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Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced a new series of audio documentaries, exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.

Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you\\u2019ll find this series fascinating.

In this episode, we survey the landscape of consciousness and get acquainted with the mystery of the mind. We start with an attempt to define consciousness\\u2013and veterans of conversations on consciousness will know that this is a huge part of the challenge.\\xa0

David Chalmers begins with his conception of what he coined \\u201cThe Hard Problem of Consciousness\\u201d and a famous question offered by the philosopher Thomas Nagel.\\xa0

We then construct a \\u201cPhilosophical Zombie\\u201d before the philosopher Thomas Metzinger explains why he is thoroughly unimpressed by the ability to imagine \\u201csuch a thing,\\u201d while he simultaneously warns us against ever attempting to build one. Anil Seth brings some hope of whittling away the intuition gap of the hard problem by pursuing the \\u201ceasy\\u201d problems, with clear scientific reasoning.

Later, Iain McGilchrist lays out the intuition-shattering implications of the famous Roger Sperry experiments with split brain patients that suggest that consciousness can be cut with a knife\\u2026 at least temporarily. Annaka Harris then shifts the conversation to the realm of panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness is nomologically fundamental and potentially permeates all matter.\\xa0

Finally, Don Hoffman explains that consciousness is not only fundamental and non-illusory, but that the physical world we appear to be navigating is merely a virtual space-time interface, which has evolved to hide the true nature of reality from us.