21 December 2024
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Jun 23, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Massimo Pigliucci
- Massimo’s new book, How to Be a Stoic, and Bob’s forthcoming book, Why Buddhism Is True
- Similarities between Buddhism and Stoicism
- The metaphysics of Stoicism
- Is there a Stoic version of the Buddhist “not-self” doctrine?
- Massimo’s Stoic advice column
- Seneca’s tips for anger management
- Achieving an objective awareness of your emotions
- Using meditation to cope with feelings of failure
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | human nature | meditation | mental health | mindfulness | philosophy | psychology | self
May 22, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Jay Van Bavel
- The partisanship that bolsters Trump
- Jay’s favorite experiments on the psychology of tribalism
- Is the anti-Trump movement its own worst enemy?
- What’s going on in Trump’s brain?
- How a sports fan’s brain warps reality
- Is there hope for overcoming our tribal psychology?
- Want a retweet? Stoke moral outrage.
TAGS cognitive science | democracy | Donald Trump | moral imagination | psychology | science | tribalism
Mar 13, 2017 —
Nikita Petrov & Tony Ortega
- How the Church of Scientology managed to run a “prison”
- L. Ron Hubbard’s theory of the mind
- “Auditing” and the “superpowers” it leads to
- Did Hubbard believe his own mythology?
- The cruel humor of LRH’s space opera
- The SeaOrg: A billion years of snitching and interrogations
- Scientology after Hubbard and outside the U.S.
Feb 24, 2017 —
Josh Summers & Ellen Langer
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | empathy | human nature | meditation | mindfulness | perception | psychology | science
Feb 15, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Robert Stickgold
TAGS biology | cognitive science | consciousness | creativity | dreaming | evolution | psychology | science
Feb 6, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- Join the hordes clamoring for Massimo’s forthcoming book!
- The science of ethics
- Is morality baked into our biology?
- Can primates tell us where morality comes from?
- How Kant and moral psychology complement each other
- Nietzsche’s moral philosophy
- Warning: Chimps and bonobos are not hairy proto-humans!
- The trouble with studying morality in infants
TAGS cognitive science | ethics | evolution | human nature | justice | philosophy | psychology | science | tribalism
Feb 2, 2017 —
Robert Wright, Deepak Chopra, & Michael Shermer
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | enlightenment | Hinduism | human nature | meditation | mysticism | perception | philosophy | physics | psychology | science | self | spirituality
Jan 23, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger
TAGS cognitive science | democracy | free will | gender | human nature | language | philosophy | politics | psychology | violence
Jan 13, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Mark Juergensmeyer
- How Mark got his start studying under Reinhold Niebuhr
- Using religion to justify violence
- The appeal of ISIS’s apocalyptic vision
- What Obama got right—and wrong—in his response to terrorism
- Will Trump’s war on terrorism lead to another 9/11?
- What would Reinhold Niebuhr say about religion and violence today?
- Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism
TAGS Christianity | Donald Trump | foreign policy | fundamentalism | Islam | politics | psychology | religion | terrorism | violence | war
Dec 25, 2016 —
Robert Wright & John Paul Lederach
TAGS anger | empathy | ethics | foreign policy | human nature | moral imagination | peace | psychology | religion | violence | war
Dec 16, 2016 —
Philip Menchaca & Erik Vance
- Erik’s new book Suggestible You
- When snake oil actually works
- How your beliefs can change your body
- Why do people respond differently to the same placebo?
- How the discovery of “placebo genes” could transform medicine
- The fuzzy line between placebos and real medicine
- Erik’s visit to a Mexican witch doctor
Dec 6, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Paul Bloom
TAGS altruism | anger | Buddhism | cognitive science | compassion | empathy | enlightenment | ethics | human nature | meditation | moral imagination | Peter Singer | psychology | science
Dec 2, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Jay Michaelson
TAGS anger | Buddhism | Christianity | compassion | democracy | Donald Trump | empathy | ethics | happiness | human nature | identity | Islam | Judaism | love | meditation | mental health | mindfulness | moral imagination | politics | psychology | religion | sadness | spirituality | tribalism | Zen
Nov 27, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & Robert Place
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | enlightenment | meditation | mysticism | mythology | occult | philosophy | politics | psychology | religion | self
Nov 22, 2016 —
Oliver Burkeman & Jonathan Shedler
- Debunking the debunking of psychoanalytic theory
- Can thoughts change emotions?
- The patient-therapist relationship as a window into the self
- Therapy’s modest goal
- Psychotherapy’s struggle to escape Freud’s shadow
- Psychoanalyzing the urge to engage in psychoanalysis
- Looking at politics through a psychoanalytic lens
Nov 21, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Gad Saad
- How hormones drive consumer and mating behavior
- How your fingers give your testosterone level away
- Why some people seem taller than they are
- Why grandfathers get fewer gifts than grandmothers
- Is religion at the root of bad behavior?
- Is Islam more conducive to violence than other religions?
- Evolutionary perspectives on religion
Nov 14, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Daniel Kaufman
- Announcing a series of “sixty-second sermons”
- Tribalism and Trump’s success
- Apocalypse now?
- Dan vs. Bob on whether a global community is possible
- The moral dimensions of the election
- The backlash against political correctness
- What it feels like to be an outsider
- A closer look at MeaningofLife.tv’s “sermons” and other local news
TAGS democracy | Donald Trump | economics | empathy | ethics | human nature | identity | moral imagination | nationalism | perception | psychology | tribalism
Nov 13, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Keith Frankish
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | human nature | memory | mind-body problem | panpsychism | perception | philosophy | psychology | self | technology
Nov 12, 2016 —
David Bryce Yaden & Scott Barry Kaufman
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | creativity | ethics | meditation | mindfulness | psychology | spirituality
Nov 6, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Arlie Hochschild
TAGS anger | climate change | democracy | Donald Trump | economics | empathy | human nature | identity | perception | politics | psychology
Oct 31, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Pamela Cooper-White
TAGS Christianity | Donald Trump | history | mental health | moral imagination | nationalism | politics | psychology | religion | tribalism
Oct 26, 2016 —
Robert Wright & David Chalmers
TAGS cognitive science | consciousness | evolution | human nature | mind-body problem | physics | psychology | science
Oct 25, 2016 —
Philip Menchaca & Benjamin Zeller
TAGS Buddhism | Christianity | death | Donald Trump | economics | psychology | religion | science | spirituality
Oct 20, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Daniel Ingram
TAGS Buddhism | consciousness | enlightenment | meditation | memory | mind-body problem | mindfulness | psychology | religion
Oct 19, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Sam Harris
- Sam Harris, mystic and atheist
- The mystery of consciousness
- Is mysticism more like science than like religion?
- How religion makes progress
- Sam’s case for intolerance
- The root causes of extremism
- Religious and secular reasons to do good
- Ways religion may be closer to the truth than atheism
- A secular approach to death
TAGS agnosticism | atheism | Buddhism | Christianity | cognitive science | consciousness | death | empathy | ethics | evolution | history | Islam | meditation | mind-body problem | mindfulness | mysticism | nationalism | New Atheists | perception | poverty | psychology | religion | science | self | spirituality | tribalism
Oct 10, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Jonathan Gold
- The seminal Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, hero of Paving the Great Way
- Buddhist and Darwinian arguments for reality not being as it seems
- The ‘hyper-reductionism’ of Buddhism
- Meditation and the doctrine of emptiness
- Does the Buddhist view of causality leave room for agency?
- Are the past and the future real?
- Hindu and Buddhist versions of non-duality
TAGS Buddhism | evolution | free will | Hinduism | human nature | meditation | mindfulness | perception | philosophy | psychology | religion | self | spirituality | time
Oct 9, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Wesley Wildman
- Wesley explains “transreligious theology”
- What’s religious about religious naturalism?
- Can science help us understand ultimate reality?
- Bringing religious thought and philosophy together
- Be skeptical of spiritual experiences
- Don’t just love your enemies, understand them
- Wesley: “Purpose” isn’t a useful category
TAGS atheism | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | meditation | Paul Tillich | philosophy | physics | psychology | religion | science | spirituality | tribalism
Oct 5, 2016 —
Vlad Chituc & Frank Bures
- The Geography of Madness, Frank’s book about “penis theft” and other “culture-bound” syndromes
- How believing that you’re going to die can kill you
- How to cure “penis theft?”
- The challenge of ethically responding to seemingly crazy beliefs
- Frank: The body isn’t like a machine
- Belief-boosted runners, windmill syndrome, and the weird case of Coca-Cola poisoning
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