Further reading

·      It’s Not Social Media, Life Is Just Worse—the article that inspired this lecture

·      Amusing Ourselves to Death—on Neil Postman and the information overload problem

·      Why Do People Kill Themselves—on what structural decline does to the most vulnerable

·      Atavism Isn’t the Answer—the lecture on why “go back to the old ways” rarely works

·      The Trap of Scientific Evidence—on the two forms of “no evidence”

·      Why Being Sad Isn’t Always a Bad Thing—on situation–symptom congruence

·      The Loneliness Epidemic

·      Models of Psychopathology—on diagnostic quality and what counts as mental illness

·      The Scientific Ritual—on the replication crisis and lazy application of the scientific method

·      The True Meaning of Family Ties—on changing family structures and social fragmentation

·      Creating a Digital Home—on digital selfhood and why we don’t treat our digital lives with care

References

·      Amy Orben’s research group, University of Cambridge

·      Ferguson, C. J. et al. (2024). Social media use and youth mental health: A meta-analysis. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. doi:10.1037/pro0000589

·      Fassi, L., Orben, A. et al. (2024). Social media and adolescent mental health: A meta-analysis of 143 studies. JAMA Pediatrics. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.2078

·      Tolboll, K. B. (2026). Social media use and mental health in children and adolescents: An umbrella review. Child and Adolescent Mental Health. doi:10.1111/camh.70071

·      Fassi, L., Orben, A. et al. (2025). Digital technology use and adolescent mental health: A registered report. Nature Human Behaviour. doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02134-4

·      Broadbent, P. et al. (2023). The public health implications of the cost-of-living crisis. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe. doi:10.1016/j.lanepe.2023.100585

·      Arundel, R. et al. (2022). Housing unaffordability and mental health. International Journal of Housing Policy. doi:10.1080/19491247.2022.2106541

·      McGorry, P. D. et al. (2025). The youth mental health crisis: A paradigm shift. Frontiers in Psychiatry. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1517533

·      Kirkbride, J. B. et al. (2024). The social determinants of mental health and disorder. World Psychiatry. doi:10.1002/wps.21160

·      Plackett, R. et al. (2022). Digital technology and mental health of young people: A scoping review. JMIR Mental Health. doi:10.2196/43213

·      Garcia-Manglano, J. et al. (2024). Escapism, social media, and internalising symptoms in adolescents. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. doi:10.1177/02654075241230248

·      Maheux, A. J. et al. (2024). Social media use and adolescent mental health: An annual research review. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. doi:10.1111/jcpp.14085

·      Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985). Wikipedia

·      Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation (2024). Wikipedia

·      Stuart Ritchie, Science Fictions (2020). Publisher

Further reading:

·      The btrmt article that inspired this one

·      More on why the amygdala isn’t what pop-psych says

·      How stress actually works

·      Why we dress up simple ideas in neuroscience jargon

·      The sociology of the “interesting”

·      Abstractions as gods

·      On naming things and losing them in the process

·      The value of brain waves

·      Honey-bees are smarter than they should be

·      The false promise of a return to nature

·      Giving in to fight or flight

·      The problem of easy measurement

·      On emotion

·      No action without emotion

·      Emotion and the mind

·      Why your unconscious isn’t the bad guy

·      Nervous energy

·      Positive Intelligence pt. I

·      Positive Intelligence pt. II

·      Positive Intelligence pt. III

·      How does the brain ‘think’? Pt. I

References:

·      Polyvagal theory (Wikipedia)

·      Triune brain model (Wikipedia)

·      Positive Intelligence white paper

·      Internal family systems therapy (Wikipedia)

·      Default mode network (Wikipedia)

·      Internal family systems therapy (Wikipedia)

·      Schema therapy (Wikipedia)

·      Gestalt therapy (Wikipedia)

·      Journal of Animal Sentience: do fish feel pain?

Further reading:

·      The btrmt. 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)

Further reading:

·      The btrmt. 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

Further reading:

·      The btrmt. 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

Further reading:

·      The btrmt. 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

·      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

·      MAHA, Means, Money, Public Citizen

Further reading:

·      The btrmt. 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

·      The invisible gorilla test

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?

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

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