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Psychology

Essays and videos offering insights into the self, relationships, cognition and neuroscience
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Neuroscience

The empty brain

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer

Robert Epstein

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Economics

Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

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Cognition and intelligence

What know-it-alls don’t know, or the illusion of competence

Kate Fehlhaber

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Language and linguistics

English is not normal

No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language

John McWhorter

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Social psychology

A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you

Clifton Mark

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Medicine

Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice

Jacob Stegenga

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Human reproduction

The macho sperm myth

The idea that millions of sperm are on an Olympian race to reach the egg is yet another male fantasy of human reproduction

Robert D Martin

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Meaning and the good life

Indifference is a power

As legions of warriors and prisoners can attest, Stoicism is not grim resolve but a way to wrest happiness from adversity

Lary Wallace

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Childhood and adolescence

The play deficit

Children today are cossetted and pressured in equal measure. Without the freedom to play they will never grow up

Peter Gray

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Consciousness and altered states

Night school

New evidence suggests that we can learn while we sleep, but do we really want to put our hours of rest to work?

Kenneth Miller

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Medicine

Lifestyle changes, not a magic pill, can reverse Alzheimer’s

Clayton Dalton

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Gender and identity

Gender is not a spectrum

The idea that ‘gender is a spectrum’ is supposed to set us free. But it is both illogical and politically troubling

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper

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Childhood and adolescence

Childhood, disrupted

Adversity in childhood can create long-lasting scars, damaging our cells and our DNA, and making us sick as adults

Donna Jackson Nakazawa

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Personality

The bad news on human nature, in 10 findings from psychology

Christian Jarrett

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Philosophy of mind

The problem of mindfulness

Mindfulness promotes itself as value-neutral but it is loaded with (troubling) assumptions about the self and the cosmos

Sahanika Ratnayake

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Ethics

A theory of jerks

Are you surrounded by fools? Are you the only reasonable person around? Then maybe you’re the one with the jerkitude

Eric Schwitzgebel

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Ethics

Kids? Just say no

You don’t have to dislike children to see the harms done by having them. There is a moral case against procreation

David Benatar

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Pleasure and pain

Psychogenic shivers: why we get the chills when we aren’t cold

Félix Schoeller

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Love and friendship

A temporary marriage makes more sense than marriage for life

Vicki Larson

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History of ideas

A philosophical approach to routines can illuminate who we really are

Solmu Anttila

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Neuroscience

The real problem

It looks like scientists and philosophers might have made consciousness far more mysterious than it needs to be

Anil K Seth

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Evolution

War in the womb

A ferocious biological struggle between mother and baby belies any sentimental ideas we might have about pregnancy

Suzanne Sadedin

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History of ideas

Before you can be with others, first learn to be alone

Jennifer Stitt

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Sex and sexuality

Pornucopia

Critics say that porn degrades women, dulls sexual pleasure, and ruins authentic relationships – are they right?

Maria Konnikova