Show Notes
Science studies the world from the outside. But for thousands of years, meditators have been running a different experiment: sit still, pay close attention, and watch what reality does. The results of those experiments can feel unintuitive. The self is an illusion. Free will too. There is no thing that exists without other things. Here's the strange part: at the frontiers of physics, the science is catching up to this ancient wisdom.
In this episode, author Annaka Harris tells the story of a lifetime spent watching her own mind, from the childhood migraines that taught her to meditate to the formation of the question she now asks leading physicists and philosophers. What if it's awareness all the way down? Her forthcoming book is Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution. That revolution begins with a wager: that felt experience is not something the brain produces but what the universe is made of.
Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod
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:
Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution — Annaka Harris (Book, Forthcoming, 2027)
Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind — Annaka Harris (Book, 2019)
The Gift of Fear — Gavin de Becker (Book, 1997)
Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution — Carlo Rovelli (Book, 2021)
Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence — Sara Imari Walker (Book, 2024)
Lights On – Annaka Harris (Audio documentary, 2024)
"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" – Thomas Nagel (Essay, 1974)
Mindful Games Activity Cards – Susan Kaiser Greenland with Annaka Harris (Cards, 2017)
"Lifelike chemicals may hold the secret to the origin of life" — Adam Frank (Article, 2023)
Lights On: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe — Annaka Harris (Audio documentary series, 2025)
Where to Find Annaka Harris:
Website
Lights On (audio documentary)
Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution (forthcoming, April 2027)
Newsletter
I Wonder (children's book, 2013)
Show ideas and feedback? Email:
Learn more about the Berggruen Institute
Follow Futurology!
Instagram: / futurologypod
Twitter/X: / futurologypod
Tiktok: / futurologypod
Facebook: / berggrueninst
LinkedIn: / berggrueninst
Bluesky: / futurologypod
Credits
Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch
Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos
Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney
Theme Music: Marcus Bagala
Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson
Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.
More from Futurology
Hypocrisy, the old line goes, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. For eighty years, the powerful at least bothered to pay it, citing human rights, national security, and democracy as reasons for starting wars and undercutting liberties. Now the veneers have been stripped, and the next generation is not accepting business as usual.
Machines are starting to act like humans. Does that mean they’re conscious? The problem is we haven’t been able to prove how or why humans are conscious yet either. So why would we be able to offer any answers about AI?
Democracy counts people, not plants. Humans are only a sliver of life on this planet, but today, we're the only ones who get a vote. What if we gave rights to rivers and standing to trees?
Somewhere around the Enlightenment we decided that thinking was what made us human. We built our schools, careers, and sense of worth at the altar of intelligence. Now machines are passing us on that rubric, which leaves two possibilities: we were replaceable all along, or we picked the wrong standard to live by.
Relying on machines to coordinate our lives was just one step toward decentering humanity’s role in the world. Flights, banking, trade, food production... But as we start merging our actual decision-making with digital entities, exactly which pieces of humanity are we leaving behind? And how might we bring those pieces back?