MindMatters

For as long as cultures have had contact with each other, attentive observers have noticed the similarities between their respective myths. Today, scholars hypothesize that these similarities are either the result of accident, cultural sharing or diffusion, or a shared collective unconscious of symbols. But in his revolutionary book, The Origins of the World's Mythologies, E.J. Michael Witzel argues that there's a better reason for many shared features: common origin. Like linguistics or...

Your MindMatters hosts can't be hitting the books and reading non-fiction ALL the time! So on this week's show we'll be sharing some of the novels, movies and shows that, in our estimation, are insightful of the human condition, artful enough to be called something like literature - and entertaining enough to add a little joy to our days - and which are certainly worth discussing. And don't worry, we'll be mentioning some of the non-fiction books we've been looking at that satisfy those...

"Just one of those things." Sometimes you just can't find your keys. Sometimes you lose your TV remote. But sometimes, an object might fall from your grasp, never to be seen again. Sometimes objects might disappear from their usual home, only to reappear in the same place days, weeks, or months later - sometimes in a completely unexpected and implausible location. Sometimes a missing object will even be replaced with a poor facsimile. Psychical researcher Mary Rose Barrington calls these...

In his dystopian classic 1984, George Orwell introduced the concept of newspeak. Better known today as doublespeak or doubletalk, even those who haven't read the book will probably recognize the phrases "war is peace" or "freedom is slavery". Orwell was inspired by the Soviets' abuse of language in their propaganda, something that leaders and PR firms everywhere engage in, but which was particularly pervasive in USSR and the nations who later adopted the Soviets' socialist model. But there's...

Today we return to Chapter 5 of Andrew Łobaczewski's groundbreaking work Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes to discern the impact of various ideologies on everyday life, and how dangerous delusions and deviant individuals can warp them into something barely recognizable, culminating in the social system Lobaczewski calls 'pathocracy'. We discuss Lobaczewski's prescient insights concerning how to discern the original contents of the ideology...

How has it come to be that our universities, societal norms and cultural values have taken a sharp turn down the road of instilling stupidity - instead of intelligence? When we see that the most tried and true (and ancient) approaches to the use of mind and emotions are being relegated to the dung heap, when we notice that many of the most advanced ideas put forth from cognitive behavioral therapy are being ignored - and indeed, inverted - what are we to make of this? On this week's...

Groucho Marx defined politics as "The art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." One could hardly come up with a better definition of postmodern politics. On today's show we discuss the psychological roots of this postmodern mayhem, which is manifesting in radical racial/gender politics in classrooms and universities, Antifa mobs on the streets, and mass censorship in Silicon Valley. Running Time: 01:06:46 Download: MP3 —...

If you're human, then chances are you believe something that "everybody knows" to be true. And if you're a thinking human, then chances are you know that such beliefs can turn out to be not so true after all. Everybody knew saturated fat is bad for you, after all. But now they don't and the opposite is true. Fancy that! Whether it's beliefs, emotions, or behaviors, social contagion is a real thing, and it's the shared nature of these phenomena that hold communities together in one relatively...

What is the nature of reality, and why does it matter? Whether we know it or not, we all have a worldview - a set of very core beliefs and assumptions about the way the world works and our place within it. Sometimes those assumptions work, sometimes they don't, but as long as they are left unexamined, we can't say we've come any closer to actually understanding who we are and what we're doing. That's the great gift that philosophy can give us: a roadmap for meaning. That doesn't mean it's...

"Do you believe in God?" It's the mother of all loaded questions. What does the questioner really want to know? That you're part of their tribe? Whether or not you're a superstitious simpleton? What do they mean by belief? What do they mean by God? It's not a simple question, and the answer is never so simple as yes or no. In his recently published talk, "Who Dares Say He Believes in God?", Jordan Peterson gives his reasons for not liking the question. But he goes deeper into the question...