Posted on

Show 361: Fund Drive Special w/ Kelly McGonigal

Audio here!

How can we cope with chronic pain, and how is it tied into memory and our outlook in ways that other sensations are not? How can cultivating self-compassion help us achieve our goals and cope with life challenges? And, most important, where is the empirical evidence that shows how well, and for whom, these mind-body systems work?

This Saturday, ETFF once again hosts Kelly McGonigal, PhD, who is a health psychologist at Stanford University and a leading expert on the mind-body relationship. She teaches for the School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program and is a senior teacher/consultant for the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Her popular public courses through Stanford’s Continuing Studies program including the Science of Willpower and the Science of a Calmed Mind demonstrate the applications of psychological science to personal health and happiness, as well as organizational success and social change.

Please call in during the program to donate to WBAI-NY to keep the station on the air, and support Equal Time for Freethought. You can call at 212-209-2950; and as a special “Thank-You” for donating, you can receive any number of gifts including Kelly’s book, Yoga for Pain Relief!

Posted on

Show 360: Peter Corning on “The Fair Society”

Audio here!

One of the missions of Equal Time for Freethought, perhaps the most important of them all, is to examine the nature of humanity so as to think clearly about what a truly humanistic society might look like.  It’s easy to criticize one or more element of our current unhealthy society in political or economic terms, but quite another thing to be able to ascertain just what sort of creatures’ humans are and to extrapolate from that the sort of social change which might have long lasting affects… humanistic affects.  We have interviewed many social scientists as well as evolutionary biologists and scientifically minded political activists over the years to help us with this mission, and today’s guest will be no exception…

For the past several years, Dr. Corning has served as the director of the non-profit Institute for the Study of Complex Systems and as a founding partner of a private consulting firm in Palo Alto California.  He has published numerous research papers and articles over the years, as well as five books including Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution.

Posted on

Show 359: Transhumanism – Understanding Our Technological Future

Transhumanism – Understanding Our Technological Future w/ James Hughes

Audio here!

Humans are inextricably linked to the technology we create, and the technology we create in turn shapes us.  In the next few decades a confluence of high technologies including nano-tech, bio-tech, info-tech, and cognitive science will bring humankind into territory previously unimagined, and largely still unimaginable.

Future technologies may empower human kind to eliminate or significantly reduce the serious existential threats we presently face such as environmental collapse, nuclear disaster, and worldwide pandemic.  On the other hand, our new technologies themselves could bring an entirely new set of challenges with which we will have to struggle.

To help us examine what our future relationship to technology might involve we will be joined by Dr. James Hughes, a scholar of futurism with the ability to discuss complex ideas about our future in a manner that is uniquely clear and accessible.  Dr. Hughes is a sociologist and bioethicist at Trinity College, and producer of Changesurfer Radio, a weekly half hour public affairs program on the impact of future technologies.  He is also the co-founder of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and currently serves as its Executive Director.