The Download: feeding the world with poop, and 2024's performing stories

Is it possible to really understand someone else's mind? Technically speaking, neuroscientists have been able to read your mind for decades. First, you must lie motionless within a fMRI scanner, perhaps for hours, while you watch films or listen to audiobooks. If you do elect to endure claustrophobic hours in the scanner, the software will learn to generate a bespoke reconstruction of what you were seeing or listening to, just by analyzing how blood moves through your brain. More recently, researchers have deployed generative AI tools, like Stable Diffusion and GPT, to create far more realistic, if not entirely accurate, reconstructions of films and podcasts based on neural activity.