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You are your brain, according to modern neuroscience, but how exactly do your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sense of self derive from this three-pound organ locked inside the black box of your skull? Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Heather Berlin has been seeking answers to those questions for decades and finding surprising answers in the brains of people with psychiatric and neurological disorders.

In this lecture, Professor Kahn will examine the state of health care and biomedical research in the US and around the globe, through the lens of ethics. The lecture will start with some historical context and examples from bioethics, and draw some parallels from the past for the current state of our public discussions on a range of controversial bioethics issues. 

The future of medicine is both amazing and terrifying. For the first time in human history, individual scientists and clinicians have the power to alter radically ways in which we live that were never before possible. This presentation explores some of the most exciting recent developments in medicine that promise to help us live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives, ranging from novel reproductive technologies and cutting-edge immunotherapies to the harvesting of big data and the implementation of new systems of information exchange.

Edison and Tesla were arch-enemies with competing visions as to how to electrically empower America. Their hostility played out in the infamous War of the Currents. Radio, television, robots, electric cars, self-driving cars, solar heating, the internet, and the cellphone were on the mind of one or the other of these geniuses. Which one ultimately proved to have the more accurate and enduring vision for the world? Who is in the news today and why? Come and find out the answers.

The research of Notre Dame Professor Jessica Payne shows that the non-waking hours are incredibly valuable for your day-to-day life, especially for helping to commit information to memory and for problem-solving. 

You are your brain, according to modern neuroscience, but how exactly do your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sense of self derive from this three-pound organ locked inside the black box of your skull? Scientists have been seeking answers to those questions for decades and finding surprising answers in the brains of people with psychiatric and neurological disorders. Join us on a journey deep into the brain, the mind, and the self, as Professor Jessica Payne reveals the startling and exciting recent findings of cutting-edge neuroscience.

Weather and climate have been shaping human history for thousands of years. Blizzards, hurricanes, droughts, dust storms, and floods: All of them have been turning points. Weather disasters seem so much bigger than we are, but they're accurate barometers for telling us about what we value as human beings. This course will examine some of these major turning points (some of them based on controversial evidence!), from the ancient world, to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, to the Dust Bowl, to Hurricane Katrina.

Longevity: the ambition of kings, super villains, and pretty much all of us who enjoy waking up each morning. It's also become a focus for biotechnology companies interested in making a big impact on healthcare. According to Professor Jill Helms, questions of this magnitude require moonshot thinking and some extreme team science. In this lecture, she will explain how her Stanford group is working to better understand why we age and translating that knowledge into strategies that slow this natural process. 

When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand: He stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, the young man took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years.  

On the evening of April 13, 1970, the three astronauts aboard Apollo 13 were just hours from the third lunar landing in history. But as they soared through space, 200,000 miles from Earth, an explosion badly damaged their spacecraft. Thirteen is the shocking and miraculous true story of how the astronauts and ground crew guided Apollo 13 back to Earth. Expanding on dispatches written for The New Yorker, Henry S. F. Cooper Jr. brings listeners unparalleled detail on the moment-by-moment developments of one of NASA’s most dramatic missions.

Including letters, speeches, articles, and essays written before 1935, this collection offers a complete portrait of Einstein as a humanitarian and as a human being trying to make sense of the world changing around him. 

For millennia, scientists thought women were inside-out versions of men, and male anxiety about female sexuality generated ludicrous ideas and perpetuated inaccurate information. The Sweetness of Venus is a provocative, straight-talking history that exposes the denial, misunderstanding, brutality, and lies endured by this taboo part of human anatomy.

In Discovering Your Spirit Animal, shamanic healer Lucy Harmer presents a practical approach to understanding spirit animals and applying their power to specific situations in daily life. Written in clear, simple language and featuring compelling stories and anecdotes, the book explains what a spirit animal is, describes its purpose, and shows that understanding the “medicine” of one’s spirit animal - assimilating its qualities and characteristics - allows one to apply the lessons and messages they convey and use them for personal transformation.

In Outlandish, acclaimed travel writer Nick Hunt takes us across landscapes that should not be there, wildernesses found in Europe yet seemingly belonging to far-off continents: a patch of Arctic tundra in Scotland; the continent's largest surviving remnant of primeval forest in Poland and Belarus; Europe's only true desert in Spain; and the fathomless grassland steppes of Hungary.

Have you ever wondered what makes dough rise? Or how your morning coffee gives you that energy boost? Or why your shampoo is making your hair look greasy? The answer is chemistry. From the moment we wake up until the time we go to sleep (and even while we sleep), chemistry is at work - and it doesn’t take a PhD in science to understand it. 

Melbourne, Australia. As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play. Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone. As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.

After moving from London to a new home in Yorkshire, and about to become a father for the first time, Rob Cowen finds himself in unfamiliar territory. Disoriented, hemmed in by winter and yearning for open space, he ventures out to a nearby edge-land: a pylon-slung tangle of wood, hedge, field, meadow and river that lies unclaimed and overlooked on the outskirts of town. Digging deeper into this lost landscape, he begins to uncover its many layers and lives - beast, bird, insect, plant and people - in kaleidoscopic detail.

Water voles are small, brownish, bewhiskered and charming. Made famous by 'Ratty' in The Wind in the Willows, once they were a ubiquitous part of our waterways. They were a totem of our rivers. Now, however, they are nearly gone. This is their story, and the story of a conservationist with a wild hope: that he could bring them back. Tom Moorhouse spent 11 years beside rivers, fens, canals, lakes and streams, researching British wildlife. Quite a lot of it tried to bite him.

Artificial intelligence is driving workforce disruption on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution. Automation was once associated with mass layoffs in heavy industry like auto and steel, but computers are getting smarter and are beginning to replace traditionally 'white collar' roles like law, consulting, banking and finance. Yet some curious findings are emerging from the world's leading research labs.

From her horse farm in Nebraska, Cara Whitney - wife of Dan Whitney (a.k.a. "Larry the Cable Guy") - shares down-to-earth stories about how ordinary people can share their faith in extraordinary ways.