The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God - Justin Brierley - #30

The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God - Justin Brierley - #30

Justin Brierley is a British writer, broadcaster and public speaker who has spent over two decades hosting dialogue between Christians, atheists and sceptics. After university he joined Premier Christian Radio in London, where he spent more than twenty years and became known for Unbelievable, a weekly faith debate show that brought believers and non-believers together to argue the big questions. Going freelance in 2023, he now hosts the Re-enchanting podcast and the dialogue show Uncommon Ground, alongside his documentary series The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. His central argument is that, after the heyday of New Atheism, secular thinkers across the West are taking Christianity seriously again, a cultural turn he traces through declining birth rates, the search for meaning, and a fresh openness among public intellectuals. His book of the same name, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, lays out the case in full. Expect to learn how Justin moved from Christian radio into hosting debates between believers and atheists, what New Atheism was and why its momentum faded, how figures like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland shifted the public conversation, why the decline of religion may be linked to falling birth rates and a loss of community, what Christianity offers people searching for meaning and purpose, how the idea of grace differs from a culture of constant striving, whether the so-called revival is real or just an online algorithm, what the controversy over the withdrawn Bible Society survey actually shows, how cultural Christianity differs from genuine belief, what Blaise Pascal meant by making people wish Christianity were true, why Justin thinks you cannot understand faith from the outside, and how to begin exploring Christianity if you are open but not yet convinced. Justin Brierley online: Website: justinbrierley.com [http://justinbrierley.com] Podcasts: The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Re-enchanting, and Uncommon Ground Book: The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, available at justinbrierley.com [http://justinbrierley.com] 0:00 Decades in faith media 0:35 Premier Christian Radio and Unbelievable 3:07 Raised in a Christian family 4:01 Doubts and questions at university 9:02 The rise of New Atheism 14:41 Jordan Peterson and the shift 16:12 What losing religion costs society 19:19 Religion, community and birth rates 24:31 How Christianity provides meaning 28:11 Which story do you prefer 32:01 Where human rights came from 38:31 Grace versus constant striving 40:39 Is the revival real 42:23 The withdrawn survey controversy 45:59 Bible sales and other data 51:57 The danger of cultural Christianity 57:55 Pascal and wishing it were true 63:34 Why you have to step inside 64:58 Faith and How to Stop Smoking 66:31 Anything before we close 69:02 The problem with chasing goals 69:53 Building a life that survives storms 72:18 Where to find Justin

The Science of Slang and Swearing - Prof. Kate Burridge - #29

Kate Burridge is Professor of Linguistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a Fellow of both the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. She earned her PhD from the University of London in 1983 with a dissertation on syntactic change in medieval Dutch. Burridge has authored or co-authored more than 25 books on language, including Blooming English, Weeds in the Garden of Words, and Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. She is a regular presenter of language segments on ABC Radio and co-hosts the Breaking Taboos podcast, which explores how older people talk about mental health. In this conversation, she explains how slang is born and dies, why swearing provides genuine physical relief, and what makes some words taboo in one era but perfectly acceptable in another. Expect to learn how medieval Dutch surgery manuals reveal patterns of language change, why 800 separate languages exist in Papua New Guinea, what linguistic accommodation is and why we do it instinctively, how swearing in your first language provides greater emotional release, why the ice water experiment proved that swearing increases pain tolerance, how slang got its start as underworld criminal jargon, why 30% of English words for stupidity begin with the letter D, how social media accelerates the birth and death of slang, what makes OK the most successful slang term of all time, how disease-based swearing works in Dutch, and why euphemisms around mental health can delay treatment for older people. Kate Burridge online: Monash University: research.monash.edu/en/persons/kathryn-burridge [http://research.monash.edu/en/persons/kathryn-burridge] Podcast: Breaking Taboos (available on all podcast platforms) Books: Forbidden Words, Blooming English, Weeds in the Garden of Words (Cambridge University Press)

Can We Upload The Human Brain? - Dr. Randal Koene - #28

Randal Koene is a Dutch neuroscientist, neuroengineer, and co-founder of the Carboncopies Foundation, a nonprofit advancing research into substrate-independent minds. He holds a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from McGill University and an M.Sc [http://M.Sc]. in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology. Koene coined the term "whole brain emulation" in 2000 and has spent decades building the scientific roadmap for recreating brain function in non-biological substrates. He previously served as a professor at Boston University's Center for Memory and Brain, as Director of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia in Spain, and as Science Director of the 2045 Initiative. In this conversation, he explains how structural brain scanning has advanced dramatically, why the viral fruit fly brain demo was more limited than headlines suggested, and what it would actually take to build and validate an emulation of a human brain. Expect to learn how Randal's father at CERN shaped his thinking about substrate independence, what inspired him to coin the term whole brain emulation, how lesion studies and evolutionary biology support the idea that minds can run on different hardware, what the difference is between neuronal networks and artificial neural networks, how electron microscopy is transforming brain data collection, why the viral fruit fly brain demo was misleading, what the two biggest bottlenecks are in scaling brain emulation to humans, how AI is being used as a tool in computational neuroscience, what consciousness is according to the Metzinger framework, whether a brain emulation would have human rights, how the Carboncopies Foundation's brain emulation challenge works, and why whole brain emulation and mind uploading are not the same thing. Randal Koene online: Website: randalkoene.com [http://randalkoene.com] Carboncopies Foundation: carboncopies.org [http://carboncopies.org] LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/randalkoene [http://linkedin.com/in/randalkoene] Contact: contact@carboncopies.org [contact@carboncopies.org]

The Science of Decision Making - Prof. Gerd Gigerenzer - #27

Gerd Gigerenzer is a German psychologist, director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam, and director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he led the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition for over two decades. He is the author of numerous books including Risk Savvy, Gut Feelings, and The Intelligence of Intuition, and has spent his career studying how people actually make decisions under uncertainty, as opposed to how theorists think they should. Before becoming an academic, he spent roughly a dozen years as a professional musician, an experience that directly shaped his thinking about heuristics and real-world choice. His long-running intellectual debate with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman over the nature of human rationality is one of the defining controversies in modern behavioral science. Expect to learn how Gigerenzer chose an academic career over life as a professional musician using heuristic rather than calculated reasoning, how the gap between what is taught about rationality in universities and how people actually decide prompted his life's research agenda, what the crucial distinction between risk and uncertainty means and why standard probability tools fail in an uncertain world, how intuition works as a form of unconscious intelligence built on experience rather than arbitrary feeling, why corporate executives routinely hide gut decisions behind consulting reports and what Gigerenzer calls defensive decision making, how predictive AI systems used in US courts fail to outperform simple strategies despite being marketed as superior, what ecological rationality means and how it differs from the logical rationality assumed by most economists and behavioral scientists, why Gigerenzer disagreed with Daniel Kahneman about heuristics and what their decades-long debate was actually about, when ignoring information leads to better decisions than processing all of it, how the framing of medical statistics as relative rather than absolute risk caused thousands of unnecessary procedures in the UK, and what risk literacy means and why Gigerenzer believes it is a necessary condition for a functioning democracy. Gerd Gigerenzer online: Website: www.gerd-gigerenzer.com [http://www.gerd-gigerenzer.com] Books: Risk Savvy, Gut Feelings, The Intelligence of Intuition, How to Stay Smart in a Smart World (available wherever books are sold).

Ozempic, GLP-1s and the Future of Obesity - Prof. Carel Le Roux - #26

Carel le Roux is a Professor of Experimental Pathology at University College Dublin, Director of the Metabolic Medicine Group, and one of the world's leading researchers on how the gut communicates with the brain. He completed his PhD at Imperial College London, where he conducted foundational research on gut hormones and appetite, and later co-founded My Best Weight, Ireland's leading obesity care clinic accredited by the European Association for the Study of Obesity. His clinical work and trials span GLP-1 receptor agonists, bariatric surgery outcomes, and the emerging class of multi-receptor drugs now transforming obesity medicine. He is currently leading the trial of survodutide, one of the most promising next-generation treatments in the field. Expect to learn how GLP-1 was discovered during PhD research into gut-brain communication and how it became one of the most consequential drug classes in medical history, what the Gila monster's saliva has to do with the development of Ozempic and drugs like it, why obesity is a disease of the brain rather than a failure of willpower or lifestyle, how these medications reset the brain's fat-mass setpoint so that weight loss happens without deliberate effort, what ultra-processed foods may be doing to brain inflammation and why reversing the obesity epidemic through diet advice alone has failed everywhere it has been tried, why the goal of treatment should be health gain rather than weight loss and what that distinction means in practice, how to manage and minimise side effects by titrating the dose slowly, what the long-term safety record of GLP-1 drugs actually shows and why not taking the medication is often the riskier choice, why muscle loss on these drugs is largely a misunderstood phenomenon and what protein intake and exercise do to address it, what the evidence says about non-obese people using GLP-1 drugs recreationally and why these treatments were designed as lifelong medications, how GLP-1-like drugs appear to reduce alcohol consumption and are now being studied for addiction and other conditions including heart and kidney disease, and what new triple-receptor drugs like retatrutide and survodutide offer over existing treatments. Carel le Roux online: Website: mybestweight.ie [http://mybestweight.ie] University profile: University College Dublin, Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research