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Latest and most popular thought-provoking articles about human nature from diverse thinkers with audio

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Physics

Why we can stop worrying and love the particle accelerator

Joel Frohlich

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Neuroscience

The empty brain

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer

Robert Epstein

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Economics

Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

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Cognition and intelligence

What know-it-alls don’t know, or the illusion of competence

Kate Fehlhaber

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Language and linguistics

English is not normal

No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language

John McWhorter

A painting of five labourers working on a construction site with tools and machinery, while a scenic landscape is seen in the background.

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Social psychology

A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you

Clifton Mark

A person stands with arms crossed, looking into the distance on a dune in a vast, foggy desert. The image is in black and white.

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Meaning and the good life

Indifference is a power

As legions of warriors and prisoners can attest, Stoicism is not grim resolve but a way to wrest happiness from adversity

Lary Wallace

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Work

Fuck work

Economists believe in full employment. Americans think that work builds character. But what if jobs aren’t working anymore?

James Livingston

Two children playing with a dog in a green field with yellow flowers, a goalpost and a yellow field in the background.

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Childhood and adolescence

The play deficit

Children today are cossetted and pressured in equal measure. Without the freedom to play they will never grow up

Peter Gray

A scanning electron microscope image showing pollen tubes in vivid pink growing from pollen grains of cucumber on the stigma.

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Human reproduction

The macho sperm myth

The idea that millions of sperm are on an Olympian race to reach the egg is yet another male fantasy of human reproduction

Robert D Martin

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Biology

The obesity era

As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us

David Berreby

Photo of a man with glasses and headphones, wearing a suit and tie, looking to the side, against a plain background.

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War and peace

What did Hannah Arendt really mean by the banality of evil?

Thomas White