Minds Over Matters

About Minds Over Matters

The podcast that could save humanity. Minds Over Matters focuses on discoveries, research, and insights that enhance our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Join us for real conversations with experts in every field, from climate change to economics, and AI to neuroscience. No noise. Just real research broken down.

Publisher

Minds Over Matters

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Oct 2025

Latest episode

21 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

22 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Jul 2026

   The Cosmos

   The universe is big. And old. And complicated. And even though we’re only able to observe a shockingly small part of it, that small part constantly reveals new insights that challenge everything we thought we knew. In this episode of Minds Over Matters (https://www.youtube.com/@MindsOverMattersPod), we are joined by Cosmologist and Physicist Lloyd Knox (https://www.lloydknox.com/), whose research tries to make sense of the ridiculously large, impossibly complex puzzle that is the cosmos. Bio: The nature of dark energy, the origins of the universe, and the afterglow of the Big Bang. These are just a few of the mind-bending phenomena studied by Lloyd Knox (https://physics.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/lloyd-knox), the Michael and Ester Vaida Endowed Chair in Cosmology and Astrophysics at the College of Letters and Science (https://lettersandscience.ucdavis.edu/) at UC Davis (https://www.ucdavis.edu/). Knox's current research interests include the Hubble tension (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/science-behind-the-discoveries/hubble-constant-and-tension/), the cosmological neutrino background (https://pirsa.org/25030127), testing the standard framework of modern cosmology, developing and testing alternative models, and searching for primordial gravitational waves (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1179541). His more than 200 publications have been cited over 100,000 times. Publications (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dKIQnXMAAAAJ&hl=en)

2. 

   7 Jul 2026

   Rocking the Climate

   The numbers surrounding climate change are very real and frightening, leaving us with very few options. We can either warm (no pun intended) to the idea of extreme weather events that increase in both frequency and intensity, rising sea levels, severe droughts and wildfires, ocean acidification, and general disruption of the ecosystems that supported our evolution. Or we can take action to slow, and hopefully even reverse, the impact of carbon and methane in our atmosphere. Today we’re joined by Isabel Montañez (https://eps.ucdavis.edu/people/isabel-montanez), a sedimentary geochemist and paleoclimatologist who says that the lessons we are learning from the earth itself, when accelerated, may help us to radically and rapidly sidestep our own extinction. Stay tuned for what may be one of the most important and inspiring messages you’ve heard in a long, long time. Bio: Isabel Montañez is a sedimentary geochemist and paleoclimatologist whose research focuses on reconstructing past global and regional climates, in particular those during warming and major climate transitions. Her approach is interdisciplinary, integrating physical, biological, and chemical proxies of environmental and ecosystem parameters with multiple scales of numerical modeling to study Earth system processes and their interactions during climate and ecosystem perturbation.Awards:• Arthur L. Day Medal, The Geological Society of America (https://www.geosociety.org/)• Endowed Biogeochemistry Lecture, Geochemical Society• The UC Davis Prize for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement• Union Fellow of the AGU• Francis J. Pettijohn Medal, Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM)• Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences (https://www.calacademy.org/)• Jean Baptiste Lamarck Medal, European Geosciences Union• Lawrence L. Sloss Award for Sedimentary Geology, Geological Society of America• Fellow of the Geochemical Society• Fellow of the European Association of Geochemistry• Chancellor's Leadership Professor• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (https://www.aaas.org/)• Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation• F. Earl Ingerson Lecture, Geochemical Society• Herbert A. Young Society Dean's Fellow, College of Letters and Sciences• Fellow of the Geological Society of America• James Lee Wilson Award for Excellence in Sedimentary Geology SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology's Young Scientist Award)• American Association of Petroleum Geologists J. “Cam” Sproule Memorial Award

3. 

   23 Jun 2026

   Emotions

   Our emotional state at any given moment is how we assess the quality of our lives. Whether we’re happy, sad, angry, depressed … that’s who we are. But where do emotions come from? Do we own them or do they own us? Today’s guest, Eliza Bliss-Moreau (https://www.elizablissmoreau.com/), is one of the country’s leading experts on the biological underpinnings of the human experience and joins us today to help us understand some of the complexities of human emotion. Bio: Eliza Bliss-Moreau (https://psychology.ucdavis.edu/people/eliza-bliss-moreau) is a Core Scientist at the California National Primate Research Center (http://cnprc.ucdavis.edu/) at UC Davis (https://www.ucdavis.edu/). Her lab, the Bliss-Moreau Laboratory, conducts translational and comparative affective science using multi-method, multi-species approaches to understand the biological underpinnings of the social and affective lives of humans and nonhuman animals. The lab is interested in how the neural systems that generate and regulate affect develop and change from womb to tomb.  We deploy tools to study these lifespan developmental changes from the level of synapses to social systems, with an emphasis on understanding how robust social environments shape psychological and biological outcomes. The lab also has a strong commitment to animal welfare and improving scientific outcomes via the ethical care of animals. Publications: Charbonneau J.A., Santistevan A.C., Raven E.P., Bennett J.L., Russ B.E., & Bliss-Moreau E. (2024). Evolutionarily conserved neural responses to affective touch in monkeys transcend consciousness and change with age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (16) e2119868119 . Santistevan, A.C., Fiske, O., Moadab, G., Charbonneau, J.A., Isaacowitz, D.M., & Bliss-Moreau, E. (2024). See no evil: Attentional bias towards threat is diminished in aged monkeys. Emotion, 24, 2, 303-325. Rothwell, E., Carp, S.B., & Bliss-Moreau, E. (2023). The importance of social behavior in nonhuman primate studies of aging: A mini-review. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 154, 105422. Moadab, G., Pittet, F., Bennett, J.L., Taylor, C.L., Fiske, O., Singapuri, A., Coffey, L.L., Van Rompay, K.K.A., & Bliss-Moreau, E. (2023). Zika virus-infected pregnant macaques had smaller infants that spent more time in physical contact with them than non-infected mother-infant pairs. Science Translational Medicine, 15, eadhoo43. Pittet, F., Heng, V., Atufa, J., & Bliss-Moreau, E. (2023). Monkeys do not show sex differences in toy preferences through their individual choices. Biology of Sex Differences, 14:3. Charbonneau, J.A., Maister, L., Tsakiris, M. & Bliss-Moreau, E. (2022). Rhesus monkeys have an interoceptive sense of their beating hearts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119 (16) e211986811. Please see Dr. Bliss-Moreau's Google Scholar Profile (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=STWy_hQAAAAJ&hl=en) for more publications.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

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