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Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

Ep2 "What would you do with robotic wings? (or How to get a better body)"

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

iHeartPodcasts

Mental Health, Science, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Education

4.6524 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How is it possible for a dog to become a champion surfer? Why does the world’s best archer have no arms? Why might someone come to believe that her leg doesn’t belong to her? How can we build robots that simply figure themselves out? In this episode, Eagleman unmasks mysteries about the brain's shocking flexibility -- revealing how it comes to drive whatever body it finds itself in, how it determines what the "self" is, and what this tells us about our future as humans.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Why does the world's best archer have no arms?

0:09.0

How does the dog learn how to skateboard?

0:12.0

How can a robot figure out what its body looks like?

0:16.0

How can someone come to believe that her leg doesn't belong to her, but to someone else?

0:22.0

And what does any of this have to do with babies babbling, or Doc Ock from Spider-Man?

0:29.3

Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman.

0:33.7

I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my whole career

0:40.0

studying the intersection between how the brain works and how we experience life.

0:53.8

Have you ever texted while you're riding your bicycle?

0:58.1

So on campus, I see students doing this all the time.

1:01.6

And I'm amazed because what it tells me is how good the three pound brain is at controlling the body,

1:09.9

running the pedals with the legs and steering the handlebars

1:13.8

with one hand and hitting these very tiny targets with the other thumb and pulling on the

1:19.5

brake when they need to slow down and so on. And this is all from inside the brain's mission

1:26.0

control center in the skull, in total darkness.

1:29.8

It's controlling all these limbs with a degree of expertise that we can't even scratch with

1:36.2

robotics. So what I want to talk about today is how you can get even a better body.

1:42.9

And I'm not talking about diet or fitness.

1:44.9

I'm talking about the future of what we can do with our brains.

1:49.3

For example, could you add new limbs?

1:56.1

Let's start with the Spider-Man comics from back in the day.

1:59.7

So in July of 1963, a new character

...

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