How to Save the Internet
Clay Shirky has always been an optimist, believing in the potential of the internet to bring humanity together. But recent trends – from the spread of fake news to the rise in online vitriol – seem to...
20 Mar 20211h 2min
What You Miss About the World If You Only Study Students at Harvard
Between 2003 and 2007, 96% of participants in social psychology studies were Westerners, most of them undergraduates at American universities. As a result, much of what psychologists have come to beli...
13 Mar 202150min
Intent Matters
There is a lot of bad advice going around these days. If something bad happened to you, define yourself by your trauma. And if somebody inadvertently did something offensive, react as though they had ...
6 Mar 20211h 5min
The Weaponization of Nostalgia
Trump's presidency, Brexit, and the mishandling of a global pandemic have made Douglas Alexander deeply concerned about the "powerful weaponization of nostalgia." As a former leader of the Scottish La...
27 Feb 20211h
How To Understand Your Enemy
We like to think the right argument could persuade our friend or uncle of our point of view. But what if our personality helps to determine how we see the world? Dr. John Hibbing, a professor of polit...
20 Feb 202157min
Why Do We Always Think We're Right?
What transforms reasonable people into an angry mob? Why are we so eager to dismiss those who disagree with us as inherently evil? These are questions which Jonathan Haidt has spent his career trying ...
13 Feb 20211h 13min
Who Is Fighting Whom?
Commentators often think that the threat to democracy comes from those who feel left behind - the ones who feel voiceless and vote accordingly. But what if the rise of populism was provoked, in part, ...
6 Feb 202152min
Is Social Media to Blame For It All?
We often hear the phrase “Twitter isn’t real life” as a reminder to take online spats with a pinch of salt. But with the U.S. Capitol riot, we’ve been painfully reminded of social media's power. There...
30 Jan 20211h 1min
