Interview - Bret Stetka on his new book, "A History of the Human Brain - from the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved"

Listen Now to Bret Stetka on How are Brain Evolved

Brain evolution is a very labyrinthian topic taking us back to the dawn of life itself and the lowly common sea sponge, with their crude cellular communications, through the reptilian, mammalian, and chimp brains, and on to the hominids, ending with our species spending inordinate amounts of time interacting with little rectangles of metal and glass. What a long strange trip it continues to be. Bret makes the case that by studying the history of the brain, we can begin to piece together what it truly means to be human.

Bret Stetka is an editorial director of Medscape.com, the professional division of WebMD.com. He is a former neuroscienceAuthor Bret Stetka researcher, a nonpracticing physician, a freelance health and science journalist, and a regular contributor to NPR and Scientific American, writingh about neuroscience, psychology and evolution.

Dr. Future News - 3D Mars Live, Fibonacci Solar Panels, Crowd Funding Ignites, Ecstatic Brain Scanning, Bacteria have friends too, the Brains behind the Mind.

 Dr. Future News 9.25.12

Welcome to the Dr. Future News, where we do our best to keep you abreast of some really interesting stories this week.  It’s pretty cool, for example that the NASA scientists are using consumer 3D glasses from Nvidia to roll around on Mars aboard the Curiousity rover.   It used to be that NASA drove the development of tech, with inventions as lithium batteries, wireless sensors, to panoramic photography. Now, consumer tech is helping to drive the space program, literally!  And in that realm there are rising new inventors, such a 13-year old Aidan Dwyer, who has created a new kind of solar panel, based on his observation of trees.

We also take a look at the world of crowd funding, where more and more people are finding the money for financing their personal projects and dreams.  Just this week, Mrs. Future (Sun Marian) spoke on the topic at a Film School in San Francisco, as a way to finance your media productions. It is an amazing up-and-coming field.

Our reporting on the social nature of bacterial colonies and the significance of brain evolution in understanding our minds were also fun to make and share with you, not to mention the report from an intrepid New Scientist journalist inside an fMRI machine while high on MDMA.  So enjoy, and you’ll hear from us next week in our new home on KOMY in Santa Cruz!