Something Interesting

Being a person means constantly navigating deep and genuine uncertainty. We are uncertain about what we think, how we feel, what might happen, and what we should do.Being uncertain means confronting the limits of our knowledge or our foresight in our lifelong efforts to persist and thrive, to seek safety and security, to find companionship and community, so make some sense of the world.We live in a digital media and social environment that tries to take advantage of that, that monetizes and exploits our desire for security and certainty. Some of the same cognitive biases and shortcuts that mean we can't ever be fully certain and secure when making our way through this very complex existence also make us susceptible to charismatic misinformation.Transcript CreditsWritten, recorded, and produced by Steve McCullough.The music is “Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons - By Attribution 4.0.The cover art features “Concentric squares forming a geometric maze pattern” by Cansu Sarp.

Cuturally, we are both fascinated and repelled by guns. They play a huge role in our love of action films and our fears of criminal violence. There are deep divisions in knowledge and communication between the communities of people who do and do not own guns. The reality of guns is obscured and shaped by the stories we tell about them.In my early 40s, I took up hunting and became a gun owner. Crossing that divide taught me a lot about why we have such a hard time talking and thinking about guns.Transcript CreditsThe music is “Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons - By Attribution 4.0.The cover art features “Concentric squares forming a geometric maze pattern” by Cansu Sarp.

Aphantasia refers to the absence of internal sense perceptions when remembering or imagining. It means knowing that you just ate a delicious chocolate cake, but not being able to re-experience its taste in your mind. People with visual aphantasia don't generate an image in their mind’s eye when hearing words like “apple” or “tree” or “dog.”The brain’s image-processing and memory systems are involved in a range of conscious and unconscious experiences. Aphantasia is associated with a range of consequences, including impaired autobiographical memory and, potentially, less emotional awareness and empathy. It's an under-recognized aspect of neurodiversity.Steve explores this experience and reflects on the uncanny fact that other peoples’ consciousnesses can work differently than our own, in more or less subtle ways with far-reaching effects.TranscriptSelected ResearchBeran, Michael J. et al (2023). Assessing aphantasia prevalence and the relation of self-reported imagery abilities and memory task performance. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103548.Blomkvist, A. (2023) Aphantasia: in search of a theory. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12432Blomkvist A, Marks DF. Defining and ‘diagnosing’ aphantasia: Condition or individual difference?https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2023.09.004Delem et al. Complete Aphantasics Process Emotions Differently, But No Less Efficiently: Evidence of a Non-linear Relationship Between Visual Imagery and Alexithymia. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/es425_v1McCormick C and Lange S (2025) Missing images: autobiographical memory in Aphantasia and blindness. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcogn.2025.1644533Monzel M, et al. Aphantasia within the framework of neurodivergence. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103567Monzel M, et al. Affective processing in aphantasia and potential overlaps with alexithymia. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bionps.2024.100106.Wicken M, et al. The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0267Zeman, Adam. Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.02.007The music is “Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).The cover art features “Concentric squares forming a geometric maze pattern” by Cansu Sarp.

Something Interesting is an audio essay anthology that explores the philosophical, the political, and the personal.I’m Steve, your host. My background is eclectic. I headed to university to study Applied Physics but wound up doing a PhD on Holocaust memoirs. I've been programming computers since I was a kid, and when I escaped the academic world, I worked for years as a web developer. More recently I’ve been a digital writer and producer working in climate change, human rights, and public history.So I’ve always appreciated and used both sides of my brain. I love statistics, science and code but also words, ideas, and interpretation.I'm fascinated by how we construct our selves and our stories to make meaning out of the unlikely enigma that is our shared existence.In each episode I address a topic that intrigues me and matters to me in some more or less intimate way. In the first season I explore things including body image and masculinity, confidence and uncertainty, aphantasia - or thinking without images-, and birds.I'm not presenting academic research here but these aren't just hot takes. I play with ideas, make connections, and generally explore the complexities involved in the perplexing, brief, and beautiful experience of being a person.I’d be honoured if you’d join me. CreditsWritten, recorded, and produced by Steve McCullough.The music is “Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons - By Attribution 4.0.The cover art features “Concentric squares forming a geometric maze pattern” by Cansu Sarp.