btrmt. lectures

By Dorian MinorsSociety & Culture Science Philosophy

btrmt. lectures episodes

February 07Atavism 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.
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/atavism-isnt-the-answer-lecture
And the piece it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/atavism-isnt-the-answer.
Stuff I mentioned:
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
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
Mundane
Cults
The trap
of scientific evidence
28 min
January 24Values 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.
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/values-dont-matter-lecture
And the piece it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/values-dont-matter.
Stuff I mentioned:
The Betterment
article that inspired this
Overview of the
ethical landscape
On
catastrophic leadership failure
Everything is
choice architecture
Making
strong group dynamics
Belief-consistent
information processing
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
Coming together -
the pattern of friendship and love
longtermism
nature
versus nurture question
Your
personality doesn’t belong to you
Alert
- IQ scores are meaningless
Leadership
consulting is usually more ‘feel good’ than ‘do good’
Malcolm
Gladwell Shit
Related stuff:
On
motivation
31 min
January 10The 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?
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-isnt-a-problem-lecture
And the piece it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/questions-that-dont-matter#consciousness.
Stuff I mentioned:
Panpsychism
AI
Consciousness
Consciousness
vs Conscious Access
Mundane
Cults
The Placebo
Effect
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?
Insight
and the Sciences
Related stuff:
Spirituality of
the Mind
16 min
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.
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/free-will-isnt-important-lecture
And the piece it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/questions-that-dont-matter#free-will-vs-determinism.
Stuff I mentioned:
Dual-Process
Theories
Brain Waves
The
Environment is Everything
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
What lies
beneath? The uncomfortably vague ‘Unconscious Processes’
On
Motivation
There is no
authentic self
Spirituality
of Mind
Related stuff:
On Motivation:
Thinky vs Non-Thinky
Spirituality of
the Mind
13 min
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?
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/nature-vs-nurture-doesnt-matter-lecture
And the piece it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/genetics-is-nurture.
Stuff I mentioned:
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
Education is
Entertainment
Heritability on
Wikipedia
Height
heritability study
Fatalism:
The Idle Argument
Related stuff:
All Food is
Toxic
13 min
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.
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/mundane-cults-lecture
And the pieces it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/mundane-cults,
https://btr.mt/analects/true-family-ties.
Stuff I mentioned:
Successful
Prophets
The Value of
Ritual
Human
Perspective is Not the Only One
Everything
is Ideology
The
Scientific Ritual
Panpsychism
All Food is
Toxic
Easy
Measurement Bias
The Placebo
Effect
The
Charismatic Leader (Weber)
True Family
Ties
Abstractions
as Gods
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)
own
book
Stupid
Questions
Related stuff:
Questions That
Don’t Matter
Belief-Consistent
Information Processing
25 min
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.
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/men-arent-from-mars-lecture
And the pieces it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus-1,
https://btr.mt/analects/men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus-2,
https://btr.mt/analects/men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus-3.
Stuff I mentioned:
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
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
Animals
First
Genetics is
nurture
Four Sure
Signs Your Relationship is on the Rocks
How to make
any fight in your relationship work in your favour
35 min
November 01, 2025Stress is Good
Everyone’s convinced stress is this outdated evolutionary
technology—poorly calibrated to modern life, something to avoid at all
costs. The story goes that it evolved to help us run from tigers, but
now it’s just triggered by email notifications. This is nonsense. Stress
is the only thing that gets us to perform at all. It’s the most valuable
biological technology we have. This lecture walks through the
Yerkes-Dodson Law—a simple, 100-year-old model that explains how stress
actually works, why we need it, and how to use it well.
Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/stress-is-good-lecture
And the pieces it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/stress-is-good,
https://btr.mt/analects/yerkes-dodson-bias-vs-noise,
https://btr.mt/analects/the-amygdala-is-not-the-fear-centre.
Stuff I mentioned:
The
Atlantic Article, demonstrating the typical approach to stress
Sapolsky’s book Why
Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers
Yerkes
Dodson Law
Vartinian
et al. (2020), Goldfarb et al.
(2017), Lenow et
al. (2017) or this
commentary on the relationship between low stress and cognitive
flexibility
Eustress (Hans
Seyle, 1976). More modern developments would be Cognitive
Appraisal Models and Attribution
Theory
Chronic
Stress and Allostatic
Load
Animals
First
Giving in
to Fight or Flight
Related stuff:
The Betterment
article that inspired this
More
on stress and cognitive flexibility
Why
the amygdala doesn’t work the way you think
26 min

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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…

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btrmt. lectures episodes

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