Just a quick forward to this episode. We taped it many months ago and the Wi-Fi connection

made it almost impossible for Dr. DiMasio to hear anything I was saying. It's like reading tea

leaves or interpreting abstract art. He answers the gist of the signal he's getting through the noise

and everything he says, it seems to me, is well worth sharing in spite of or maybe partly because

of all the

interference. Also, separately, those of you paying extra close attention might have noticed

that there wasn't a show last week. I was away in Italy and Turkey, but I'm back now in

the humidity of New York in August, and I've brought back some goodies with me from those

travels that I'll be sharing with you soon.

Hi there, I'm Jason Gottz, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

Quick question. Answer without thinking too hard. Ready? Where is your mind? What is your mind?

Okay, raise your hand if you thought of your brain. If you did, you're in very good company.

For centuries, Western science, culture, and language has been obsessed with the head as the center of thought and the body as the center of feeling.

This split can get hierarchical, attaching ideas like sin to the body and the body is the center of feeling. This split can get hierarchical, attaching ideas

like sin to the body and the emotions, while putting the brain along with rationality up on a

pedestal. I'm very happy to be speaking again today with neuroscientist and philosopher Antonio

Damasio, who has done more than anyone else I know of to get that brain down off its high

horse and reattach it to the body. We last talked a year ago about his book, The Strange Order of

Things, Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures, which has now come out in paperback.

It turns everything upside down, not only re-anchoring mind and body, but finding in primitive bacteria

and social insects, patterns that help explain human culture.

Maybe there's more going on in the Mona Lisa than in a bacterial colony, but they also have

...