Mixed Mental Arts

Bryan sits down with comedian, Kira Soltanovich. For the past 8 years, she could be seen as a television corespondent in her own reoccurring segment for the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, called Photo Booth. She's also a successful Podcaster at The Network Studios of her very own show about comedians, who are also parents, called "The Kira Soltanovich Show. You can find her online by going to thekirashow.com as well as kiracomedy.com. Be sure to rate and comment in iTunes.

As the head writer and creative director of video at Cracked.com, Dan O’Brien writes important potentially Pulitzer-prize winning pieces on topics such as Why Spiderman is a Dick and 3 Insane Spider-Man Movies You Won't Believe Almost Got Made. But Dan O’Brien doesn’t just write about Spiderman. Over the last few years, he has systematically tackled the most important historical question humanity has ever faced: which US President would be toughest in a fight? In his latest book How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country, Dan O’Brien summarizes in just a few pages everything you would need to know to beat not just lesser Presidents like Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce but truly epic Presidents like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. In this episode, Dan, Bryan and Hunter get into a heated debate about which President would win in a fight. Through Dan’s definitive book on the question and occasional use of unreliable internet sources, Dan, Bryan

Dr. Ben Goldacre is the author of two excellent books, Bad Pharma and Bad Science, but he didn’t show up for this episode so there’s not much point telling you more about him. So, Bryan and Hunter just had a conversation the same way they would if a famous author/doctor wasn’t around…because he wasn’t. This episode features Bryan and Hunter talking a lot about Bad Pharma—because it really is an excellent book—and then more generally about the scientific method, how much regulation of the pharmaceutical industry is optimal and what exactly is going on inside Bryan’s pants. We’d actually really recommend both Bad Pharma and Bad Science. We’d also love to interview Dr. Ben, so send him a tweet and ask him to come on The Bryan Callen Show. @bengoldacre. Paging, Dr. Ben. Paging, Dr. Ben. Your presence is requested on The Bryan Callen Show.

For 150 years, we’ve been taught that we had to choose sides when understanding where top-level performance comes from. Is it nature? Or, is it nurture? In this episode, two of our favorite guests of all time Dan Coyle—author of The Talent Code—and Dave Epstein—author of The Sports Gene—join us on the show to discuss what the latest science really shows about where talent comes from. Is it nature vs nurture or is it more accurate to say nature plus nurture? One of the mankind’s most enduring questions. We think we can pretty much wrap it up in an hour. Well, maybe not wrap it up but with Dan Coyle and Dave Epstein onboard we can get about as close as humanly possible. You can follow them on Twitter at @DavidEpstein and @DanielCoyle. Their blogs are http://thesportsgene.com/blog/ and http://www.thetalentcode.com. The Sports Gene, The Talent Code and The Little Book of Talent are available from all good booksellers. You can also get them by clicking below. To listen to Bryan and Hunter interviewing them one-on-

When Steven Spielberg was looking for a dinosaur expert for Jurassic park, he chose John Gurche. Steven Spielberg kind of gets to pick whoever he wants, so that’s a pretty good sign that John Gurche is the best in the world at what he does. As a paleoartist, Gurche works closely with the world’s foremost paleontologists to figure out from fossils that are often millions of years old what the creatures that left them behind would have looked like. In Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins, Gurche explains the work he did for the Smithsonian Institution’s Hall of Human Origins. Commissioned to make fifteen sculptures covering six million years of human evolution, Gurche explains how a hole in the base of the skull tells us which ancestors walked upright and why we currently think our ancestors’ eyes might have turned white. In this interview, we explore how through accidental finds and scientific missteps we have teased out our present understanding of human evolution

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the power of the internet and thereby the power of a democratic approach to problem solving like Wikipedia. In The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created The World’s Greatest Encyclopedia, Andrew Lih lays bare for us the tremendous power of ordinary people to do something truly incredible when they come together. While traditional encyclopedias like Encylopedia Britannica have relied on Nobel Laureates and other highly-respected professionals to write their articles, Wikipedia has placed its faith in ordinary people and the wisdom of the crowds. In just over a decade, the results have been astounding. With over 30 million articles in 287 languages, Wikipedia dwarfs all other encyclopedias and a 2005 investigation by the highly-respected journal Nature found that Wikipedia’s accuracy was almost exactly the same as Encyclopedia Britannica. In this interview, Andrew Lih shares with us how he became fascinated by the site, how the site has developed and what the success

Bryan sits down with the founder of The Bullet Proof Executive, Dave Asprey. Long time friend, Jimmy Burke. Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes.

Bryan has a very exclusive conversation with one of America's finest military veterans and a former member of Seal Team 6. Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes.

Bryan sits down with author, producer and actor, Chad Kultgen. He is a controversial author notable for publishing several novels on the sexual relationships of Americans. He has published opinion pieces on the Huffington Post, and was a staff writer for Hits and The World Weekly News. His works have been reviewed by Maxim, Penthouse, and the New York Times amongst others. He has several writing and production credits, including for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a 2013 film starring Steve Carell. Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes. 

Steven Strogatz has a really impressive resumé. Besides being a professor at Cornell, he also has the sixth most highly cited paper in all of physics and his 1998 paper “Collective dynamics of small-world networks” was the most highly cited paper in its field for a decade. Cool as all of that is that’s not what excites us most about Steven Strogatz, because as you look at his resumé you realize that Strogatz is perhaps the greatest living popularizer of something that underpins all of our lives but most people have (at best) mixed feelings about: math. As the author of a series of NY Times columns that the Harvard Business Review "must reads for entrepreneurs and executives who grasp that mathematics is now the lingua franca of serious business analysis.” Those columns have now been collected in an awesome book called The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math From One to Infinity. From basic arithmetic to calculus and beyond, Strogatz shows readers not just what math is but puts it in a context that allows us to ex

Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991), Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Prize), Collapse (2005) and The World Until Yesterday (2012). Originally trained in physiology, Diamond's work is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. As of 2013, he is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been described as "America’s best-known geographer". Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes.

Lawrence Krauss is the only physicist to have received awards from all three major American physics societies. In addition to his work as a theoretical physicist and cosmologist where he has authored or co-authored more than three hundred academic articles, Krauss has devoted much of his career to getting the public of their fear of science. As Krauss explains to Bryan and Hunter, you don’t have to be a professional musician to enjoy music and you’re wrong if you think you have to be a professional physicist to enjoy the beauty of physics. With books such as The Physics of Star Trek and Fear of Physics, Krauss meets the public where they are and helps move them towards being able to enjoy science without feeling like they need a PhD. In this interview, Krauss also tackles head on why we don’t need God to explain the existence of the Universe and why he thinks we’re better off without religion.Lawrence Krauss has authored nine books for the general public. They’re available from all good booksellers and they’r

Bryan and Hunter sit down with comedian, Sarah Tiana. They talk about their lives in comedy as well as comedians in relationships and much more. Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes. 

Charles Duhigg is a writer for the business section of The New York Times. He's clearly pretty good at it, because he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for a series of ten articles on Apple called iEconomy. He's also clearly pretty good at writing books, because The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business was on The New York Times bestseller list for 62 weeks. Basically, Charles Duhigg is pretty damn awesome. Oh, wait. He won a Pulitzer Prize and wrote a New York Times bestseller. He’s incredibly awesome. In this week's episode, Charles tells Bryan and Hunter about how the book came about (it began with civil unrest, food vendors and being with the US Armed Forces in Iraq), the science behind the book and how—by breaking down the true and often surprising sources of our own habits—we can shape our habits to fit our lives rather than the other way around. The Power of Habit is available from all good booksellers and you can follow Charles on twitter at @cduhigg.

Bryan sits down with comedian, Skylar Stone. Stone has been seen on telelvision and in comedy clubs throughout the country. He has a monthly show at the Improv in Hollywood. Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes. 

Along with his colleagues Professor Russell Foster broke the conventional wisdom and discovered a light-sensitive cell inside the eye that had nothing to do with vision. Although much of the scientific community was originally skeptical, these photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells (pRGCs) have not only become an accepted part of our biology they have major consequences for people young and old living in every part of the world. That's because pRGCs regulate sleep. In spite of playing no role in vision, these crucial components of the eye use the light exposure in our daily lives to manage an activity so important we spend a third of our lives doing it. In this episode of the show, Professor Foster offers insight into what sleep is, why it matters so very much and what his research means for individuals, businesses and societies as a whole.Russell Foster is the author of three particularly excellent books for a general audience Sleep: A Very Short Introduction, Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Contr

Back by popular demand, Bryan sits down with his dad, Michael Callen. They talk about a variety of different things, from professional schooling and the changes they are encountering, as well as the differences regarding traditional schooling verses online. Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes. 

"Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck. 3301." Hidden in that image were a series of elaborate clues that would draw the world's best cryptographers, steganographers and internet security experts racing to unlock the mysteries of this puzzle. It's still going on…or is it? On November 25th, 2013, Chris Bell wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph about what has come to be known as Cicada 3301 and made the wider world aware of what only the internet’s superusers had known before. The intent of Cicada 3301's creators remains unknown as does what will happen next. On this episode, Chris tells Bryan and Hunter all about the known knowns and the known unknowns of Cicada 3301. (Hunter’s note: For the best listening experience, read Chris' article first: The Internet mystery that

It's the Bryan Callen Christmas Special. Bryan sits down with actor, comedian and good friend, Dov Davidoff. Be sure to Rate and Comment on iTunes. 

Daniel Coyle kept hearing about places all over world where talent flourished. They weren’t necessarily well-funded. They weren’t necessarily in big cities. In fact, quite often, these talent hot spots looked run down and neglected, but inside what was happening was something very close to magic: ordinary people were being turned into top-level performers. From a Russian tennis camp to soccer coaching in the slums of Brazil to an unlikely music camp, Coyle found that “Greatness isn’t born. It’s Grown.” In The Talent Code—which, by the way, is one of the best books you’ll ever read—Daniel Coyle lays out those secrets and let’s the world that it’s not just about doing 10,000 hours of practice…it’s about doing the right kind of practice. In this episode, Bryan, Hunter and Dan talk about the book, their own experiences and the one thing required to fix education today. Dan has an excellent blog, which you can read at thetalentcode.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @DanielCoyle. The Talent Code and his follow