Mind Field

1. S01E01Season's bestIsolationJanuary 18, 2017 9.0What happens when your brain is deprived of stimulation? What effect does being cut off from interaction with the outside world have on a pe
2. S01E02ConformityJanuary 18, 2017 8.0We are all unique individuals. We follow the beat of our own drum. We wouldn’t throw our own beliefs out the window just to fit in...or woul
3. S01E03DestructionJanuary 25, 2017 8.0We humans love to build, create, and organize. So why do we also love to destroy things? Can violently breaking stuff really help to calm us
4. S01E04Artificial IntelligenceFebruary 1, 2017—So you say you love your computer or smartphone...but can it love you back? As we become more dependent on technology, and our technology be
5. S01E05Freedom of ChoiceFebruary 8, 2017—We may value having Freedom of Choice, but are we actually happier when we have limited choices...or even no choice at all? Do we truly have
6. S01E06TouchFebruary 15, 2017—How much of the sensations we feel is determined by our physical bodies? Maybe our minds play a bigger role than we know. I’ll see if people
7. S01E07In Your FaceFebruary 22, 2017—How much do we communicate through facial expressions? Are our expressions affected by our moods, or is it the other way around? And what ha
8. S01E08Do You Know Yourself?March 1, 2017—What makes you, you? If even the most basic parts of you, like your memories or your past, can be forgotten or manipulated, how can you know

Season 1 ranked & reviewed

1. S02E01The Greater GoodDecember 6, 2017—Would you reroute a train to run over one person to prevent it from running over five others? In the classic “Trolley Problem” survey, most
2. S02E02The Psychedelic ExperienceDecember 6, 2017 8.0Do psychedelic drugs really bring about self-healing and personal enlightenment? New research says they may. In this episode, I travel to
3. S02E03InterrogationDecember 6, 2017—Psychology. Neuroscience. Drugs. All can be tools of interrogation. In this episode, an expert shows me how to coerce unsuspecting subje
4. S02E04Your Brain on TechDecember 6, 2017—Technology isn’t just changing our lives. It’s literally changing our brains -- and maybe for the better. In this episode, I’m a human lab
5. S02E05How to Make a HeroDecember 13, 2017—What makes a hero? Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, now runs seminars to teach everyday
6. S02E06The Power of SuggestionDecember 20, 2017—Exactly how do placebos work? Researchers believe that, through the power of suggestion, placebos may unleash the power of our own subconsc
7. S02E07Divergent MindsDecember 27, 2017—Scientists can’t dissect living people’s brains to study their function. But by examining the behavior of people whose brains are atypical (
8. S02E08The Electric BrainJanuary 3, 2018—Our nervous system is fundamentally electric. We move our arm by sending a signal to the muscles that control it. That means we can bypass o

Season 2 ranked & reviewed

1. S03E01The Cognitive Tradeoff HypothesisDecember 5, 2018 9.0Humans are the only Earthlings with complex language. But at what cost was that ability acquired? In this episode, Michael Stevens visit Tet
2. S03E02Moral LicensingDecember 5, 2018 7.0How are our moral decisions influenced by factors we’re not aware of? A phenomenon known as Moral Licensing claims that when we do something
3. S03E03The Stilwell BrainDecember 12, 2018—There are 100 billion individual neurons in the human brain. Working together, they allow us to make sense of, and move through, the world a
4. S03E04The Stanford Prison ExperimentDecember 19, 2018—Normal people can become monsters, given the right situation. That’s the standard narrative of the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the mo
5. S03E05Should I Die?December 26, 2018—If I could live forever, should I? How does being reminded of our own mortality affect us psychologically? In this episode I speak with mort
6. S03E06How to Talk to AliensJanuary 2, 2019—Are we alone in the universe? Even if we could contact aliens, what would we say? How would we say it? And, most importantly, should we even
7. S03E07Behavior and BeliefJanuary 9, 2019—How can a lie become true? In this episode, Dr. Aaron Blaisdell and I create a game show that is actually a giant "human Skinner Box" to obs
8. S03E08Mind ReadingJanuary 16, 2019—In this episode I visit a researcher who is studying memory by using machine learning and neuroimaging to detect and predict people's brain

Season 3 ranked & reviewed