Amidst the headlines tallying the damage wrought by persistent economic decline, cataclysmic climate change and unbending political stalemate — among other things — Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker brings good news.
‘Mind Reading’
Q&A: Why Bad Math Can Ruin Your Health
How do we know which numbers to trust and which health studies are sound? Healthland faces this dilemma every day, so we spoke with Charles Seife, the rare journalist with an undergraduate degree in mathematics, from Princeton no less.
Q&A: How Pleasure Works
How does the brain create the experience of joy and desire? That’s the subject of David Linden’s new book, The Compass of Pleasure. A professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Linden studies …
Q&A: Everything You Wanted to Know About Poisoning
Murder by poisoning may seem like an old-fashioned phenomenon interesting only to fans of mystery novels and the odd toxicologist. But the new book, The Poisoner’s Handbook, suggests the threat of poisons and poisoning is ever present.
Q&A: Why ‘Expert’ Predictions in the Media Are So Often Wrong
With the gyrations of the stock market and unsettling political and financial climates causing jitters around the world, writer Dan Gardner offers timely insight in his new book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Are Next to …
Q&A: Why 50 Is Not the New 30, and How to Make the Best of It
Mirth and menopause may seem an unlikely mix, but in her new book, Between a Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty is Not the New Thirty, Hollywood screenwriter Tracey Jackson manages to deliver women’s health advice with an …
Q&A: When You Go Hunting for Psychopaths, They Turn Up Everywhere
Psychologist Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist is the most widely used diagnostic tool to identify psychopathy — not only in prisons and institutions. If you give the test to CEOs or other corporate executives, Hare says, a …
Q&A: Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen on Empathy and the Science of Evil
Cambridge psychology professor and leading autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen is best known for studying the theory that a key problem in autistic disorders is “mind blindness,” difficulty understanding the thoughts, feelings and …
Q&A: The Researchers Who Analyzed All the Porn on the Internet
Searching all the porn on the Internet might not seem like the most scientifically productive activity, but computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam did it anyway.
Q&A: Positive Psychologist Martin Seligman on the Good Life
These days Martin Seligman, author of the best-selling book Authentic Happiness, is perhaps best known as a father of positive of psychology — the study of people’s strengths and virtues, rather than on pathological behavior.
Q&A: How to Use Quirks of the Mind to Change Behavior
How can we motivate ourselves to do what we really want to do? By better understanding the brain’s unconscious tendencies and tactics, argues journalist Wray Herbert — or, in other words, tricking ourselves into doing it.
Q&A: How to Live Well on the Autistic Spectrum
What happens when children with Asperger’s grow up?
Q&A: The Surprising Upside of Getting Old
Americans have tremendous fear of aging — and a great deal of prejudice against the elderly. But, as the joke has it, being old is better than the alternative. And, despite our fears, new research suggests that being old is …
