Our very own Erik Vance has a brand new book out through National Geographic, and it’s called Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. Listen to my conversation with him about such varying topics as the placebo effect, that curse a brujo put on him in Mexico, how […]
Month: November 2016
Dear readers, dear friends, As I write this, on the afternoon of November 9, 2016, the future looks very dark. If you respect reason and truth, if you care about the planet we depend on, if you believe that biology is just biology, not destiny, then I expect the future looks dark to you, too. I […]
In 2015, I wrote a post ostensibly about a funny-looking seabird called the booby. It’s about evolution and biology I suppose but in truth, it’s really about the forces of nature that drive at least some of our actions. And how those forces aren’t always good. In my last post I made the case for why we […]
Today is Election Day in the United States. For the past several months, this election, the most brutal, mean-spirited, and frankly alarming in decades, has caused a wave of anxiety, dread, and bitterness to blanket the country like a kind of noxious psychic soot. The American Psychological Association reports that 52 percent of American adults say […]
I’ve spent a lot of time giving talks at elementary and middle schools recently, as I’m touring for my new book Unlikely Friendships DOGS (yes, that’s yet another shameless plug). Wandering those halls, with their shiny mopped floors and florescent lighting, draws up so many strange feelings—like that first-day flip-gut excitement (School! New books! Friends! […]
October 31 – November 4, 2016 On Monday, our Tom Hayden reflects on sharing his name with the other Tom Hayden, who died last week. Guest Laura Paskus has been trying to avoid the election. But the kids are asking questions—ones that maybe all of us should have to answer. Say your friend is being […]
I’ve written about cephalopod penises before, but the time seems right to approach this subject (with extreme caution) again. You know, because it’s Friday. The octopus and the number eight seem inseparable. We have read children’s counting books that feature this cephalopod prominently between pages 7 and 9; we flip through under-the-sea books that rhyme […]
I’ve been reading a history book, this one on a subject with so little documentation it needs to rely on eyewitnesses remembering what happened 10, 30, 50 years before. Which, honest to God, why would you even bother? Science insists over and over and over, eyewitness testimony isn’t reliable – it’s influenced by stress, it […]
