MeaningofLife.tv

Danielle’s response to the controversial NYT piece on long-term antidepressant use ... Why research on long-term antidepressant use is lacking ... What depression and type I diabetes have in common ... Danielle and Aryeh describe their experiences with depression ... Should medication be a last resort? ...

What does it mean to “be yourself”? ... Introversion vs. anxiety ... Ellen’s advice for heading out into the world: Just do it ... Men, women, and liquid courage ... The building blocks of beautiful friendships ...

Chris’s experience as a humanist chaplain at Harvard and Yale ... Secular community with a moral tone ... Atheism, anti-theism, and humanism ... What Richard Spencer doesn’t like about the Abrahamic faiths ... Atheism and tribalism ... Atheistic fervor as a response to religious trauma ... An inspirational atheism ... Does some New Atheist rhetoric encourage bigotry? ...

Is masculinity treated as a pathology? ... Why girls are outperforming boys in class ... Disentangling gender and sex, culture and biology ... “Girl power” was a success, but at what social cost? ... Crispin’s years as a teen revolutionary ... The modern school as a totalitarian institution ... What really explains high-security schools? ... How safe can we reasonably expect to be in society? ... Is the media distorting our narratives of crime and danger? ...

The Ku Klux Klan’s appeal to Protestant America ... How the KKK rationalized a Jewish Jesus ... The Birth of a Nation and the symbology of the burning cross ... How to “love thy neighbor” as a Klansman (answer: very selectively) ... Kelly: The Klan declined, but its politics went mainstream ... Kelly’s search for apocalyptic rhetoric in Klan literature ...

Was the Buddha a Buddhist? ... What the Buddha meant by “suffering” ... Mindfulness as awareness ... "Secular" mindfulness as sacred ... The trap of goal-oriented meditation ... The heart of the Buddha’s message ... When Jon discovered his purpose ... Mindfulness training in schools ...

Puppet Show: Are emotions in the brain? ... Luiz Pessoa’s argument for the feedback between lower and higher brain function ... How the regions of the brain evolved to interact ... “The content problem” in the neuroscience of emotion and cognition ... Are the common fears of snakes and spiders “hard-wired," and how? ... What brain mapping fails to tell us about cognition ... Rami's research on prosopagnosia (face blindness) and emotional cognition ...

The narrative of "economic anxiety" in Appalachia ... Elizabeth: Appalachia is more diverse than you think ... The myth of the "mountain white" ... Critiquing J.D. Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy ... Political activism in the region ... How Elizabeth sees her role as a "public historian" ...

Massimo’s new edited volume, Science Unlimited?: The Challenges of Scientism ... What is scientism? ... Science and the challenge of studying subjective experience ... And about those pesky fundamental questions of existence… ... How philosophical thought underpins all research methodology ... Massimo: Core concepts across science have competing interpretations ... The importance of distinguishing “is" from "ought ... What neuroscience can never explain about human consciousness ...

Molly’s research on social media and moral outrage ... The personal benefits of sanctimony ... Why do certain posts go viral? ... Even without complex algorithms, social media discourages mindful reflection ... Online outrage and the signal-to-noise problem ...