Heidi Keller challenges Western assumptions about teamwork, parenting, and collective action by drawing on decades of cross-cultural research with families across Africa, Asia, and South America. Subscribe for more episodes exploring how collaboration works across cultu...

How do you push 27 EU member states toward a single climate target when every country has different interests? Former EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard reveals the invisible mechanics of political collaboration , from backroom negotiations to cross-sector coalition building. Subscribe for more episodes on how collaboration works under real-world pressure. Connie Hedegaard brings a rare comb...

Can mathematics compose music? Can robots create art that is genuinely good for people? Brazilian mathematician and composer Jonatas Manzolli explores the collision between understanding and interpretation , and why collaboration between art and science may be essential for humanity's survival. Subscribe for more episodes on how collaboration works across disciplines. Jonatas Manzolli occupies a r...

What does it take to make a thousand full professors, each king of their own empire, work together as equals? Sijbrand de Jong, former president of the CERN Council, reveals how the world's largest scientific collaborations actually function, why formal rules of procedure matter more than goodwill, and what particle physics can teach every organization about scaling cooperation. Subscribe for more...

Why do some people sacrifice their income, freedom, or even their lives for strangers who can never repay them? Political scientist Margaret Levi unpacks the concept of "communities of fate" and reveals how institutional design determines whether collaboration produces solidarity or exploitation. Subscribe for more episodes on the science of real-world collaboration. Margaret Levi, director of Sta...

What happens when a global religious organization operating in 90 countries tries to practice genuine collaboration instead of top-down mission work? Rafael Malpica Padilla, executive director of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's global mission, reveals how theology, power dynamics, and neighbor love reshape what partnership means across cultures. Subscribe for more episodes on collabor...

What can Indian family dynamics teach us about collaboration at every scale? Developmental psychologist Nandita Chaudhary reveals why affection, trust, and empathic leadership are the invisible infrastructure behind every successful partnership , from raising children to running organizations. Subscribe and follow for more conversations on how collaboration works in practice. Nandita Chaudhary, a...

Why did ancient civilizations bury 20% of their GDP in tombs and turn half their grain into beer? Edward Slingerland, scholar of Chinese philosophy and cognitive science of religion, argues that religion and alcohol are not evolutionary mistakes but the hidden engines of large-scale human collaboration. Subscribe for more episodes exploring the deep roots of how humans work together. Edward Slinge...

On an island in eastern Congo, 200,000 people live with a life expectancy of 26 years and half a dozen doctors. Pediatrician and public health scholar Annie Sparrow works in places like this, and in conflict zones from Syria to Australian refugee camps, to understand what collaboration in global health actually requires when lives are on the line. Subscribe for more episodes on real-world collabor...

From Doctors Without Borders to the United Nations to Fairtrade International , what does a career spent inside the world's largest collaborative institutions reveal about why global cooperation works and when it fails? Meg Jones unpacks the mechanics of international collaboration and why compassion may be the most underrated driver of collective action. Subscribe for more episodes on real-world...

Europe's greatest collaborative achievement , transforming a war-devastated continent into one of the world's richest regions , is now at risk because cooperation has replaced genuine collaboration. Heritage scholar Rob van der Laarse explains why shared memory, contested landscapes, and the unresolved traumas of the twentieth century hold the key to whether Europe survives the twenty-first. Subsc...

What if the missing ingredient in every failed development project, broken institution, and dysfunctional team is not better rules but love? Deepa Narayan, who spent 35 years working on global poverty, including 20 years with the UN and World Bank, argues that power without love produces coercion, and love without power produces sentimentality. Real collaboration requires both. Subscribe for more...

A foundation giving away $600 million a year still cannot solve climate change alone. Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation, explains why philanthropy's greatest challenge is not funding but collaboration , and why the biological instinct to divide the world into "us vs. them" may be the single biggest barrier to solving collective problems. Subscribe for more on how collaboration work...

How does a decentralized youth movement with 500 local hubs coordinate climate action at the national level without losing its grassroots soul? Naina Agrawal-Hardin, organizer with the Sunrise Movement and the US Youth Climate Strike Coalition, reveals the architecture of "power with" , and why radical decentralization is both the movement's greatest strength and its hardest challenge. Subscribe a...

What do cancer cells, cyber warfare, and the prisoner's dilemma have in common? They all reveal how collaboration really works , and why it breaks down. Listen to political scientist Robert Axelrod explain the hidden architecture of cooperation, from tumor biology to international security. Subscribe and follow for more from this series on real-world collaboration. Robert Axelrod, one of the most...

What happens when you publicly criticize five major research institutions for not collaborating , and they call you back to fix it? Neuroscientist Theo Mulder shares the inside story of building a 200-person scientific consortium from scratch, and why trust and the willingness to share are the only things that make large-scale research collaboration work. Subscribe for more episodes on the science...

There is nothing in science that is not collaborative , yet our reward systems actively punish teamwork. Susan Fitzpatrick, president of the James S. McDonnell Foundation, explains why interdisciplinary research fails, what makes small-scale collaboration succeed, and why billion-dollar brain initiatives may be asking the wrong questions. Subscribe for more episodes exploring real-world collaborat...

How does the Nobel Prize actually work , and what does its century-old selection process reveal about collaboration in science? Neuroscientist Sten Grillner, a former member of the Nobel Committee, takes us inside the deliberation process and explains why small-scale discovery still outperforms industrial-scale science. Subscribe for more episodes on how real-world collaboration functions. Sten Gr...

The healthcare system is on the brink of collapse , not from disease but from cost. Alexander Nuyken, EY's Life Science Strategy Leader, explains how digital health is forcing an unprecedented collaboration between doctors, tech companies, hospitals, and patients, and why the stakeholders who resist this transformation will be the ones who disappear. Subscribe for more episodes on how collaboratio...

How do you translate academic research into policy that actually saves lives , across 50 countries, through political upheaval, and during a global pandemic? Public health scholar Martin McKee reveals why the gap between evidence and policy is not an information problem but a collaboration problem. Subscribe for more episodes on how real-world collaboration works. C. Martin McKee, professor of Eur...