Why Your Gut Dictates Your Decisions: The Somatic Brain
Antonio Damasio and Mark Solms argue that consciousness starts with visceral feelings in the brain stem, not high-level thoughts in the neocortex.
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Brain and learning: what the top podcasts are saying.
How attention, memory, and habits work, and how to train them. 45 write-ups from 2 shows so far, the newest from October 2026.
45 write-ups2 shows
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Latest write-ups
Agency Is an Acquired Skill, Not Your Brain's Default State
In Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin's nursing home experiment at Shady Grove, giving residents small choices, such as watering their own plant or picking movie nights, reduced mortality.
Michael Pollan on Caffeine, Resetting Baseline, and Tolerance
Michael Pollan quit all caffeine for three months after a conversation with psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths.
Why Late-Night Stress Traps Bad Memories in Your Brain
The locus coeruleus, which floods the brain with norepinephrine during alertness, shuts down completely only during REM sleep.
Why Fluency Beats Smarts: Fix the 3rd-Grade Math
Automatic fluency uses zero working memory slots: memorizing a basic fact like 7 * 8 = 56 lets your brain process higher-level logic without arithmetic friction.
Why 2 AM Bedtimes Trap Metabolic Waste in Your Brain
Wakefulness physically alters neurons: firing causes cell membranes to expand, depletes cellular ATP reserves, and leaves behind misfolded protein debris.
Why Dopamine Controls the Will to Move, Not Muscle
Parkinson's disease is traditionally diagnosed as a pure motor failure, but new neurological evidence shows it is an altered threshold in the motivation to act.
Why Apathy Is an Effort Calculation, Not Laziness
Apathy is a physical breakdown in the brain circuit connecting desire to physical execution, not a character flaw or a mood disorder.
Dr. Chris Palmer: Why Mitochondria Run Brain Chemistry
Mitochondria operate as the cellular motherboard, directing resource allocation and chemical signals rather than acting as simple power generators.
Why Ketogenic Diets Were Built for the Brain
Dr. Russell Wilder developed the ketogenic diet in 1921 at the Mayo Clinic to mimic fasting and stop epileptic seizures.
Why Procrastination Burns More Brain Energy Than Starting
Brain scans from Oxford show that unmotivated individuals burn significantly more neural glucose in the medial frontal cortex and basal ganglia simply deciding whether to start a low-reward task.
Why Stimulants Make High Performers Worse
Dopamine drives the motivation to pursue a goal, while endogenous opioid neurotransmitters generate the pleasure of actually reaching it.