Matthew D. Lieberman

Explore the groundbreaking research in social neuroscience revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world – other people and our relation to them.

How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

Literacy does strange things to you, and mass literacy does strange things en masse. Did you know that literate people have worse facial recognition abilities than those who are illiterate? Or that in learning to read and write your corpus callosum (the cable if you like connecting your right and left hemisphere) will have grown thicker?

Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Jonanthan Haidt; reviewed by John Zada

We are without doubt living in an era of polarised thinking, marked by much bickering across social and political lines. But could positions of both side have roots in common moral foundations?

Moving Toward Conscious Evolution

Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich

Over millions of years, our minds evolved with quick reflexes to deal with sudden threats, which makes long-term threats like pollution and overpopulation invisible to us. Our survival now requires that we consciously evolve a new mind and new perceptions to adapt.

Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

Joshua D. Greene

Our innate moral behavior evolved over millions of years to promote cooperation within our group. Each group has its own moral code, which provides a map for how individuals can live successfully within it. Our other innate tendency, to favor our group over all others, is something we need to understand and mitigate to address the existential challenges of our modern global society.

Colin Turnbull

The story of the IK tribe of northeastern Uganda is a classic study of how a society’s concept of fairness and justice can quickly devolve when its people are cut off from their accustomed means of livelihood and forced to compete for their very survival.

Iain McGilchrist

One of McGilchrist’s central points is that our society is one in which we rely on representations of the world as our way of knowing it. Scientific theories expressed in mathematical form, economic models, photographs – all re-present the reality they purport to describe. 

Paul Ehrlich & Robert Ornstein

Psychologist Robert Ornstein and biologist Paul Ehrlich join forces to explain why the human race has reached its current perilous precipice. To sidestep the fate they say is now barreling towards us will require us to address our “empathy shortfall.”

Edward T. Hall and Our Hidden Culture

Report by John Zada

Edward T. Hall, after spending his early adulthood working and travelling among non-Anglophones, both in the United States and in other parts of the world, became cognizant and fascinated in the deeper layers of culture that he claimed lie buried beneath those more obvious forms.