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Our guest today is Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness Oxford University Press.

Anil is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2019-2024), which recognizes the top 0.1% of scientists in the world, by the impact of their publications.

N - In 2023, he was awarded the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize, which is ‘awarded annually to the scientist or engineer whose expertise in communicating scientific ideas in lay terms is exemplary’.

His 2021 book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was a Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller, and was Economist, Guardian and FT Science Book of the Year. Anil edited and co-authored the best-selling 30 Second Brain, and also writes the blog NeuroBanter.

We talk about:

• How to define consciousness
• What it feels like to be a bat
• Are we at the mercy of our brain chemistry
• The concept of interoception
• The white and gold OR the blue and black dress
• We predict ourselves into existence
• Does consciousness need a body

Let’s get our neurons firing!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet

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Our guest today is Laura Clarke. She is the CEO of ClientEarth. She was recognised as one of the most influential climate business leaders globally in Time magazines top 100 climate list. Her background is in diplomacy and environmental advocacy. Laura was British High Commissioner to New Zealand, Governor of the Pitcairn Islands, High Commissioner to Samoa and has an OBE. Laura holds an MA in German and Russian from Cambridge University and a MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

ClientEarth uses the law to hold polluting companies and negligent governments to account for the climate and nature crisis. It is one of the most ambitious environmental organisations that works across boarders, systems and sectors using the law to protect life on Earth. ClientEarth works in over 60 countries with around 140 active cases tackling the most pressing environmental challenges. The impact of this charity’s work goes far beyond the cases that they fight in court but sets standards and creates precedents that lead to wider climate compliance.

We talk about:

• Holding governments to climate laws
• 2 million abandoned oil wells
• Using shareholder interests to companies accountable
• Holding directors personally liable for climate action not taken
• China’s proactive stance on climate
• How we can use the law as citizens
• Suing multinational organisations into climate compliance
• How 36 companies are responsible for half the world’s total emissions

Let’s go to court

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message!

Our guest today is Sam Harris. Sam is the host of the Making Sense Podcast and an the author of five New York Times best sellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

Sam’s work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, Nature, among others. The Making Sense Podcast, which was selected by Apple as one of the “iTunes Best” and has won a Webby Award for best podcast in the Science & Education category.

Sam received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He has also practiced meditation for more than 30 years and has studied with many Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers, both in the United States and abroad. He has created the Waking Up app for anyone who wants to learn to meditate in a modern, scientific context.

We talk about:

• How failing at meditation is the best approach
• Dissolving concepts that are made up by our mind
• How to loose your head
• His book the Moral Landscape
• Moral absolutes versus moral relativism
• Is adversity is the only path to growth
• The illusory distinction between rationality and emotions
• His book Free Will
• Whether we really know why we change our minds
• How losing a foot might lead to better podcasts
• And a lot more

Let’s meditate!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet