Beautiful Illusions

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:47 - Jeff’s 5 old desert island “favorite” books: Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac, Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Immortality by Milan Kundera, and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• 3:29 - Darron’s 5 favorite movies: The Big Lebowski, Goodfellas, The Shawshank Redemption, The Empire Strikes Back, The Goonies
• 4:45 - Darron’s top 5 albums (plus one): OK Computer by Radiohead, Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, Kid A by Radiohead, and Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses
• 5:20 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 19 - How We Learn Like A Scout: Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking from October 2021
• 5:57 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 08 - System 2, Superman, & Simulacra: Jeff's Amateur Philosophy from December 2020
• 6:22 - Originally published in 2007, Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson describes cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, as well as various memory biases, and then uses these psychological ideas to illustrate how people justify and rationalize their behavior. It describes a positive feedback loop of action and self-deception by which slight differences between people's attitudes can become increasingly polarized and how memory distortions influence our present thoughts and beliefs about everything, especially our own selves. Ideas from this book were discussed in a number of previous episodes, most notably Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment and Episdode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2
• 10:30 - See “Our Two Selves: Experiencing and Remembering” (Huffington Post, 2012),  “Living, and thinking about it: two perspectives on life” by Daniel Kahneman and Jason Riis (Chapter 11 from The Science of Well-Being, 2005), and watch Kahneman’s TED Talk: The riddle of experience vs. memory from 2010
• 11:22 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 20 - Reflections on a Year of Beautiful Illusions from November 2021
• 11:54 - Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• 12:47 - In Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain  psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett says “You can invest a little time and energy to learn new ideas. You can curate new experiences. You can try new activities. Everything you learn today seeds your brain to predict differently tomorrow…It’s also possible to change predictions to cultivate empathy for other people and act differently in the future…that is a form of free will, or at least something we can arguably call free will. We can choose what we expose ourselves to.”
• 14:25 - See “The Real Problem” by Anil Seth (Aeon, 2016)
• 21:42 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
• 29:22 - Psychologist Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a partnership between separate but connected entities using the metaphor of the rider and the elephant - the rider represents all that is conscious and is the director of actions and executor of thought and long term goals, while the elephant represents all that is automatic, and often acts independently of conscious thought. He first introduced the metaphor in his 2006 book book, The Happiness Hypothesis and also use it extensively in his 2013 book The Righteous Min
• 37:00 - According to the Ultimate Classic Rock website, Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses was slow to break through “partially because a string of retailers refused to carry the album. Blame a gruesome original cover image, based on a Robert Williams painting of the same name, that depicts the interruption of a robot rape by an avenging metal angel” See “The History of Guns N’ Roses Controversy-Courting ‘Appetite for Destruction’ Cover” (2017)
• 38:55 - “You Won’t Remember the Pandemic the Way You Think You Will” (The Atlantic, 2021)
• 51:24 - The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef is discussed in Beautiful Illusions Episode 19 - How We Learn Like A Scout: Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking from October 2021
• 53:20 - See “Soldier Mindset / Scout Mindset” comparison table
• 57:38 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 169 - C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency which is an interview with C. Thi Nguyen who is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah
• 58:48 - The line “it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only” comes from the song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)” by Bob Dylan
• 1:05:53 - In Act 2, Scene 2 of Hamlet by William Shakespeare the titular character, speaking of the country of Denmark, says “Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.”
• 1:07:32 - Listen the Brain Science podcast where host Ginger Campbell, MD, explores how recent discoveries in neuroscience are unraveling the mystery of how our brain makes us human.
• 1:07:34 - The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains by Joseph E. LeDoux
• 1:10:15 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March 2020
• 1:10:23 - The Origins of Creativity by E.O. Wilson
• 1:11:59 - Jeff’s current 5 desert island books: Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich, and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain byLisa Feldman Barrett

This episode was recorded in November 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:43 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 10 - Craft Beer Culture: A Personal History from January 2021
• 5:10 - Athletic Brewing Company
• 6:43 - Listen the Beautiful Illusions Episode 19 - How We Learn Like A Scout: Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking from October 2020, which is centered around a discussion of two books: The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef and How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine...for Now by Stanislas Dehaene
• 7:36 - Listen and read “This is Water” (Farnam Street Blog) by David Foster Wallace
• 8:18 - In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a partnership between separate but connected entities using the metaphor of the rider and the elephant - the rider represents all that is conscious and is the director of actions and executor of thought and long term goals, while the elephant represents all that is automatic, and often acts independently of conscious thought. According to Haidt, our problem is that we overemphasize the power and importance of our conscious verbal thinking and neglect the other components of our mind. In his book, he argues that we must improve our understanding of these divisions and learn to let them operate in harmony, not compete for control.
• 8:33 - For more on “System 1” and “System 2” see  “Of 2 Minds: How Fast and Slow Thinking Shape Perception and Choice” from Scientifc American, excerpted from Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• 15:46 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 08 - System 2, Superman, & Simulacra: Jeff's Amateur Philosophy from December 2020
• 17:59 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 11 - Darwin & The Dude: Darron's Journey to Poetic Naturalism from February 2021
• 19:38 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• 21:58 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 03 - The Examined Life from September 2020 and see the “I know that I know nothing” Wikipedia entry
• 24:09 - The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
• 27:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020 and Episode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2: Just the Facts from April 2021
• 30:35 - See “Why Chimpanzees Don’t Hold Elections: The Power of Social Reality” by Lisa Feldman Barrett (Undark, 2021) - “We all live in a world of social reality that exists only inside our collective human brains. Nothing in physics or chemistry determines that you’re leaving the United States and entering Canada, or that an expanse of water has certain fishing rights, or that a specific arc of the Earth’s orbit around the sun is called January. These things are real to us anyway. Socially real.”
• 32:38 -  See “Moral Foundations Theory” (Conceptually), the Moral foundations theory Wikipedia page, read chapter 7 of The Righteous Mind which outlines Haidt’s 6 moral foundations of politics, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009), and watch Haidt’s 2012 TED Talk on “The moral roots of liberals and conservatives” (YouTube)
• 35:13 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March 2021
• 35:38 - Watch the Statue of Liberty, Higher and Higher scene from Ghostbusters 2 (YouTube)
• 37:54 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 15 - The Mind of Gatsby: A Look Through the Cognitive Lens from June 2021
• 41:19 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 17 - BI Book Club 1: The Reality Bubble from August 2021 where we discuss The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong, and then follow that up with Episode 18 - Making Progress Better where we continue to explore themes raised in the previous episode
• 45:29 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 04 - Too Cultured from October 2020
• 45:43 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 05 - It’s Alive! from October 2020
• 46:46 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 16 - Partisan Pizza from July 2021
• 47:50 - We ate the Cheeseburger Pizza from Tipsy Tomato in Derby, CT, along with the Loaded Mashed Potato and Baked Stuffed Shrimp pizzas
• 50:52 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 09 - Lying About Santa: Naughty or Nice? from December 2020
• 52:37 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 01 - Why It's Pointless to Start a Podcast in a Pandemic from September 2020
• 52:48 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 02 - Our Back Pages from September 2020, which was actually recorded in 2019 with the intention of becoming the first episode of Beautiful Illusions
• 53:55 - Listen to “My Back Pages” by Bob Dylan and read the lyrics
• 54:16 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 07 - Boxing Aristotle from November 2020
• 54:38 - Listen to the Brain Science podcast
• 1:03:58 -  See Apple Podcasts Statistics and  “Why there really aren’t 2 million podcasts” (Amplifi Media, 2021)
• 1:07:05 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Heinrich
• 1:07:43 - Slaughterhouse-Five  by Kurt Vonnegut 

This episode was recorded in October 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:15 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 18 - Making Progress Better from September 2021
• 8:36 - AP English Language and Composition (College Board)
• 12:23 - The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef
• 12:26 - How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine...for Now by Stanislas Dehaene
• 12:53 - See an outline of The Scout Mindset (Effective Altruism Forum)
• 13:41 - See the “hyperreality” Wikipedia entry and read “On Exactitude in Science” by Jorge Luis Borges
• 14:27 - See “Soldier Mindset / Scout Mindset” comparison table
• 21:08 - See “Carol Dweck: A Summary of Growth and Fixed Mindsets” (fs Blog)
• 21:58 - See the “testing effect” Wikipedia entry and “The Ultimate Learning Machine”, a summary of an interview with Stanislas Dehaene: “One of the most surprising insights coming from current research is that we learn more from regular testing than we do from extra lesson time. Testing doesn’t necessarily entail doing a formal exam, it’s more about brief, daily testing during class and can involve doing an exercise, using flashcards or having the teacher ask questions after introducing a new concept. The best is to alternate teaching and testing, even within a single lesson. “Teachers think that evaluation is for them to get an idea of what the kids are doing, but according to the recent science, testing is really for the learner,” Dehaene says. “It’s an essential part of the learning algorithm. You learn when you test yourself.” In this sense, testing and evaluation are misunderstood by teachers, he believes.”
• 22:58 - See “Bloom’s Taxonomy” (Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching) and the “Bloom’s taxonomy” Wikipdedia entry
• 34:58 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020
• 35:10 - Difficult Conversations by by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen
• 39:09 - For a nice summary of Dehaene’s 4 pillars see ”Did neuroscience find the secrets of learning?” (Article by Stanislas Dehaene, Paris Innovation Review, 2013) and  “Science: These are the 4 Pillars of Learning” (Daniel Gogek)
• 40:59 - See an outline of The Scout Mindset (Effective Altruism Forum)
• 41:00 - Watch Julia Galef’s TED Talk “Why you think you're right — even if you're wrong”
• 43:51 - See “What are Book Clubs?” (Fountas & Pinnell Literacy Blog)
• 57:36 - Listen to Brain Science Episode 167 - Stanislas Dehaene on “How We Learn” from February 2020
• 1:02:50 - See Metacognition (Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching) and the “Metacognition” Wikipdedia entry

This episode was recorded in August 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:12 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 17 - BI Book Club 1: The Reality Bubble from July 2021, where we discuss Ziya Tong’s 2019 book The Reality Bubble
• 4:07 - Published in 1739, book 3 of philosopher David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, “Of Morals”, articulates what has come to be known as the “is-ought problem” which arises when someone makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between positive statements (about what is) and prescriptive normative statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. While Hume was dealing with moral philosophy, a related epistemological concept derived from Hume’s thought is the fact-value distinction, in which statements of fact based upon reason and physical observation, and which are examined via the empirical method, are separate from statements of value, which encompass ethics and aesthetics. This barrier between 'fact' and 'value' implies it is impossible to derive ethical claims from factual arguments, or to defend the former using the latter. 
• 5:44 - James Madison lays out his views on a large diverse republic in Federalist No. 10, see the Wikipedia entry as well
• 10:33 - See the great “Cognitive bias cheat sheet” and “What Can We Do About Our Bias?” by Buster Benson writing for Better Humans
• 12:49 - Listen to Season 2, Episode 18 of Conversations With Coleman: The Myth of Climate Apocalypse with Michael Shellenberger (YouTube), more on Coleman Hughes and Michael Shellenberger
• 13:27 - From the Season 2, Episode 22 show notes of Conversations With Coleman (YouTube): "My second announcement today is about my interview with Michael Shellenberger from a few weeks back. It seems that Michael made some very misleading or outright false claims about the connection between climate change and extreme weather events. Specifically, he said that climate change did not contribute to the intensity of wildfires in California and Australia. It was a surprising claim to me at the time, but I didn't push back in the moment. Although in retrospect, I should have because it turns out this is not the consensus of the climate science community. Some of his other claims, including that we're not in a sixth mass extinction are at the very least far more controversial than he indicated. So to rectify this, I'm going to get a mainstream climate scientist on the show very soon, and cover all of these topics in detail."
• 13:34 - Factfulness by Hans Rosling
• 22:04 - In his 2018 book Stubborn Attachments economist Tyler Cowen argues that “[t]he lives of humans born decades from now might be difficult for us to imagine, or to treat as of equal worth to our own. But our own lives were once similarly distant from those taking their turn on Earth; the future, when it comes, will feel as real to those living in it as the present does to us. Economists should treat threats to future lives as just as morally reprehensible as present threats to our own.”
• 23:11 - See “The Brain Isn’t Supposed to Change This Much” (The Atlantic, 2021)
• 25:25 - Watch “Louis CK Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy” (YouTube)
• 27:53 - See “How much plastic actually gets recycled?” (Live Science, 2020), “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not” (New York Times, 2018),and “Is This The End of Recycling?” (The Atlantic, 2019)
• 28:12 - See “Biden’s fake burger ban and the rising culture war over meat” (Vox, 2021), and “Eating meat has ‘dire’ consequences for the planet, says report” (National Geographic, 2019)
• 29:24 - In Factfulness, author Hans Rosling lays out 10 “dramatic instincts” that often lead us astray, the first three of which he refers to as “mega misconceptions.” The first of these is what he calls “The Gap Instinct” or the mega misconception that the world is divided into two, to paraphrase Rosling he says we have a tendency to “divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups with an imagined gap...in between...the gap instinct makes us imagine a division where there is just a smooth range, difference where there is convergence, and conflict where there is agreement...in most cases there is no clear separation of two groups...the majority is to be found in the middle, and it tells a very different story.” To combat this instinct Rosling suggests recognizing when a story is about a gap and realizing that reality is often not polarized at all, and furthermore to beware of extremes, that although the difference between extremes is dramatic, the majority is usually in the middle where the gap is supposed to be.” For more useful information on the gap instinct and the other 9 dramatic instincts, see Factfulness at Gapminder
• 31:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020, and see Difficult Conversations by by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen
• 34:18 - See Super Duper Food Trucks Catering, the spin off of Super Duper Weenie
• 42:28 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• 44:38 - As well meaning as we might be, it goes without saying that Jeff and I are hardly the first humans to engage in this kind of exercise, in fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948, as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It was drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, and was it set out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected, and is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels. The Declaration comprises 30 individual articles, the first of which states “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” and the 25th of which states “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” For the other 28 Articles see the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (United Nations)
• 46:31 - Watch the benefit song “U.S.A. For Africa - We Are the World (Official Video)” (YouTube) and read the Wikipedia entry, Bob Dylan appears at 3:46
• 46:38 - See “We Already Grow Enough Food For 10 Billion People -- and Still Can't End Hunger” (Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, 2012) and “Can we feed the world and ensure no one goes hungry?” (United Nations, 2019)
• 50:28 - See “Building New Renewables Is Cheaper Than Burning Fossil Fuels” (Bloomberg Green, 2021), “Majority of New Renewables Undercut Cheapest Fossil Fuel on Cost” (International Renewable Energy Agency, 2021), and “Solar power got cheap. So why aren’t we using it more?” (Popular Science, 2021)
• 52:14 - See Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, “Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago” (Scientific American, 2015) and “How the oil industry made us doubt climate change” (BBC, 2020) 
• 53:30 - Former Vice President Al Gore released his climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2006
• 55:22 - See “Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong” (TED Ideas, 2017)
• 58:18 - The Progress Network
• 1:00:24 - In his 1971 book Theory of Justice, philosopher John Rawls presents the thought experiment of the Veil of Ignorance, which allows us to test ideas for fairness when thinking about setting up a just society. For more see “The Fairness Principle: How the Veil of Ignorance Helps Test Fairness” (Farnam Street Blog) 
• 1:00:43 - See “The Ship Breakers” (The Atlantic, 2014), “Inside the Shady, Dangerous Business of Shipbreaking” (Atlas Obscura, 2016), watch “Where Ships Go to Die, Workers Risk Everything” (National Geographic YouTube Channel), and see the Wikipedia entry on ship breaking
• 1:02:35 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March 2021

This episode was recorded in August 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:23 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 133: Ziya Tong on Realities We Don’t See for an overview and discussion of ideas Tong presents in her 2019 book The Reality Bubble
• 4:36 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 04 - Too Cultured from October 2020
• 6:10 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 01 - Why It’s Pointless to Start a Podcast In a Pandemic from September 2020
• 7:52 - Factfulness by Hans Rosling
• 8:00 - Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
• 9:39 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March 2021
• 9:56 - Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway
• 10:35 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2: Just the Facts from April 2021
• 16:40 - See “Chickens have gotten ridiculously large since the 1950’s” (Vox, 2014)
• 18:50 - See the Wikipedia entry on the “environmental impact of meat production” and “Meat’s Sustainability Problem” (The Good Food Institute, 2018)
• 19:48 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett - “An organization called Seeds of Peace tries to change predictions by bringing together young people from cultures that are in serious conflict, like Palestinians and Israelis, and Indians and Pakistanis. The teens participate in activities like soccer, canoeing, and leadership training, and they can talk about the animosity between their cultures in a supportive environment. By creating new experiences, these teens are changing their future predictions in the hopes of building bridges between the cultures and, ultimately, creating a more peaceful world.”
• 26:06 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 15 - The Mind of Gatsby: A Look Through the Cognitive Lens from June 2021
• 30:22 - The 2008 documentary Food, Inc. is an “unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry.”
• 30:27 - For more on Chinese surveillance see the “Mass surveillance in China” Wikipedia entry, “Facial Recognition And Beyond: Journalist Ventures Inside China's 'Surveillance State'” (NPR, 2021), “China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone” (The Atlantic, 2018), and “The Panopticon Is Already Here” (The Atlantic, 2020)
• 30:30 - The 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma “[e]xplores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.”
• 31:33 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 08 - System 2, Superman, & Simulacra: Jeff's Amateur Philosophy from December 2020
• 31:03 - See “Can Prairie Dogs Talk?” (New York Times Magazine, 2017) and “The Linguistic Genius of Prairie Dogs” (Animal Cognition) which discuss the work of animal biologist Con Slobodchikoff, who among other things claims that many animals have language and can talk
• 33:08 - See the “Pain in animals” Wikipedia entry and “Animals can feel pain. A biologist explains how we know.” (Vox, 2017)
• 35:22 - The Origins of Creativity by E.O. Wilson
• 40:17 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
• 40:42 - Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari 
• 42:15 - See The Secret of Our Success website
• 43:09 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 16 - Partisan Pizza from July 2021
• 48:44 - 1491 by Charles C. Mann
• 51:44 - Slight correction - the evolution of fish began about 530 million years ago, see the “Evolution of fish” Wikipedia entry for more
• 54:20 - Watch a hilarious compilation from legendary comedian Mitch Hedberg and see “21 of the Funniest and Most Unforgettable Mitch Hedberg Jokes” (Vulture, 2020)
• 1:02:30 - Candide by Voltaire
• 1:03:15 - James Stockdale was a candidate for Vice President of the United States in the 1992 presidential election, on Ross Perot's independent ticket.
• 1:03:35 - Jim Collins discusses what he calls The Stockdale Paradox, which is based on the experience of James Stockdale who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War for over seven years, in his 2001 business classic Good to Great
• 1:03:58 - In his 2018 book Stubborn Attachments  economist Tyler Cowen argues that “if we want to flourish, do what’s best for the maximum amount of people and create a more pluralistic society. One of the most important building blocks of such a society is to have a stubborn attachment to economic growth (in its Cowen variety of Wealth Plus).Cowen defines Wealth Plus as “the total amount of value produced over a certain time period. This includes the traditional measures of economic value found in GDP statistics, but also includes measures of leisure time, household production, and environmental amenities, as summed up in a relevant measure of wealth.”” See “The Clear and Comprehensive Case for Growth” (Archbridge Notes, 2018)

This episode was recorded in July 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:12 - The “Big Mac” pizza is one of of many “Gourmet Pizzas” served at Illiano’s Pizza & Italian Cuisine in Middletown, CT
• 3:45 - See “The Definitive Guide to New Haven Pizza”, the “New Haven-style pizza” Wikipedia entry, and the website for Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana
• 4:05 - I’m currently using Andrew Janigan’s updated version for NYC Thin-Crust Pizza Dough, which is terrific, and for more detail about the process check out his three part series on dough and baking pizzas
• 5:21 - See “The History of Pizza” (CNN Travel, 2021)
• 8:15 - For more on pizza styles see “Do You Know These Regional Pizza Styles?” (Serious Eats, 2018)
• 8:40 - See Adam Kuban’s current site, Famous Original Slice, and this profile from Serious Eats where he mentions, among other things, his pizza cognition theory
• 10:00 - See “Chefs Weigh In: Is Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Really Pizza?” (Eater, 2014), “Why Deep Dish Can't Be Considered Pizza in a Court of Law” (Thrillist, 2016), and the Wikipedia entry on Chicago-Style Pizza
• 12:10 - See “What Is a Controlled Experiment?” (ThoughtCo, 2019)
• 17:53 - The Yale repertory Theatre
• 18:54 - See “How the Difference Between Your Experiencing Self and Your Remembering Self Shapes Your Happiness” (Brainpickings, 2011) and watch “Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle of Experience Vs. Memory” (TED, 2010)
• 19:02 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 14 - Talkin' Baseball Stories & Beautiful Illusions from May 2021
• 23:54 - See the Jimi Hendrix Wikipedia entry, bio from JimiHendrix.com, “Jimi Hendrix’ use of distortion to extend the performance vocabulary of the electric guitar” (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1998), “100 Greatest Guitarist lists” from Rolling Stone (Hendrix comes in at #1) and Guitar World (Hendrix comes in at #2), and watch his legendary Woodstock performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” (YouTube)
• 25:21 - Watch Jimi Hendrix play acoustically and listen to an acoustic jam session from 1968
• 28:42 - Molecular gastronomy
• 29:05 - See “Modern Art: History and Concepts” (The Art Story) and the “Modern Art” Wikipedia entry
• 29:40 - See “Pumpkin Spice Is Overrated and We Need to Talk About It” (Eating Well, 2019) and the “Pumpkin Pie Spice” Wikipedia entry
• 29:58 - See “Why do so many people find pineapple on pizza offensive?” (GoodFood, 2019) and the “Hawaiian Pizza” Wikipedia entry
• 32:29 - J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (official site) and bio from Serious Eats
• 36:50 - See “The Happiness Benefits of Trying New Things” (The Atlantic, 2021)
• 38:40 - The Big Five Personality Traits
• 40:37 - The Epic of Gilgamesh
• 40:48 - For more on the long history of bread see “14,000-Year-Old Piece Of Bread Rewrites The History Of Baking And Farming” (NPR, 2018), “Who Invented Bread?” (LiveScience, 2018), the “History of Bread” Wikipedia entry, “Why San Francisco does sourdough best” (BBC Travel, 2020), and “What Makes San Francisco Sourdough Unique?” (KQED, 2017)
• 43:16 - Watch Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s TED Talk “Flow, The Secret To Happiness”
• 46:18 - See “Stream Jimmy Montague’s horn-fueled, ’70s-inspired new album ‘Casual Use’” (Brooklyn Vegan, 2021) and visit the album’s Bandcamp page
• 47:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 02 - Our Back Pages from September 2020 where Jeff and Darron discuss their long-standing obsession with Bob Dylan
• 51:50 - See “Category Learning in the Brain” (Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2010) and “How the brain forms categories” (ScienceDaily, 2012)
• 54:35 - The new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009 and “our version” of Yankee Stadium was actually the renovated version of the original stadium built in 1923
• 55:09 - See “A Guide to Italian Certifications” (Eataly) and “DOP Foods of Italy: What They Are, and How to Find Them” (Walks of Italy)
• 56:55 - See the “Neopolitan pizza” Wikipedia entry and the website of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, an association set up in 1984 to preserve the Neapolitan pizza tradition and their 14-page document outlining the requirements for certification
• 59:38 - See the “Carbonara” Wikipedia entry, “Watch Michelin-Starred Chefs Cook Carbonara” (Fine Dining Lovers, 2017), “Smoky Tomato Carbonara” (New York Times, 2021), “'Stop this madness': NYT angers Italians with 'smoky tomato carbonara' recipe” (The Guardian, 2021), “New York Times’ Tomato Carbonara Recipe (Rightly) Causes International Incident” (The Daily Beast, 2021), and pre-dating the recent controversy “Italian Icons: Carbonara, a Squabble Recipe” (Find Dining Lovers, 2015) and “Carbonara Purists Can’t Stop the Pasta Revolution” (The New Yorker, 2016)
• 1:01:09 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020 and Beautiful Illusions Episode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2: Just the Facts from April 2021
• 1:01:15 - James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham
• 1:02:10 - Madison lays out his views on a large diverse republic in Federalist No. 10, see the Wikipedia entry as well
• 1:03:00 - See “Aristotle’s Ethics: The Doctrine of the Mean” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• 1:07:45 - See “The Jefferson Dinner” (JeffersonDinner.org)
• 1:07:50 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

This episode was recorded in June 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:00 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - “A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism” from March 2021
• 2:09 - See Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett and Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson
• 2:30 - See the “Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism” subsection of the Purdue Online Writing Lab website
• 3:28 - F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby
• 3:48 - See the entry on “allostasis” from the extended endnotes of How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett and/or the “Allostasis” Wikipedia entry
• 3:50 - See “Confirmation bias”, and the “Cognitive bias cheat sheet” and “What Can We Do About Our Bias?” by Buster Benson writing for Better Humans
• 14:39 - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which Jeff and I discussed at length in Beautiful Illusions Episode 05 - “It’s Alive!” from October 2020
• 14:41 - Jacques Lacan was an influential French psychoanalyst
• 15:16 - Watch Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson describe “The Pyramid of Choice” and how it leads to justification of actions and leads to further action and self justification
• 22:50 - See “How Robert Zimmerman Became Bob Dylan” - Born in Minnesota as Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, he settled officially on the name Bob Dylan in 1961, having already gone by Elston Gunn, and Robert Allen. In a 2004 interview Dylan said "You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free." and perhaps most tellingly, in the 2019 Martin Scorscese documentary “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story” he says “Life isn’t about finding yourself—or about finding anything, Life is about creating yourself.”
• 23:20 - Released in 2007, I’m Not There explores different aspects of Dylan’s life and career through 6 vignettes where the “Dylan” character is played by different actors
• 26:40 - The quote “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 novel Mother Night
• 40:05 - For more on System 1 and System 2 thinking see “Of 2 Minds: How Fast and Slow Thinking Shape Perception and Choice” from Scientifc American, excerpted from Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• 41:14 - Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, listen to episode 40 of the It’s Not What It Seems podcast where Darron discusses Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert with his brother Doug
• 44:05 - See the entry on “Tuning and pruning” from the extended endnotes of Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• 53:06 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
• 53:39 - See “Secret Fears of the Super-Rich” (The Atlantic, 2011)
• 55:25 - According to American Heritage “Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color is apparently the book that Tom Buchanan of The Great Gatsby has in mind when he praises “‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man Goddard.” Although he had the title and author wrong, he wasn’t all that far off. Henry Goddard was, in fact, the author of the famous eugenical study of The Kallikak Family.
• 57:10 - See “Ten Years Later: Timeline of Tiger’s Scandal” (Golf Channel, 2019)
• 1:06:55 - For more on the predictive nature of the brain see the entry on “allostasis” from the extended endnotes of How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett and/or the “Allostasis” Wikipedia entry
• 1:08:29 - The quote “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” comes from George Orwell’s 1949 classic Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel
• 1:11:20 - Slaughterhouse Five  by Kurt Vonnegut

This episode was recorded remotely via Zoom in May 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:19 - The Yankees beat the Indians 1-0 in Game 3 of the 2017 American League Division Series, see “2017 American League Division Series (ALDS) Game 3, Indians at Yankees” (Baseball Reference) and 2017 ALDS Game 3 Highlights
• 3:25 - Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees Box Score, August 2, 2019
• 3:34 - Yankee Stadium
• 3:36 - We always park at the Harlem River North Lot, exit 6 off of I-87S (The Major Deegan Expressway)
• 3:55 - It was Adam Ottavino
• 4:52 - Watch Gleyber Torres' Grand Slam vs Red Sox | August 2, 2019
• 5:28 - Torres' grand slam leads Yankees to a 4-2 win | Red Sox-Yankees Game Highlights 8/2/19 (YouTube)
• 8:50 - Written in 1908, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is the baseball anthem traditionally sung during the 7th inning stretch -  listen to a 1908 recording and watch legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray famously lead the singing at Wrigley Field
• 9:18 - See “New York Yankees Team History & Encyclopedia” from Baseball Reference, the “History of the New York Yankees” Wikipedia entry, or the “New York Yankees” entry from Baseball Almanac
• 9:45 - Thurman Munson, an avid amateur pilot, died on August 2, 1979 attempting to land his personal plane and crashing short of the runway - see “8/02/1979 - Thurman Munson dies in crash” (SBNation, 2010), “40 years on, Thurman Munson's death remains one of sports' most stunning moments” (Yahoo! Sports, 2019), and “Remembering the Great Thurman Munson 40 Years After His Tragic Death” (How They Play, 2020)
• 10:05 - Watch Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson almost come to blows in the dugout at Fenway Park after Martin pulled Jackson from the game, which the Red Sox won 10-4, see “June 18, 1977: When Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin clashed at Fenway” (Sporting News, 2019) and “New York Yankees at Boston Red Sox Box Score, June 18, 1977” (Baseball Reference)
• 14:44 - The Red Sox beat the Yankees 11-0 on Saturday September 6, 2003 at Yankee Stadium, see “Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees Box Score, September 6, 2003” (Baseball Reference)
• 16:05 - The Yankees didn’t trade for Jason Giambi, they signed him to a seven-year, $120 million dollar free agent contract in December of 2001, see “Giambi tops Yankees' arsenal of new additions” (ESPN, 2001)
• 16:18 - The Yankees traded Alfonso Soriano for Alex Rodriguez in February of 2004, see “Trades Of The Decade: A-Rod For Soriano” (MLB Trade Rumors, 2009) and “The great A-Rod trade robbery” (Bronx Pinstripes, 2020)
• 16:34 - Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992 and was innovative and influential for being the first of the “retro” style ballparks that , see “Three Movements in New Retro Ballpark Construction” (Ballpark Ratings)
• 20:06 - See Wikipedia’s list of current Major League Baseball stadiums and the slightly out of date article “MLB Ballparks, From Oldest to Newest” (Ballpark Digest, 2017)
• 20:46 - See “The Steroids Era” (ESPN, 2012) and the Wikipedia entry on “doping in baseball”, also check out what is shaping up to be an excellent podcast summation of the era, Crushed from Religion of Sports
• 20:53 - Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961 breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 60 set in 1927, watch the 61st homer with call by the former Yankee shortstop and legendary broadcaster Phil Rizzuto , and see “Roger Maris Breaks the Home Run Record” (History) or “61 Home Runs by Roger Maris” (Baseball Almanac)
• 21:07 - See the “1998 Major League Baseball home run record chase” Wikipedia entry and “The McGwire-Sosa home run chase helped make 1998 one of MLB's wildest seasons ever” (ESPN, 2020)
• 21:10 - The Yankees beat the Red Sox 3-2 at Fenway Park on September 8, 1998, see “New York Yankees at Boston Red Sox Box Score, September 8, 1998” (Baseball Reference)
• 21:44 - Watch Mark McGwire’s 62nd homer of 1998
• 22:53 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 09 - Lying About Santa: Naughty or Nice? from December 2020
• 24:38 - The Yankees beat the Red Sox 5-4 in 13 innings at Yankee Stadium on Thursday July 1, 2004, this game is notable for being the famous “Jeter In The Stands” game, and is undoubtedly one of the best Yankees vs Red Sox regular season games of all time, see “July 1, 2004: Best regular season win” (Bronx Pinstripes), “Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees Box Score, July 1, 2004” (Baseball Reference), and watch the Yankees rally and win in the bottom of the 13th
• 28:08 - The 2003 Yankees home opener vs the Minnesota Twins scheduled to be played on Monday April 7, was postponed due to snow and played on Tuesday April 8, the temperature was a balmy 35° at first pitch, the Yankees won 7-3, and Hideki Matsui hit a memorable grand slam in his first game at Yankee Stadium, see “Minnesota Twins at New York Yankees Box Score, April 8, 2003” (Baseball Reference)
• 29:17 - See the referenced "poster" which was indeed created with Microsoft Paint
• 31:27 - The Diamondbacks came back in the bottom of the 9th to beat the Yankees 3-2 in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, see the winning hit by Luis Gonzalez off of future Hall of Famer, greatest closer of all time, and absolute Yankee legend Mariano Rivera
• 32:08 - See “Baseball History, American History and You” (National Baseball Hall of Fame) and “The National Pastime” (Our Game MLB Blog)
• 33:05 - Watch James Earl Jones in his role as Terence Mann reciting one of the most famous monologues in movie history from 1989’s Field of Dreams, and while you’re at it watch Ray have a catch with his dad, just because...
• 34:06 - See “Why are Sportswriters Whitewashing Baseball’s Dark Secrets?” (The Daily Beast, 2018)
• 34:33 - See “The Legend of Mickey Mantle” (American Heritage, 2019), and with an extreme grain of salt see “Mickey Mantle’s 10 Longest Home Runs” (TheMick.com)
• 34:40 - See “Time in a Bottle” by Mickey Mantle recounting his struggles with alcoholism from the April 1994 issue of Sports Illustrated
• 36:39 - See the 2010 article in Sports Illustrated adapted from her Mickey Mantle biography The Last Boy, by baseball writer and journalist Jane Leavy 
• 42:14 - See “After 1968’s ‘Year of the Pitcher,’ MLB lowered the mound. Now, the league could do it again.” (Washington Post, 2019) and “Four stats that showed why baseball had to lower the mound after 1968” (Cut4, MLB.com)
• 43:27 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
• 43:32 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 128 - Joe Henrich on the Weirdness of the West from January 2021
• 44:05 - See “The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012), “A cultural species: How culture drove human evolution” (American Psychological Association, 2011), and “How Culture Drove Human Evolution” (Edge, 2012)
• 44:42 - Watch “Why chimps don’t play baseball” (Nature YouTube Channel)
• 50:09 - See “Stats to Avoid: Batting Average” (FanGraphs) and “Stat to the Future: Why it's time to stop relying on batting average” (Sporting News)
• 50:16 - See “State of Analytics: How the Movement Has Forever Changed Baseball – For Better or Worse” (Stats Perform) and “Statistics ruined baseball by perfecting it” (The Conversation, 2019)
• 54:02 - The new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009
• 55:40 - “My version” of Yankee Stadium was actually the renovated version of the original stadium built in 1923
• 1:00 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020 and Episode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2: Just the Facts from April 2020
• 1:01:05 - Watch Trumbull, CT win the 1989 Little League World Series by beating Taiwan, 5-2

This episode was recorded remotely via Zoom in April 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:10 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - “What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics”
• 3:07 - See “U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided” (Pew Research Center, 2020)
• 3:45 - See “American News Pathways Project,” “How Americans Navigated the News in 2020: A Tumultuous Year in Review,” and “Misinformation and competing views of reality abounded throughout 2020” (Pew Research Center, 2021)
• 4:45 - See “The COVID Confidence Conundrum” (Gallup, 2020), “How misinformation is distorting COVID policies and behaviors” (Brookings, 2020), and “Covid’s Partisan Errors” (New York Times, 2021)
• 10:11 - Watch “How We Figured Out That Earth Goes Around the Sun” from the SciShow Space YouTube channel
• 14:17 - The Atlantic
• 14:45 - Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• 15:40 - Listen to You Are Not So Smart Episode 200 - “Socks and Crocs”
• 16:02 - See “The inside story of the ‘white dress, blue dress’ drama that divided a planet” (Washington Post, 2015)
• 17:00 - See “‘The dress’, 5 years on” (Pascal’s Pensees, 2020), and “Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw “The Dress” Differently” (Pascal Wallisch writing for Slate, 2017), and “Illumination assumptions account for individual differences in the perceptual interpretation of a profoundly ambiguous stimulus in the color domain: ‘The dress’” (Journal of Vision, 2017)
• 19:45 - See “Liberals and Conservatives React in Wildly Different Ways to Repulsive Pictures” (The Atlantic, 2019)
• 20:00 - Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson
• 27:40 - See “Three kinds of propaganda, and what to do about them” by Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing, 2017)
• 30:06 - Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway
• 30:30 - See “Merchants Of Doubt: How The Tobacco Strategy Obscures the Realities of Global Warming” (Farnam Street, 2016)
• 32:48 - For more on the concept of “negative partisanship” and it’s role in our politics see “‘Negative Partisanship’ Explains Everything” (Politico Magazine, 2017), the research the article is based on, “The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century” (Electoral Studies, 2015), and “How Hatred Came To Dominate American Politics” (FiveThirtyEight, 2020)
• 35:14 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - “A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism”
• 35:40 - See “You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You?” (or watch the video) by Danah Boyd (Data & Society, 2018)
• 37:13 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• 40:09 - Social reality
• 40:30 - See “Trust and Distrust in America” and “Key findings about Americans’ declining trust in government and each other”, and “Trust and Mistrust in Americans’ Views of Scientific Experts” (Pew Research Center, 2019)
• 40:05 - See “Why Chimpanzees Don’t Hold Elections: The Power of Social Reality” (Undark, 2021) excerpted from Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• 43:12 - Watch Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson describe “The Pyramid of Choice” and how it leads to justification of actions and leads to further action and self justification
• 45:10 - See “Our Consensus Reality Has Shattered” (The Atlantic, 2020)
• 50:07 - Listen to Episode 116 of the Mindscape Podcast - “Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration”) - an interview with Teresa Bejan, political scientist and author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration
• 53:14 - See “Truth Decay” - a 2018 report from the RAND Corporation
• 57:35 - See “Bad science in the headlines. Who takes responsibility when science is distorted in the mass media?” (EMBO Reports, 2006), “Opinion: The media is ruining science” (Washington Post, 2016), “How the media warp science: the case of the sensationalised satnav” (The Guardian, 2017), “Fake science: Who's to blame when the media gets research wrong?” (National Post, 2018), or “Hyped-up science erodes trust. Here’s how researchers can fight back.” (Vox, 2019)
• 58:38 - See “Op-Ed: I called Arizona for Biden on Fox News. Here's what I learned” by Chris Stirewalt
• 1:00:43 - As Jeff will note in a minute, this is false, for more see “Shattering the infertility myth: What we know about Covid-19 vaccines and pregnancy” by reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist, Dr. Eve Feinberg, who is also an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. For an extremely reasonable and respectful take on vaccine hesitancy and talking with people who may be expressing reservations about vaccination, I recommend listening to a recent episode of The Dispatch Podcast from March 26 which features an excellent interview with former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden
• 1:04:54 - Watch Eli Pariser’s 2011 TED Talk “Beware Online ‘Filter Bubbles’”, and see “How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality: Everything You Need to Know” (Farnam Street, 2017)
• 1:05:48 - See “Facebook Built the Perfect Platform for Covid Vaccine Conspiracies” (Bloomberg Businessweek, 2021)
• 1:07:14 - Difficult Conversations by by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen
• 1:10:48 - See “Social media and the challenge of managing disagreement positively” (Pascal’s Pensees, 2017) - click here for diagram image

This episode was recorded remotely via Zoom in March 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

• 2:07 - See “Literary Periods, Movements, and History” (The Literature Network)
• 5:10 - See “What is Enlightenment?” by Immanuel Kant - “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.”
• 5:12 - The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy by Norman Melchert
• 6:10 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 11 - “Darwin & The Dude: Darron’s Path to Poetic Naturalism”
• 7:23 - Such notable figures as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, were building off of Enlightenment thought in the time leading up to the American Revolution and the founding of the United States, See “American Enlightenment Thought” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) and “American Enlightenment” (Wikipedia) for more
• 8:25 - See “Allen Ginsberg’s Definition of the Beat Generation” (Literary Hub) for more on Jack Kerouac and the naming of the Beat Generation, then listen to Jack Kerouac read “San Francisco Scene (The Beat Generation)” from his 1959 spoken word album Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation, and “Is There a Beat Generation?” - a live lecture by Kerouac to students of Hunter College on November 6, 1958
• 12:30 - Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press around 1436 setting the stage for the dissemination of knowledge on a wider and faster scale than ever before, for more see “7 ways the Printing Press Changed the World” (History.com), “The Printing Press and the Spread of Ideas” (Encyclopedia.com), and “The Evolution of Media” (University of Minnesota Libraries)
• 14:56 - The Origins of Creativity by E.O. Wilson
• 20:27 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• 24:42 - See the entry on “allostasis” from the extended endnotes of How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett and/or the “Allostasis” Wikipedia entry
• 28:37 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 07 - “Boxing Aristotle”
• 32:15 - In 7 ½ Lessons About the Brain, Barrett states this explicitly with the half lesson that opens the book titled “Your Brain is Not For Thinking” which lays the foundation for the subsequent 7 lessons, - In a New York Times op-ed piece of the same title published in November 2020, after drawing a brief sketch of the evolution of the animal brain, she writes “This story of how brains evolved, while admittedly just a sketch, draws attention to a key insight about human beings that is too often overlooked. Your brain’s most important job isn’t thinking; it’s running the systems of your body to keep you alive and well. According to recent findings in neuroscience, even when your brain does produce conscious thoughts and feelings, they are more in service to the needs of managing your body than you realize...Your brain runs your body using something like a budget...This view of the brain has many implications for understanding human beings. So often, for example, we conceive of ourselves in mental terms, separate from the physical...In body-budgeting terms, however, this distinction between mental and physical is not meaningful...Your brain is not for thinking. Everything that it conjures, from thoughts to emotions to dreams, is in the service of body budgeting.” 
• 35:02 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 03 -  “The Examined Life” , according to Plato, in defending himself at his trial Socrates said “I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.”.
• 38:11 - See the entry on “Tuning and pruning” from the extended endnotes of Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• 40:20 - Listen to episode 89 of The Knowledge Project Podcast - “Less Certainty, More Inquiry” featuring an interview with psychologist, writer, and poker player Maria Konnikova
• 44:30 - Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson
• 49:51 - The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent
• 58:14 - Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by John Meacham
• 59:04 - Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari 
• 1:01:01 - See “Why Chimpanzees Don’t Hold Elections: The Power of Social Reality,” an excerpt from Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

This episode was recorded remotely via Zoom in February 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti