Playing Chess against Nature: Rafael Yuste explains how today's advances in neuroscience will eventually lead to a new Renaissance in understanding who exactly we are as a species

EPISODE 1669: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Rafael Yuste, author of LECTURES IN NEUROSCIENCE,  about how today's advances in neuroscience will eventually lead to a new Renaissance in understanding who we are as a species

Rafael Yuste is Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. He studies the function and pathology of the cerebral cortex. Yuste obtained his M.D. in Madrid. After working in Brenner’s laboratory in Cambridge, he was a Ph.D. student with Katz in Wiesel’s laboratory at Rockefeller University, and postdoctoral student of Tank at Bell Laboratories. He joined Columbia in 1996 and is director of its Neurotechnology Center and co-director of its Kavli Institute for Brain CircuitsIn 2011 Yuste led a group of researchers who proposed the US BRAIN Initiative, and in 2016 he helped coordinate the International BRAIN Initiative. He is involved in ethical guidelines for Neurotechnology (“NeuroRights”).Yuste is a member of Spain’s Royal Academies of Medicine and of Science and has obtained awards from the Mayor of New York City, the Society for Neuroscience and the Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He recently shared the Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.