New Books in Psychology
1,051 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 10 hours ago - ★★★★ - 44 ratingsInterviews with Psychologists about their New Books
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Episodes
Jacob Johanssen, "Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition" (Routledge, 2021)
December 14, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn his new book Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition (Routledge, 2021), Jacob Johanssen takes us on a journey into the dark masculinist recesses of the internet. He analyses original data from online communities of Involuntary Celibate (Incel) men, women-denigrating “Men Going Their Own Way”, anti-porn crusading NoFap users and the manifestos of mass shooters. By making use of the work of Willhelm Reich, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl and Klaus Theweleit, he is a...
Greg Hickock, “Beyond Mirror Neurons” (Open Agenda, 2021)
December 13, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourBeyond Mirror Neurons is based on an in-depth, filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Greg Hickok, Professor of Cognitive science at UC Irvine, where he directs the Center for Language Science and the Auditory and Language Neuroscience Lab. This thought-provoking conversation examines Greg Hickok’s neuroscience research related to speech and language which led him to eventually reject many aspects of the mirror neuron hypothesis, while giving his views on the mechanisms behind imitatio...
Ginny Smith, "Overloaded: How Every Aspect of Your Life is Influenced by Your Brain Chemicals" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
December 10, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourFrom adrenaline to dopamine, most of us are familiar with the chemicals that control us. They are the hormones and neurotransmitters that our brains run on, and Overloaded: How Every Aspect of Your Life is Influenced by Your Brain Chemicals (Bloomsbury, 2021) looks at the role they play in every aspect of our lives, from what we remember, how we make decisions and who we love to basic survival drives such as hunger, fear and sleep. Author Ginny Smith gets to the bottom of exactly what these t...
Kalanit Grill-Spector, “Vision and Perception” (Open Agenda, 2021)
December 10, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourVision and Perception is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Kalanit Grill-Spector, Professor in Psychology and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. Kalanit Grill-Spector’s is a vision specialist with a background in computational neuroscience. Her research examines how the brain processes visual information and perceives it. This extensive conversation explores how functional imaging techniques are used to visualize the brain in action a...
Michael Frazer, “The Power of Sympathy: Politics and Moral Sentimentalism” (Open Agenda, 2021)
December 07, 2021 09:00 - 2 hoursThe Power of Sympathy: Politics and Moral Sentimentalism is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Michael Frazer, Senior Lecturer in Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia. After a detailed discussion of Prof. Frazer’s intellectual journey, the conversation explores the core ideas behind the sentimentalist theory as outlined in Prof. Frazer’s book called The Enlightenment of Sympathy. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas ...
Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Love: A History in Five Fantasies" (Polity Press, 2021)
December 07, 2021 09:00 - 45 minutesBarbara Rosenwein talks about her new book Love: A History in Five Fantasies (Polity Press, 2021) today on the podcast. We make sense of love with fantasies, stories that shape feelings that are otherwise too overwhelming, incoherent, and wayward to be tamed. For love is a complex, bewildering, and ecstatic emotion covering a welter of different feelings and moral judgments. Drawing on poetry, fiction, letters, memoirs, and art, and with the aid of a rich array of illustrations, historian Bar...
David Herzberg, "White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
December 06, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourThe contemporary opioid crisis is widely seen as new and unprecedented. Not so. It is merely the latest in a long series of drug crises stretching back over a century. In White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America (U Chicago Press, 2020), David Herzberg explores these crises and the drugs that fueled them, from Bayer's Heroin to Purdue's OxyContin and all the drugs in between: barbiturate "goof balls," amphetamine "thrill pills," the "love drug" Quaalude, an...
Philip Zimbardo, “Critical Situations” (Open Agenda, 2021)
December 03, 2021 09:00 - 2 hoursCritical Situations is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. During this extensive conversation Philip Zimbardo relates his intriguing life history and the survival techniques that he developed from the particular dynamics of his upbringing in the Bronx to his quarantine experiences, his experiences with South Bronx gangs, and more. Further topics include his relationship with his former cla...
Mental Health in Academia 2: Hacks for Cultivating and Sustaining Wellbeing
December 03, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourWe are delighted to present All for One and One for All: Public Seminar Series on Mental Health in Academia and Society. All for One and One for All talks will shine the light on and discuss mental health issues in academia across all levels – from students to faculty, as well as in wider society. Seminars are held online once per month on Wednesdays at 5pm CEST/ 11am EST and free for all to attend. Speakers include academics, organisations, and health professionals whose work focuses on ment...
Susan Wolf, “Meaningfulness” (Open Agenda, 2021)
December 02, 2021 09:00 - 2 hoursMeaningfulness is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Susan Wolf, the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This fascinating conversation explores what it is to live an ethical, meaningful life in keeping with her book, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters, the role that love, fulfillment, self-interest and happiness play in giving meaning to one’s life, and how meaningful activities occur when “subjective attrac...
Matthew Walker, “Sleep Insights” (Open Agenda, 2021)
November 29, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourSleep Insights is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Matthew Walker, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley. This extensive conversation gives a clear and compelling picture of our recent understanding of sleep’s essential role in our daily lives, from reinforcing learning and memory to regulating emotion. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of...
Oliver Rollins, "Conviction: The Making and Unmaking of the Violent Brain" (Stanford UP, 2021)
November 26, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourExposing ethical dilemmas of neuroscientific research on violence, this book warns against a dystopian future in which behavior is narrowly defined in relation to our biological makeup. Biological explanations for violence have existed for centuries, as has criticism of this kind of deterministic science, haunted by a long history of horrific abuse. Yet, this program has endured because of, and not despite, its notorious legacy. Today's scientists are well beyond the nature versus nurture deb...
Christine Kane, "The Soul Sourced Entrepreneur: An Unconventional Success Plan for the Highly Creative, Secretly Sensitive & Wildly Ambitious" (BenBella, 2020)
November 26, 2021 09:00 - 34 minutesToday I talked to Christine Kane about her book The Soul Sourced Entrepreneur: An Unconventional Success Plan for the Highly Creative, Secretly Sensitive & Wildly Ambitious (BenBella, 2020). Sick of the frequent images of entrepreneurs as machismo, take-no-prisoner, Rambo-like action figures? Look no farther than this episode, in which Christine Kane admits that bulimia was her first business mentor as she had to learn to deal with her 10-year battle with binging and purging to fit an ideali...
Galit Atlas, "Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma" (Little, Brown Spark, 2022)
November 24, 2021 09:00 - 46 minutesLoss and trauma are ubiquitous, yet we are often unaware of their presence in our individual and family histories, much less how they affect us present-day. We carry them in symptoms, dreams, and patterns that seemingly lack explanation yet haunt us for much of our lives. The key to working through them may lie in uncovering ungrieved losses and making connections between past and present. Author and psychoanalyst Galit Atlas addresses such phenomena in her new book, Emotional Inheritance: A ...
Nolan Gasser, "Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste" (Flatiron Books, 2019)
November 24, 2021 09:00 - 57 minutesWhy do we love the music we love? In Why You Like IT: The Science & Culture of Musical Taste (Flatiron Books, 2019) musicologist Nolan Gasser, architect of Pandora Radio’s Music Genome Project, discusses how psychology, anthropology, history, sociology, and culture combine to define our musical tastes—what he calls “inculturing.” From the Northern California Redwoods to Paris to Africa, from Nashville to New York City, and from medieval music to Phillip Glass to Led Zeppelin to Taylor Swift, ...
Mental Health in Academia: A Conversation with Roy Richard Grinker
November 23, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourWe are delighted to present All for One and One for All: Public Seminar Series on Mental Health in Academia and Society. All for One and One for All talks will shine the light on and discuss mental health issues in academia across all levels – from students to faculty, as well as in wider society. Seminars are held online once per month on Wednesdays at 5pm CEST/ 11am EST and free for all to attend. Speakers include academics, organisations, and health professionals whose work focuses on ment...
Gila Ashtor, "Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia" (Fordham UP, 2021)
November 22, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn this episode, I interview Gila Ashtor, a practicing psychoanalyst and critical theorist, about her new book, Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia (Fordham University Press, 2021). This book proceeds from the perplexing observation that for all of its political agita, rhetorical virtuosity, and intellectual restlessness, queer theory conforms to a model of erotic life that is psychologically conservative and narrow. Even after several decades of combative, dazzling, irreverent queer...
April Rinne, "Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change" (Berrett-Koehler, 2021)
November 18, 2021 09:00 - 36 minutesToday I talked to April Rinne about her new book Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2021) What’s your relationship to change? Do you embrace it, filled with hope for the future? Or are you somebody who’s more cautious, even worried about what change might portend? In this episode, April Rinne offers advice based on her 8 rules for navigating change more adroitly. Part of her advice has to do with slowing down, setting a sustainable pace to avoid burnout in e...
Joel Whitebook, "Freud: An Intellectual Biography" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
November 17, 2021 09:00 - 56 minutesWe interview Dr. Joel Whitebook, philosopher and psychoanalyst about his book Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge UP, 2017). Dr. Whitebook works in Critical Theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, developing that tradition with his clinical and philosophical knowledge of recent advances in psychoanalytic theory. The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and professional readers alike. Joel Whitebook here presents the first major biography of Freud since...
Lisa Marchiano, "Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself" (Sounds True, 2021)
November 17, 2021 09:00 - 51 minutesToday I interview Lisa Marchiano. Marchiano is a mother of two children. She’s also a Jungian analyst and a host of the podcast called This Jungian Life. She brings these experiences together in her new book Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself (Sounds True, 2021). It’s a fascinating and deeply insightful book that draws on the universal wisdom of fairy tales and myths to illuminate how motherhood offers mothers a rich opportunity for psychological exploration and growth. And the wonderful...
Darian Leader, "Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction" (Polity Press, 2021)
November 12, 2021 09:00 - 55 minutesAlthough the term 'jouissance' is common currency in psychoanalysis today, how much does it really tell us? While often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality, suffering and satisfaction, the term has fallen into a purely descriptive use that closes down more questions than it opens up. Although assumed to explain the coalescence of pleasure and pain, it tends to cover a range of quite different issues that should be distinguished rather than conflated. By returning to some of its sources ...
Nika Kabiri, "Money off the Table: Decision Science and the Secret to Smarter Investing" (Houndstooth Press, 2020)
November 11, 2021 09:00 - 36 minutesToday I talked to Nika Kabiri about her new book Money off the Table: Decision Science and the Secret to Smarter Investing (Houndstooth Press, 2020). Adam Smith not only helped to create the field of economics; the guy was also a moral philosopher who readily accepted the role of emotions in decision-making. How surprised he might have been to discover that it took decades upon decades for the field to come back to accepting the role that emotions and biases play in decision-making! My guest ...
Edward Slingerland, "Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization" (Hachette, 2021)
November 10, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourEver since Noah exited the ark, human beings have been wanting to get drunk and high. Why? Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization (Hachette, 2021) is the latest attempt to answer that question. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive ...
Tony Nader, "One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness: Simple Answers to the Big Questions of Life" (Penguin Random House, 2021)
November 08, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourTony Nader, MD, PhD, a medical doctor trained at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD in neuroscience) and globally recognized expert in the science of consciousness and human development. His training includes internal medicine, psychiatry, and neurology. He's the successor to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the head of the Transcendental Meditation organization globally. He was appointed assistant director of clinical research at MIT, and was a clinical research fello...
Alcino Silva, “Learning and Memory” (Open Agenda, 2021)
November 04, 2021 08:00 - 2 hoursLearning and Memory is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Alcino Silva, Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology, Psychiatry and Psychology at the David Geffen School of Medicine and Director of the Integrated Center for Learning and Memory at UCLA. Alcino Silva runs a learning and memory lab at UCLA that is focused on a vast number of topics, from schizophrenia and autism to learning and memory. This fascinating conversation explores how he and his colleagues f...
Michele Wucker, "You Are What You Risk: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World" (Pegasus Books, 2021)
November 04, 2021 08:00 - 35 minutesToday I talked to Michele Wucker about her new book You Are What You Risk: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World (Pegasus Books, 2021) Your risk fingerprint is a mixture of how personality traits, experiences, and social context have shaped how you approach risk and uncertainty in life. Also crucial is your risk empathy and the degree to which you are risk-savvy, both of which value reading your environment in analyzing the risk you and others face and how people are coping...
Bernard Scott, "Cybernetics for the Social Sciences" (Brill, 2021)
November 03, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourOn this episode, I have the great pleasure of finally getting to talk with one of the “unsung heroes” of cybernetics, whose work has finally begun to receive the critical attention it has long deserved, and upon which I have leaned quite heavily in my own work since I entered this field. With Cybernetics for the Social Sciences, out from Brill in 2021, Bernard Scott has met a long-felt need by authoring a book that shows the foundational relevance of cybernetics for such fields as psychology,...
Michelle Elman, "The Joy of Being Selfish: Why You Need Boundaries and How to Set Them" (Welbeck Publishing, 2021)
November 03, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutesDo you frequently say 'yes' to people and events to keep those around you happy? Do you often find yourself emotionally exhausted and physically drained? Do people describe you as a pushover or 'too nice'? It's time to discover the joy of being selfish and reclaim your life through the art of boundaries! With The Joy of Being Selfish: Why You Need Boundaries and How to Set Them (Welbeck Publishing, 2021), life coach and influencer @scarrednotscared Michelle Elman is here to teach you the pra...
Anthony Ianni, "Centered: Autism, Basketball, and One Athlete's Dreams" (Red Lightning Books, 2021)
November 02, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutes"They don't know me. They don't know what I'm capable of." Diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder, a form of autism, as a toddler, Anthony Ianni wasn't expected to succeed in school or participate in sports, but he had other ideas. As a child, Ianni told anybody who would listen, including head coach Tom Izzo, that he would one day play for the Michigan State Spartans. Centered: Autism, Basketball, and One Athlete's Dreams is the firsthand account of a young man's social, academic, a...
Kirsten Powers, "Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts" (Convergent Books, 2021)
November 02, 2021 08:00 - 37 minutesSaving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts, by Kirsten Powers was published by Penguin Random House in 2021. In this honest and thought-provoking book, Powers takes us out of the newsroom and into her own process learning and extending grace. For years, New York Times bestselling author Kirsten Powers has been center stage for many of our nation’s most searing political and cultural battles as a columnist, TV analyst, and one-time partic...
Jonathan Schooler, “Mind-Wandering and Meta-Awareness” (Open Agenda, 2021)
November 01, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourMind-Wandering & Meta-Awareness is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Jonathan Schooler, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This wide-ranging conversation examines how mind-wandering can serve as a window into the psychological world of meta-awareness. further topics include the nature of consciousness, mindfulness, creativity, free will, verbal overshadowing and more. Howard Burton is the founder of th...
Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro, "When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from Ourselves" (Princeton UP, 2021)
November 01, 2021 08:00 - 44 minutesThere is an epidemic of bad thinking in the world today. An alarming number of people are embracing crazy, even dangerous ideas. They believe that vaccinations cause autism. They reject the scientific consensus on climate change as a “hoax.” And they blame the spread of COVID-19 on the 5G network or a Chinese cabal. Worse, bad thinking drives bad acting—it even inspired a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol. In this book, Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro argue that the best antidote for bad think...
Elyn Saks, “Mental Health: Policies, Laws and Attitudes” (Open Agenda, 2021)
October 28, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourMental Health: Policies, Laws and Attitudes is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Elyn Saks, Orrin B. Evans Distinguished Professor of Law, and Professor of Law, Psychology and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at USC. During this wide-ranging conversation Elyn Saks candidly shares her personal experiences with schizophrenia and discusses the intersection of law, mental health and ethics: the legal and ethical implications surrounding mental health. Furthe...
Anna Spain Bradley, "Human Choice in International Law" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
October 25, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutesProfessor Anna Spain Bradley "wrote this book to be accessible to anyone, because international law is for everyone." In this important book, Professor Anna Spain Bradley explores human choice in international law and political decision making. Human Choice in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021) investigates the neurobiological processes which shape human choice in the framework of international law and shows how human choice impacts decisions on peace and security. Professor...
Jean Hopman, "Surviving Emotional Work for Teachers: Improving Wellbeing and Professional Learning Through Reflexive Practice" (Routledge, 2020)
October 22, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourJean Hopman’s book Surviving Emotional Work for Teachers: Improving Wellbeing and Professional Learning Through Reflexive Practice (Routledge, 2020), is a guide to improving teachers' wellbeing and practice through support of their emotional workload. The book argues that teachers should be given a formal opportunity to debrief on challenging events, allowing them to reflect on and reframe these experiences in a way that informs future practice to prevent the emotional fatigue that can lead t...
Jacki Edry, "Moving Forward: Reflections on Autism, Neurodiversity, Brain Surgery, and Faith" (2021)
October 22, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourJacki Edry's Moving Forward: Reflections on Autism, Neurodiversity, Brain Surgery, and Faith (2021) is a journey between the worlds of autism, neurodiversity, brain surgery recovery, and faith. It provides a rare glimpse into how sensory and neurological processing affect functioning and thought, through the eyes of a professional, parent, and woman who has experienced them firsthand.This book presents an informative, emotional, and empowering account of the challenges and struggles on the ro...
Steven Knoblauch, "Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity" (Routledge, 2020)
October 20, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourSteven Knoblauch's Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity (Routledge, 2020) traces the development of an unfolding challenge for psychoanalytic attention, which augments contemporary theoretical lenses focusing on structures of meaning, with an accompanying registration different than and interacting with structural experience. This accompanying registration of experience is given the term ‘fluidity’ in order to characterize it as too fast movin...
Peter Toohey, "Hold On: The Life, Science, and Art of Waiting" (Oxford UP, 2020)
October 20, 2021 08:00 - 49 minutesWhat do you do when you're not asleep and when you're not eating? You're most likely waiting--to finish work, to get home, or maybe even to be seen by your doctor. Hold On is less about how to manage all that staying where one is until a particular time or event (OED) than it is about describing how we experience waiting. Waiting can embrace things like hesitation and curiosity, dithering and procrastination, hunting and being hunted, fearing and being feared, dread and illness, courting and ...
Jackie Fast, "Rule Breaker: Rebellious Leadership for the Future of Work" (Kogan Page, 2021)
October 14, 2021 08:00 - 36 minutesToday I talked to Jackie Fast about her new book Rule Breaker: Rebellious Leadership for the Future of Work (Kogan Page, 2021). Imagine finding yourself in a career sector, sponsorship, because it’s the way to get a visa and stay in England. Well, that’s what happened to Jackie Fast. And as things turned out, she was very good at sponsorship work. In a few years her ability to put two brands together for a campaign, or more, a kind of temporary Merger and Acquisition, meant she was spending t...
Hannah Zeavin, "The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy" (MIT Press, 2021)
October 14, 2021 08:00 - 49 minutesOn this episode, J.J. Mull interviews author Hannah Zeavin about her new book, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (MIT Press, 2021). Among Zeavin’s central interventions in the book is to reframe what is normally understood as the “therapeutic dyad” as always already a triad: therapist, patient, and mediating communication technology. Across the book’s chapters, she traces teletherapy’s history from Freud’s epistolary treatments to contemporary algorithmic therapies. Her account of t...
Heinz Weiss, "Trauma, Guilt and Reparation: The Path from Impasse to Development" (Routledge, 2019)
October 13, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesTrauma, Guilt and Reparation: The Path from Impasse to Development (Routledge, 2019) identifies the emotional barriers faced by people who have experienced severe trauma, as well as the emergence of reparative processes which pave the way from impasse to development. The book explores the issue of trauma with particular reference to issues of reparation and guilt. Referencing the original work of Klein and others, it examines how feelings of persistent guilt work to foil attempts at reparatio...
Gillian Straker and Jacqui Winship, "The Talking Cure: Normal People, their Hidden Struggles and the Life-Changing Power of Therapy" (Macmillan, 2019)
October 12, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourGillian Straker’s name has long been on my radar, particularly for the ways in which she has used psychoanalytic thought to contend with the vicissitudes of apartheid and its aftermath in her home country, South Africa. But she has also made use of what apartheid taught her about the human mind. Indeed, there is much for psychoanalysis to learn from apartheid. For over 20 years, Straker has published, largely in relational journals, about racism, and the ways in which living under the extreme...
Sheldon George and Derek Hook, "Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory" (Routledge, 2021)
October 08, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourDerek Hook and Sheldon George's Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2021) is a path-breaking edited volume that draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation. In my conversation with Derek and Sheldon, touching on the main themes of the volume, we explore the problems with popular psychological conceptualisations of racism, the promises and pitfalls of bringing Lacanian concepts like ...
Martin Monti, “The Limits of Consciousness” (Open Agenda, 2021)
October 08, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe Limits of Consciousness is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Martin Monti, Associate Professor in Psychology and Neurosurgery, Brain Injury Research Centre, UCLA. This extensive conversation examines Martin Monti’s innovative work with patients who are in a vegetative state or minimally conscious state which has led to some surprising results that might well prove to be integral to our development of a deeper understanding of consciousness. Howard Burton i...
Soo Bong Peer, "The Essential Diversity Mindset: How to Cultivate a More Inclusive Culture and Environment" (Career Press, 2021)
October 07, 2021 08:00 - 34 minutesToday I talked to Soo Bong Peer about her new book The Essential Diversity Mindset: How to Cultivate a More Inclusive Culture and Environment (Career Press, 2021) In 1967, bans on interracial marriages were finally declared unconstitutional in America. Only a decade earlier than that, merely 4% of Americans endorsed them. Today, the figure is 87% approval. So clearly, progress has been made in a country whose citizens are often multiracial as well as in interracial marriages and relationships...
Darrin McMahon, “Deconstructing Genius” (Open Agenda, 2021)
October 04, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourDeconstructing Genius is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and intellectual historian Darrin McMahon, Dartmouth College. The word “genius” evokes great figures like Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Mozart but what quintessential quality unites these individuals? Can we measure it? Can we create it? This thoughtful conversation explores Darrin’s research on the evolution of genius from Plato to Einstein (which led him to write the book Divine Fury: A History of Gen...
Catarina Dutilh Novaes, "The Dialogical Roots of Deduction: Historical, Cognitive, and Philosophical Perspectives on Reasoning" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
October 01, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIf all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then it must be that Socrates is mortal. What could be more obvious? Well, sometimes obviousness serves to conceal philosophical difficulties. There’s more going on in this simple deduction than we tend to recognize. For one thing, we are not being asked to assess whether all men are, indeed, mortal. Nor are we asking whether Socrates is indeed a man. Instead, we’re focusing on the logical relation that obtains between those two claims and the thi...
Gidi Ifergan, "The Psychology of the Yogas" (Equinox Publishing, 2021)
September 30, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourGidi Ifergan's new book The Psychology of the Yogas (Equinox Publishing, 2021) explores the dissonance between the promises of the yogic quest and psychological states of crisis. Western practitioners of yoga and meditation who have embarked upon years-long spiritual quests and who have practiced under the guidance of a guru tell of profound and ongoing experiences of love, compassion and clarity: the peaks of spiritual fulfillment. However, after returning to the West, they reported difficul...
Sarah Nannery and Larry Nannery, "What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love—with Autism Spectrum Disorder" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)
September 30, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourWhen Sarah Nannery got her first job at a small nonprofit, she thought she knew exactly what it would take to advance. But soon she realized that even with hard work and conscientiousness, she was missing key meanings and messages embedded in her colleagues' everyday requests, feedback, and praise. She had long realized her brain operated differently than others, but now she knew for sure: she had Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). With help from her neurotypical partner--now husband--Larry, mos...
Samuel Gershman, "What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition" (Princeton UP, 2021)
September 28, 2021 08:00 - 44 minutesAt the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility of human perception, language, and reasoning. Yet, we routinely commit errors that reveal the failures of our thought processes. What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition (Princeton UP, 2021) makes sense of this paradox by arguing that our cognitive errors are not haphazard. Rather, they are the in...