Why does a cold pool feel warmer the second time you dip your toes in? Why does a safecracker run his fingers over sandpaper? Why do Mediterranean cultures touch each other more than Scandinavian cultures? Would it be great — or not so great — if you were unable to feel physical pain? Why does stubbing your toe have different sensations through time? And what does any of this have to do with cuddle puddles, NBA players bumping chests, or puppies sleeping in dog piles? Today’s episode is a love story about our sense of touch: what it is, how it works, and why it plays such a critical role in our lives.
"David Eagleman is the kind of guy who really does make being a neuroscientist look like fun."
- New York Times
"David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist and fiction-writer alive."
- Stewart Brand
"What Eagleman seems to be calling for is a new Enlightenment."
- Sunday Herald
"[A] neuroscientist and polymath."
- Wall Street Journal
"David Eagleman offers startling lessons.... His method is to ask us to cast off our lazy commonplace assumptions.
- The Guardian
"Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness."
- The New Yorker
"A popularizer of impressive gusto...[Eagleman] aims, grandly, to do for the study of the mind what Copernicus did for the study of the stars."
- New York Observer
