John Boehner cries a lot. The incoming Speaker of the House tears up when he thinks about the American Dream, and his own rise from humble roots. He gets watery when he sees little kids on the playground, and he even sobs during floor debate on complex legislation. According to New York Times columnist Gail… Read more
Primatologist Marc Hauser was a scientific superstar at Harvard–until he came under suspicion for fudging his data. He is now under investigation, and his career hangs in the balance. Testimony by a former lab assistant is damning; the assistant maintains he “saw” behaviors in rhesus monkeys that others in the lab simply couldn’t see. Emory… Read more
You should be feeling really good about yourself right now. You managed to bite your tongue at the office when your hypercritical boss lit into you. So that was good, disciplined and professional. You kept your head down all day, focusing on a tedious but important deadline project that needed your total concentration. And you… Read more
Your nervous system is not autonomous, nor is mine. For better or worse, our nervous systems and our minds are connected. This rich interconnection enables empathy and group cohesion, but it can also lead to an infantile need to connect and belong. I discuss both the advantages and perils of such connection in On Second… Read more
In the book, I devote a chapter to the Visionary Heuristic, which is our tendency to link work and vision, effort and spatial perception: We see hills as steeper than they really are if we’re tired, or if we must carry something heavy up the hill. Here is a new and interesting twist on this… Read more
Alms for the poor. Sidewalk Santas with clanging bells. The words and images may seem a bit Dickensian, but the charitable sentiment still resonates throughout the winter holiday season. After all, every one of the world’s major religions preaches compassion and generosity toward those less fortunate. Yet despite the universality of this simple message, a… Read more
Religious beliefs date back at least 100,000 years. That’s the time when our Neanderthal cousins began burying their dead with weapons and tools — presumably prepping them for the world beyond the grave. And such beliefs persist today, with the vast majority of modern humans in every corner of the globe espousing some kind of… Read more
Many people who have never even stepped foot into a 12-step recovery room have nevertheless heard of the 9th step. That’s the part where recovering alcoholics and addicts make amends to people they have harmed over the years, and it’s the most public part of an otherwise very private process. There is even a Seinfeld… Read more