The Future And You -- August 8, 2012

Eva Sawyer and Stephen Euin Cobb (your host) are today's featured speakers. Topic: Improving the Functioning of Your Brain (AKA: Cognitive Enhancement).  Discussion points include: recent developments in cognitive enhancement, what is desired and what is desirable, drugs known to increase mental capacity, why there is push-back and resistance, the benefits, the dangers, and trends in medical research which will affect the future of cognitive enhancement. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 8, 2012 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 57 minutes] This panel was recorded on July 21, 2012 before a live audience in Chattanooga Tennessee at the science fiction and fantasy convention: LibertyCon. Special thanks go to Derek Spraker and John Trieber of LibertyCon who recorded this, and many other panels for me; and to the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel for having such a fine sound system. Eva Sawyer has a bachelors degree in neurobiology and behaviour, a masters degree in zoology, and is currently working on her doctorate in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University.  Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, futurist, magazine writer and host of the award-winning podcast The Future And You. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he is also a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. His novels include Bones Burnt Black, Plague at Redhook and Skinbrain.