Paul Bloom is Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He works quite broadly in psychology, and studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. Paul is the author of seven books, most recently Psych: The Story of the Human Mind, some of the topics of which constitute the subject of this episode. More particularly, Paul and Robinson discuss Freud’s legacy in contemporary psychology, mental illness, human rationality and irrationality, and the roots of motivation. Paul has also recently been producing a fantastic podcast with his friend and colleague David Pizarro—also called Psych—that covers many of the topics in introductory courses to psychology, and it comes highly recommended.

Psych (Book): https://a.co/d/eYNR4q7

Psych (Podcast): https://psych.fireside.fm

Paul’s Website: https://paulbloom.net

Paul’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulbloomatyale

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

01:10 Introduction

06:09 Writing Psych

08:30 What is Mental Illness?

23:40 Freud versus Contemporary Psychology

36:31 Psychoanalysis versus Contemporary Therapeutic Modalities

52:13 Is Man THE Rational Animal?

58:24 The Psychological Roots of Our Irrationality

01:17:46 The My-Side Bias and Political Gridlock

01:24:47 The Psychological Roots of Human Motivation

01:52:24 Susan Carey

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.