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Futurology: The Future Is a Human Invention (with Dean Buonomano and Grant Slater)

zapier

November 10, 2026

consciousness as process, evolutionary psychology, Futurology, human fears of artificial intelligence, neuroscience of time, podcasts, the brain’s invention of tomorrow

Listen: https://ift.tt/ZBP40Ut

Nothing on Earth plans like we do. A chimpanzee will use a tool, then walk away from it. A child takes years to learn that tomorrow is coming. Somewhere in our past, an ape started saving tools for a day that didn't exist yet. That move gave us agriculture, markets, and the knowledge that we will die. The future isn't out there waiting. The brain built it.

In this episode, Dean Buonomano, the UCLA neuroscientist behind Your Brain Is a Time Machine, follows that invention through the mind. There is no clock in the head; every circuit keeps its own time. Consciousness is a process, not a state. The brain stays blind to itself. The modern world moves faster than it can absorb. Psychedelics, he argues, reveal no truer reality than the one evolution already tested. And our fear of AI, he suspects, is an older fear of each other.

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The Futurology Podcast – full episodes on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p–2IFJbn0CIdaZMva

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode:

Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time — Dean Buonomano (Book, 2017)

How to Change Your Mind — Michael Pollan (Book, 2018)

The Time Machine — H.G. Wells (Book, 1895)