About this episode
The episode explores the implications of telepathy, including its potential to enhance empathy and the chaos it could bring to daily life.
What the if you could read minds — but only when someone's nearby? Congratulations, your subway commute just became a psychic nightmare. Babies would blast unfiltered emotional chaos straight into your skull, your dog would telepathically loop images of a full food bowl at you around the clock, and predators might evolve to psychically lure prey into their mouths. But here's the thing — telepathy might also unlock a kind of empathy we've never experienced before, letting us truly feel the world through someone else's mind. Tinfoil hats optional — tune in and find out why you might actually want one! Want to explore how Darwin catalogued every possible gradation of animal communication and emotion? Check out these resources mentioned in the episode: Janet Browne's award-winning two-volume biography of Darwin: https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Darwin-Biography-Vol-Voyaging/dp/0691026068 The Darwin Correspondence Project, where you can read Darwin's notebooks and journals yourself: https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/ —— When she's not studying zombie fungus at Harvard or helping us break the universe every week, our very own Gaby Paniccia writes science fiction. Her short story "The…
People in this episode
Host: Philip Shane
Topics covered
- telepathy
- empathy
- animal communication
- psychic abilities
- science fiction
Keywords
- telepathy
- empathy
- mind reading
- animal communication
- psychic abilities
- Darwin
- science fiction
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: The Darwin Correspondence Project, Escape Pod
Books & works: The Automatic Grocery Store, Charles Darwin: A Biography, Vol. 1: Voyaging
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