By the summer of 1945, Japan’s cities were burning, its people were starving, and its military leaders were preparing for a final battle on home soil. Even the destruction of Hiroshima did not bring an immediate surrender. Historian James Scott, author of Empire of Ashes, talks with Michael Shermer about why Japan kept fighting and why he believes Nagasaki was decisive. Could the war have ended without the atomic bombs?

A Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestseller, James M. Scott is the author Black Snow, Rampage, Target Tokyo, The War Below, and The Attack on the Liberty, and co-author, with Jack Carr, of Targeted: Beirut. In addition, Scott, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is a sought-after public speaker who leads battlefield tours and lectures at institutions around the world. His new book is Empire of Ashes.

We tend to explain success by looking at what people did right, while overlooking everyone who made the same choices and failed.

Philosopher Duncan Pritchard joins Michael Shermer to discuss his book, Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to Risk, Luck, and a Meaningful Life, and how to make decisions when even the best preparation can’t guarantee a good outcome.

Duncan Pritchard is UC Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He works mainly in epistemology, and has published widely in this area, including the application of epistemological ideas to such domains as religion, law, and cognitive science. His new book is Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to Risk, Luck, and a Meaningful Life.

Why does being alive feel like something? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio argues that the answer begins with the body’s need to stay alive. Hunger, thirst, pain, and pleasure tell us how we’re doing and push us to act. These basic feelings, he says, are the foundation of consciousness.

Damasio returns to the show to discuss his new book, Natural Intelligence and the Logic of Consciousness, why feelings and emotions are different, what your dog knows about you, and why he thinks Francis Crick looked in the wrong place for the origins of conscious experience.

If consciousness depends on a living body, could a computer ever have it? And would uploading your brain actually preserve you? Damasio leaves room for a form of machine consciousness, though he argues it would be fundamentally different from ours. He also talks about what brain injuries reveal about the mind, how psychedelics change our perception, where human choice comes from, and why religion offers such powerful comfort.

Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Considered one of the most eminent scientists of our time, he has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of brain processes and their relationship to emotions and consciousness. He has discussed his research in books such as Descartes’ Error, The Sensation of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza, and The Strange Order of Things.