btrmt. lectures

By Dorian Minors

A brain scientist talking about (better) patterns of thought, of feeling, and of action. One pattern, one podcast—you see if it works for you. The btrmt. lectures, with Dr Dorian Minors. (btrmt.—said ... more

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FAQs about btrmt. lectures:

How many episodes does btrmt. lectures have?

The podcast currently has 21 episodes available.

btrmt. lectures episodes:

March 21, 2026Bias is Good
Everyone’s been told that bias is the enemy of good thinking. Over
200 cognitive biases catalogued on Wikipedia, and the message is clear:
your brain is broken, and if you could just think more rationally, you’d
make better decisions. But when researchers actually tested whether
knowledge of biases helped predict behaviour, the experts did worse than
random laypeople. Maybe the problem isn’t bias. Maybe the problem is
what we think bias is.
Further reading
The Betterment
article that inspired this
Confirmation
bias is all there is — fundamental beliefs and belief-consistent
processing
Bias vs Bias —
heuristics vs biases, and why the distinction matters
Stress
and the Yerkes-Dodson Law — bias vs noise in the stress
response
Stress is
Good (Lecture 1) — the stress lecture
The
Amygdala is Not the Fear Centre (Lecture 2) — the amygdala
lecture
Everything
is Ideology — why biases are adaptive
Pop
Neuroscience is Just a Fancy Way of Saying “Calm Down”
References
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking,
Fast and Slow (2011)
List of
cognitive biases (Wikipedia) — the 200+ biases
Rational-actor
model (Wikipedia)
Milkman et
al. (2021): Megastudy on behavioural nudges for vaccination
Oeberst
& Imhoff (2023): Toward Parsimony in Bias Research — the
fundamental beliefs paper
Robert
Axelrod’s iterated prisoner’s dilemma tournaments
Bias–variance
tradeoff (Wikipedia)
...more
27min
March 07, 2026The Amygdala is Not the Fear Centre
Everyone’s been told the amygdala is the fear centre of the brain.
That it hijacks your rational mind and throws you into fight-or-flight
at the sound of an email notification. This is nonsense—the kind of
nonsense that makes every McKinsey consultant sound like a
neuroscientist and every neuroscientist cringe. The amygdala is an
emotional intensity detector, not an emotional dictator. And focusing on
it is distracting you from what actually matters: how you respond to the
world.
Further reading
The
Betterment article that inspired this
Stress is
Good (Lecture 1) — the stress lecture that set this up
More on stress and
the Yerkes-Dodson Law
Why
fight-or-flight isn’t what you think
Pop
Neuroscience is Just a Fancy Way of Saying “Calm Down” — the next
lecture in this thread
How we
make meaning in the brain
References
The
Atlantic article — the management professor’s piece on stress and
the amygdala
Daniel Goleman, Emotional
Intelligence (1995)
Amygdala
hijack (Wikipedia) — note the lack of academic citations
Amygdala
(Wikipedia) — particularly the section on emotional learning
Pessoa
(2010): Emotion and cognition (PDF) — reappraisal evidence, pg
44
Janak &
Tye (2015): From circuits to behaviour in the amygdala — the
complexity of amygdala function
Adolphs
(2015): “The unsolved problems of neuroscience” — on the amygdala
and emotional significance
...more
18min
February 21, 2026 Hydraulic Despotism
Karl Wittfogel’s theory of hydraulic despotism was savaged by his
peers and rightly so. But the pattern he was reaching for—that whoever
controls the essential flowing resource controls the people—is the story
of modern infrastructure. Energy, social media, payment systems, AI
compute. We handed over the water. We don’t have to hand over everything
else.
Further reading: - The Betterment
article that inspired this - From Zero: on recreating
systems from scratch - Digital Selves: taking
control of your digital presence - True Family Ties: on the
erosion of our communities - Education is
Entertainment: on why some ideas stick
References: - Karl
Wittfogel and Hydraulic
civilisations on Wikipedia - Wittfogel, Oriental
Despotism (1957) - Thames Water’s
debt crisis (BBC) - Russia-Ukraine
food insecurity (European Council) - Nvidia
valuation (BBC) - Mann’s Infrastructural
Power on Wikipedia - Platform
Capitalism and its
dynamics - Callon’s Obligatory
Passage Points and Latour’s Actor-Network
Theory on Wikipedia - Essential
Facilities Doctrine on Wikipedia - EU Digital
Markets Act on Wikipedia - Cory Doctorow, “The
Post-American Internet” (39C3 talk) — on the new coalition,
anticircumvention law, and Eurostack - Cory Doctorow on enshittification
and adversarial
interoperability - Elinor Ostrom, Governing
the Commons (1990) - Selye’s Eustress — the
distinction between good stress and bad stress
...more
18min
February 07, 2026 Atavism Isn’t the Answer
Seed oils, raw milk, carnivore diets, tradwives, phone bans,
anti-sunscreen, cold plunges—these look like separate cultural phenomena
across health, diet, gender, and technology. They’re all the same
pattern: the same two faulty assumptions, the same Just So Story
template, the same political movement. The yearnings are real. The
reasoning isn’t.
Further reading: - The Betterment
article that inspired this - Evolution is
Overrated - All
Food is Toxic - Hydraulic
Despotism - Nature
vs Nurture Just Isn’t That Interesting - Tinbergen’s
Four Questions - Education is
Entertainment: on why some ideas stick - Mundane Cults
References: - MAHA
(Make America Healthy Again) on Wikipedia - Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. on Wikipedia - Butter
and Plant-Based Oils Intake and Mortality, JAMA Internal Medicine
(2025) - The
Evidence Behind Seed Oils’ Health Effects, Johns Hopkins (2025) -
Paul Saladino, The
Carnivore Code - Jonathan Haidt, The
Anxious Generation - Candice Odgers, Nature
review on smartphones and mental health - Ferguson (2025): Do
Social Media Experiments Prove a Link With Mental Health: A
Methodological and Meta-Analytic Review - Liver King on
Wikipedia - Andrew Huberman
on Wikipedia - Ballerina Farm /
Hannah Neeleman on Wikipedia - Tradwife on Wikipedia
- Tradwife:
Between Myths and Realities, King’s College London Global Institute
for Women’s Leadership - MAHA, Means,
Money, Public Citizen report on MAHA and wellness industry
revenue
...more
28min
January 24, 2026 Values Don’t Matter
Everyone loves organisational values. Corporates, militaries, sports
clubs, schools—any place where people collect in a serious way has a
list of qualities they want everyone to embody. But values are just
virtue ethics by another name. And virtue ethics suffer two rather
troubling problems: virtues are hugely context-dependent, and the
situation overwhelmingly drives behaviour anyway. So if you want people
to act virtuously, design the context.
Further reading: - The Betterment article
that inspired this - Overview of the ethical
landscape - On
catastrophic leadership failure - Everything is choice
architecture - Making
strong group dynamics - On motivation - Belief-consistent
information processing
References: - MacIntyre’s After
Virtue - Situationist
critique of virtue ethics - Person-situation
debate - Milgram’s
obedience experiments - Stanford
Prison Experiment - John Doris on the ecological
approach to ethics - Maria Merritt on “humility
ethics” - Moore
and Beadle on organisations as MacIntyrean practices
...more
31min
January 10, 2026The Hard Problem of Consciousness Isn’t a Problem
What is consciousness? From Mary’s Room to philosophical zombies,
from panpsychism to eliminativism, everyone has theories about the “hard
problem.” But under what realistic circumstances would it actually
matter whether something is truly conscious versus merely appearing
conscious?
Further reading
Panpsychism
AI
Consciousness
Consciousness
vs Conscious Access
Mundane
Cults
The Placebo
Effect
Spirituality of
the Mind
References
John
Locke: Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction
Mary’s
Room (Knowledge Argument)
Qualia on
Wikipedia
Thomas
Nagel: “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”
Animal
Echolocation
Hard
Problem of Consciousness
Philosophical
Zombie
Sam
Harris: The Moral Landscape
Sam
Harris TED Talk: Science Can Answer Moral Questions
New
Mysterianism
Brian
Key: Fish Cannot Feel Pain
Do
Honey Bees Have Conscious Experience?
...more
16min
December 27, 2025Who Cares if There’s No Such Thing as Free Will?
From Libet’s experiments to modern neuroscience, evidence keeps
mounting that our decisions might be predetermined. But even if free
will is an illusion, what would actually change? Behaviour is still
something we can modify, determinism doesn’t excuse us from consequence,
and the debate itself is practically irrelevant.
Further reading
On Motivation:
Thinky vs Non-Thinky
Dual-Process
Theories
Brain Waves
Spirituality of
the Mind
The
Environment is Everything
References
Determinism on
Wikipedia
Fatalism on
Wikipedia
Theological
Determinism
Benjamin
Libet’s Experiments
Neuroscience
of Free Will
Agent
Causation
Compatibilism
Neuroethics
and Free Will
Fatalism:
The Idle Argument
...more
13min
December 13, 2025Nature vs Nurture isn't Interesting
The nature versus nurture debate seems foundational to understanding
human behaviour. But evolutionary stories are just stories, genetics is
shaped by environment, and the environment matters far more anyway. So
why are we still arguing about it?
Further reading
Genetics is
Nurture
Evolution
is Overrated
Atavism
Isn’t the Answer
Stress is
Good
Prehistoric
Polygamy
Sexual
Strategies and Evolution
Tinbergen’s
Four Questions
The
Environment is Everything
All Food is
Toxic
Education is
Entertainment
References
Heritability on
Wikipedia
Height
heritability study
Fatalism:
The Idle Argument
...more
13min
November 29, 2025Mundane Cults
The word cult conjures images of hooded figures, mass suicide, and
narcissistic leaders. But this dark image is nonsense—the kind that
makes us more vulnerable to destructive groups. Cults are actually a
pervasive building block of modern community, from veganism to fitness
franchises to health movements. The question isn’t whether you’re in
one, but whether it’s one you chose.
Further reading
Successful
Prophets
The Value of
Ritual
Human
Perspective is Not the Only One
Everything
is Ideology
The
Scientific Ritual
Panpsychism
Questions That
Don’t Matter
All Food is
Toxic
Easy
Measurement Bias
The Placebo
Effect
The
Charismatic Leader (Weber)
True Family
Ties
Abstractions
as Gods
Belief-Consistent
Information Processing
References
Sociological
classification of cults
Roy Wallis on
Wikipedia
The Protestant
Reformation
Robert Jay
Lifton on Wikipedia
Robert
Jay Lifton: Theories of Totalism
Margaret
Singer on Wikipedia
Janja Lalich on
Wikipedia
Steven
Hassan: Combating Cult Mind Control
Korean
War
Brainwashing:
China and the Korean War
Jonestown
Heaven’s
Gate
Manson
Family
Religious
Behaviour on Wikipedia
LA
Times: Cults as Places of Value
JSTOR: Affiliation
and Spiritual Fulfillment
Church
vs Sect (Troeltsch and Niebuhr)
...more
25min
November 15, 2025Men aren't from Mars
Gender essentialism is having a moment. Everyone’s reading books
about what it means to be a man or woman, and Men are from Mars,
Women are from Venus keeps getting recommended to me like it’s
gospel. Here’s the thing: the book perfectly illustrates a pattern we
see everywhere. The same behaviours—complaining, offering advice,
needing reassurance, getting defensive—are cast as reasonable when men
do them and unreasonable when women do them. Gray’s men are emotionally
fragile and his women just want basic partnership, but somehow it’s the
women who need to lower their expectations. This isn’t about men and
women. It’s about how we frame identical behaviours differently based on
who’s doing them.
Further Reading
Men
and women are from earth, fool pt. I - On Gray’s credentials and
Chapter 2’s absurdities
Men
and women are from earth, fool pt. II - On how Gray’s “Martians” are
actually just poorly attached people
Men
and women are from earth, fool pt. III - On how women’s ordinary
needs are cast as unreasonable
References
Is
Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? - British Vogue - Chanté
Joseph’s viral article on modern dating
Men
Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (Wikipedia)
John
Gray (author) - Wikipedia
Tribe: On
Homecoming and Belonging - Sebastian Junger - On why young men join
the military
Gender
essentialism
Sexual
dimorphism in humans
Nature
article on sex differences in the brain
The Myth
of Mars and Venus (book) - Academic critique of Gray’s work
Columbia
Pacific University - Gray’s fraudulent PhD
FDA
Warning Letter to John Gray’s Mars Venus LLC
Women
are better at using soft skills crucial for leadership - Korn
Ferry
Rejection
sensitivity
Attachment
theory and styles
...more
35min

FAQs about btrmt. lectures:

How many episodes does btrmt. lectures have?

The podcast currently has 21 episodes available.