In our scintillating third episode, we got some time with Mark Changizi, cognitive theoretician and Co-Founder of a new institute, FreeX.group, for free speech and free expression.

Mark has been an outspoken critic of lockdowns and mask mandates since early 2020. He brings decades of cognitive research and theory to bear on the mass hysteria around a real underlying infectious disease.

Not such a big fan of “conspiracy theorizing,” Mark proposes that a lot of what is going on can be better explained by “emergent psycho-social dynamics,” …which he illustrates in the second half with an example of seances, and other human behaviors.

Mark’s books include The Brain from 25,000 Feet; The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We Thought We Knew About Human Vision; Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man; and Humans 3.0. He studied at CalTech, RPI and Duke University.

We highly recommend his prolific social quips and short “Science Moments” on Twitter (@markchangizi), Facebook and Youtubezzz, …at least for the moment 🙂

Scholarly footnote: The reference I drop at the end to “Cultural Fugue State” – Samuel Delaney, Stars in my Pockets Like Grains of Sand – a book everyone should read at least twice! To repeat, the basis of all future politics is to avoid “Cultural fugues” that can wind up killing whole planets.