Unpopular Neuroscience
Episodes
Slug Fest
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Unpopular Neuroscience, Katie and Patrick welcome special guest Matt Baumann with a deep question from his son, Calvin. When a slug remem...
I, Robot.
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Large attentional transformers like ChatGPT generate text that seems surprisingly human-like. On this episode Katie and Patrick ask which bits of the ...
Lots of People in Your Head
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Neuroscientists don't believe in Artificial General Intelligence because they don't believe in General Intelligence. Instead they think the brain has ...
Consciousness, Man.
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is consciousness? To the general public it's one of the most profound and enduring mysteries of the human psyche. To specialists it's something w...
Cognitive Biases: Why Everyone Is Stupid Except Me!
20 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode Katie & Patrick discuss why cognitive biases are so popular—at least when applied to other people—even though these reasoning ...
Learning Science, Learning Magic
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows that learning takes hard work, deep reading, study, and repeated practice. But wouldn't it be rad if it didn't? On this episode Katie a...
AI Winter is Coming
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI oscillates between impressive breakthroughs and laughable failures. In this episode Katie & Patrick discuss AI booms and winters and what makes...
Hat Trick
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What's so great about having a "normal" brain? Katie & Patrick discuss a trio of patients from Oliver Sacks' iconic book The Man Who Mistook His W...
All the brains I've loved before.
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We sometimes talk about "the brain" as if there's only one of them, but there's tremendous diversity in nervous systems between species, and even betw...
Weird Little Guys: Vehicles by Valentino Braitenberg
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How hard is it to build a working, thinking brain from simple parts like wires, sensors, and motors? According to Valentino Braitenberg, author of thi...
Why Study Unpopular Neuroscience?
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone is curious about the brain, but what would understanding the brain even look like? On the first episode of Unpopular Neuroscience, neuroscien...