What happens when your brain is deprived of stimulation? What effect does being cut off from interaction with the outside world have on a person? What effect does it have on Michael, when he is locked…

We 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 would we? In this episode of Mind Field, I demonstrate the stron…

We 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 down, or does it just make us more angry? In this episode o…

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 becomes more lifelike, where does the line between human and c…

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 control over our decisions, or are they really predetermine…

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 can be tricked into feeling intense physical pain, even tho…

How much do we communicate through facial expressions? Are our expressions affected by our moods, or is it the other way around? And what happens to your ability to relate to others when your facial m…

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 ever really know who “you” are? In this episode of Mind Fie…

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 people say they would. But I wanted to test what people woul…

Do psychedelic drugs really bring about self-healing and personal enlightenment? New research says they may. In this episode, I travel to the Amazonian jungle of Peru to experience the mind-expandin…

Psychology. Neuroscience. Drugs. All can be tools of interrogation. In this episode, an expert shows me how to coerce unsuspecting subjects into signing false confessions; a police psychologist q…

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 rat in a groundbreaking study at UC Irvine, where scientist…

What makes a hero? Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, now runs seminars to teach everyday people how to be heroes. But can heroism be learned? I pu…

Exactly how do placebos work? Researchers believe that, through the power of suggestion, placebos may unleash the power of our own subconscious minds to cure ourselves. I was honored to participate i…

Scientists can’t dissect living people’s brains to study their function. But by examining the behavior of people whose brains are atypical (due to stroke, injury, or being born that way), we can learn…

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 our brains and use electricity to control our bodies, or use …

Humans are the only Earthlings with complex language. But at what cost was that ability acquired? In this episode, Michael Stevens visit Tetsuro Matsuzawa to learn about his influential cognitive trad…

How are our moral decisions influenced by factors we’re not aware of? A phenomenon known as Moral Licensing claims that when we do something good, we often subconsciously allow ourselves to then do so…

There are 100 billion individual neurons in the human brain. Working together, they allow us to make sense of, and move through, the world around us. Scientists have built replicas of the human brain …

Normal people can become monsters, given the right situation. That’s the standard narrative of the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous psychological experiments of all time. But what if…

If I could live forever, should I? How does being reminded of our own mortality affect us psychologically? In this episode I speak with mortician and death positivity activist Caitlin Doughty and visi…

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 be trying to make contact at all? This episode takes me on …

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 observe the formation of superstitious beliefs. And Dr. Samuel …

In this episode I visit a researcher who is studying memory by using machine learning and neuroimaging to detect and predict people's brain states. I also travel to Japan to meet with a team working o…