If you love Should This Exist?, we have exciting news to share: From the same company behind our show, the podcast Spark + Fire is back for Season 2! Spark + Fire explores what really happens on the road to creative success. In their own words, creative icons share the moments of inspiration and setback, the collaborations and the pivots, the breakthroughs and the dead ends along the hero's journey to bring something new into the world. Regardless of your own field, there are endless discoveries in each story that could transform the way you approach your practice of creative thinking and innovating.

Stories from comedian Patton Oswalt, "Wicked" composer Stephen Schwartz, actor and producer Joseph Gordon-Levitt, best-selling author Ann Patchett, "Frozen" composers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Pixar director Domee Shi, and many more.

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You’d be forgiven for being surprised if your doctor wrote you a prescription for ecstasy, ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, or LSD. But a recent resurgence in psychedelic research shows that a number of mental health conditions can be treated directly and effectively with potent psychoactive drugs. Dr. Dave Nichols has been studying the chemistry of these drugs for over 40 years, and he’s convinced of their therapeutic potential — and aware of the dangers of abuse. After a long psychedelic winter, are we ready to welcome these drugs back into the psychiatric fold?

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If you love Should This Exist, I think you’ll love Spark & Fire – so I’m sharing a trailer with you now for this new show that launches on January 5, 2021. 

Why do I think you’ll like it? Because, a lot like our show, Spark & Fire is about the hero’s journey of bold, creative thinking. 

On each episode of Spark & Fire, an iconic creator — designers, architects, authors, filmmakers, musicians — tells their own story about what really happens on the road to success, from the initial spark down the twisting path of invention. It's told entirely in their own words. No host. No interview. Just captivating stories set to terrific music.     

If this sounds good to you, subscribe to the Spark & Fire feed now so you’ll get the first full episode in early January. It will help you think more creatively about everything.

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When you think of nuclear power, what do you envision? For many people, the answer is Chernobyl or Fukushima: massive meltdowns that turned vast areas into radioactive wastelands. But those were meltdowns — and without meltdowns, nuclear power could be a valuable source of clean energy. Dr. Jose Reyes, the co-founder of NuScale, has designed a small, modular reactor that, he claims, cannot melt down. A six-pack of these reactors could power a good-size city, and though that power comes at a higher price than natural gas or renewables, the cost might be offset by the gains in climate goals. Bottom line: How safe is safe enough for nuclear power?

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Kelly Wanser is a climate activist who wants to use a strategy called cloud brightening to fight climate change, using a naturally occurring process to bounce rays from the sun back out to space. She and others have described it compellingly as “emergency medicine for the earth’s climate fever,” and suggest it could buy us more time to implement policies addressing the root causes of climate change. But climate change is a planetary problem – so who gets to decide what countries or groups are allowed to take the risk of geoengineering to fix it? How can one country pursue a risky mitigation strategy if neighboring countries would be the most adversely affected if things went wrong?

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UCSF bioengineer Shuvo Roy and his team have created the world’s first bionic kidney. The coffee-cup-sized device includes a silicon nanotechnology filter to cleanse the blood, while living kidney cells grown in a bioreactor perform the other functions of a natural kidney. A bioartificial kidney could save kidney patients from being stuck on a dialysis machine for life – or dying while waiting for a rare transplant. But is the promise of such a life-changing device enough to convince investors to bring such a thing to market? We talk through the ethics of artificial organs. 

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Could you, would you, go one full hour without your phone? The average American spends one-third of their waking hours on a smartphone; we’ve been told our devices make life better, faster, and easier. What happens when we choose to live without them – or when we are forced to? In this episode, we’ll talk to media studies professor Douglas Rushkoff, get the down low from a U.S. senator who sat in a “digitally sequestered” hearing for three weeks (guess which one) – and travel to the WiFi-free town of Green Bank, West Virginia, to find out exactly what happens when we unplug.

Listen to Douglas Rushkoff’s podcast Team Human: http://teamhuman.fm

Get Douglas’ book Team Human: https://rushkoff.com/books/team-human-book

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Standard college admissions tests are:

a. based on an outdated model of intelligence;

b. exclusionary;

c. a lucrative business and a near-monopoly;

d. all of the above.

28-year-old Harvard dropout Rebecca Kantar is disrupting the paradigm of pencil-and-paper tests like the SAT and ACT by designing interactive scenarios that play like video games, and that test for qualities like grit and creativity. But is another test the answer? Given the spotty history of aptitude tests, maybe it’s time to completely reevaluate how colleges evaluate prospective frosh.

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A VR system called Bravemind allows combat veterans with PTSD to confront and process their trauma in a virtual environment. The therapy, developed by psychologist Skip Rizzo, shows promise for PTSD and potential for other issues like phobias and addiction – and it may have applications to help healing more broadly. But does the potential for harm from virtual self-medication outweigh the good it can do in a clinical setting? And given what we know about how VR affects the brain – is it as safe as it seems? 

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What if you could extend your healthy life by 10 or 20 years – with a blood transfusion from someone younger and healthier than you? Research by Stanford professor Tony Wyss-Coray shows potential to treat Alzheimer’s and prevent age-related cognitive decline: He’s discovered that proteins found in the blood of young mice can dramatically reverse the effects of aging when transfused into older mice. Doing the same thing in humans could increase our quality of life as we age, and our life expectancy too. We’re years away from seeing any clinical applications of this research, which gives us time to ask about its implications. Who will have access to this treatment? Who are the donors providing young blood? We could add years to our lives – but is that what we really want?

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