Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman
Aug 3, 2026 · 1 hr · 23 segments
Have you ever spent hours with a thought cycling around in your head? What happens when the brain continuously worries, craves, or replays something without finding the exit? Where does the feeling of…
Jonathan DownarGuest
David EaglemanHost
Have you ever spent hours chasing a thought that's cycling around in your head, and it's hard to stop it? What is that about? What happens when your brain keeps worrying or craving or replaying something without finding an exit? Where does the feeling of being done come from in the brain? Could depression and addiction and OCD and PTSD, could these all share the same problem, which is a difficulty your brain has finding the exit? Is mental freedom just the ability to change states? Today, we're joined by neuroscientist and psychiatrist Jonathan Downer to talk about doom loops and how they might be broken.
I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three-pound universe to understand why and how our lives look the way they do.
Guaranteed human.
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Have you ever spent hours chasing a thought that's cycling around in your head, and it's hard to stop it? What is that about? What happens when your brain keeps worrying or craving or replaying something without finding an exit? Where does the feeling of being done come from in the brain? Could depression and addiction and OCD and PTSD, could these all share the same problem, which is a difficulty your brain has finding the exit? Is mental freedom just the ability to change states? Today, we're joined by neuroscientist and psychiatrist Jonathan Downer to talk about doom loops and how they might be broken.
I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three-pound universe to understand why and how our lives look the way they do.
Guaranteed human.