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

Show Notes

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)

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

The btrmt. article that inspired this. And more here, and here.

The Atlantic Article, demonstrating the typical approach to stress

Sapolksy's book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

The Yerkes Dodson Law (or the Wikipedia page)

Vartinian et al. (2020) , Goldfarb et al. (2017), Lenow et al. (2017) or this commentary are all good places to check out the relationship between low stress and cognitive flexibility etc vs higher stress and the kind of cognitive rigidity that leads to performance.

Eustress (Hans Seyle, 1976) More modern developments would be Cognitive Appraisal Models and Attribution Theory

Chronic Stress and extended Allostatic Load