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A psychologist’s guide to understanding and spotting narcissism | Ramani Durvasula
Narcissistic people are often charming at the dinner party and cruel in the car ride home, which tells you they can control it. Clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula, author of It’s Not You, has studied narcissism since long before it beca
Screens made belonging easy and selfhood nearly impossible | Luke Burgis
In 1936, a shipyard worker in Hamburg kept his arms folded while hundreds of men around him raised theirs for Hitler. Luke Burgis, author of Wanting and The One in the 99, wants to know what it takes to become that person, and he traces the
Pantheism: A third way between religion and atheism | Jack Symes
For decades, atheists have used one move to dismantle the case for God: swap in an evil one and show that the arguments work just as well. Philosopher Jack Symes was convinced by it, and was 50,000 words into a book defending atheism when h
The theory that connects the origin of life to the rise of intelligence | Blaise Aguera
From von Neumann's blueprint, which predated the discovery of DNA, to viral genes that now help form our memories and placentas, Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues that function defines life more than material does, and that AI belongs in the sam
The political philosophy under attack from both the left and the right | Jonathan Rauch
Jonathan Rauch, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, dives into the philosophy of liberalism, how it has created and transformed our institutions, and the state of truth in a world rife with misinformation.
The minimum viable intervention for a happier life | Tal Ben-Shahar
Most of us can recite the benefits of exercise, gratitude, and patience while doing none of it. Tal Ben-Shahar calls this the Knowing-Doing gap, and our typical interventions, like retreats and month-long overhauls keep it open.
The lost art of rhetoric, from a 2x debate world champion | Bo Seo
Two-time debate champion Bo Seo breaks down why arguments fail: the 4 bad-faith personas that hijack conversations, a four-question framework for picking fights worth having, and the surprising Cold War standoff between Nixon and Khrushchev
The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation and menopause | Jen Gunter
OBGYN Jen Gunter unpacks the science, history, and mythology of menstruation and menopause, and offers a guidebook to navigate the modern healthcare landscape.
The invisible forces that create talent and elite performance | Daniel Coyle
Talent isn’t a gift we're born with – it’s a signal we’ve been reading completely wrong. Author Daniel Coyle breaks down the common traits shared by successful people, and why environment, not innate ability, is the variable that ties them
The world's greatest mathematician explains 6 essential concepts of math | Terence Tao
Terence Tao has spent decades solving problems most people can't even state, and he says he's never had a single eureka moment. In this conversation, the UCLA mathematician and Fields Medalist breaks math down to six essential ideas: number
The #1 predictor of relationships that are doomed to fail | Julie & John Gottman
Every marriage’s disintegration is marked by the same four warning signs that researchers John and Julie Gottman can spot before a couple even finishes their first sentence. The founders of the Gottman Institute break down decades of lab re
Psychologist: The blueprint for developing a healthy relationship with your emotions | Lisa Damour
Stress has a branding problem. Clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour argues that most of us have the wrong relationship with discomfort entirely, treating stress like a malfunction instead of what it actually is: a signal that we're growing
Young people say their lives feel fake. Here’s why | Arthur Brooks
Arthur Brooks studies happiness for a living, and he says the epidemic of depression and anxiety among young adults comes down to one culprit: a meaning crisis. Brooks walks through the biology of falling in love, the real formula behind hu
Giulia Enders: The old-fashioned mindset that gets in the way of our healing
Physician Giulia Enders spent years studying the gut before realizing no organ works alone. Here, she walks through 5 body parts — the lung, the immune system, the skin, the muscles, and the brain — and what each one reveals about how we wo
A philosopher's guide to escaping your own echo chamber
Philosopher Jonny Thomson walks through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 3 conditions for the kind of stupidity that destroys societies: outsourcing your thinking to an authority, willful ignorance, and conformity. He shows how each one shows up today
Paul Bloom: The psychology of morality, perversion, and revenge
Psychologist Paul Bloom has spent his career studying the parts of human nature we often feel uncomfortable examining: why loneliness feels like starvation, why people are drawn to behaving poorly, why revenge feels righteous until it destr
The myth of the cult of genius, in 48 minutes
A philosopher who walked away from an elite academic career to spend 3 years washing dishes in a monastery says that intellectual life has nothing to do with degrees. Zena Hitz argues that the real philosophers are taxi drivers, office cler
250 million years of dinosaur history, in 104 minutes
Steve Brusatte, the paleontologist behind Jurassic World's science and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Story of Birds, walks through what fossils actually prove versus what Hollywood invented. Brusatte traces dinosaurs
A neuroscientist’s guide to protecting your brain, in 58 minutes
A retired Japanese engineer once memorized pi to over 111,000 digits using nothing but storytelling and visualization. He also forgot his wife's birthday that same year. Neuroscientist Lisa Genova uses this contradiction to dispel a persist
Tim Spector: The science of the gut microbiome and chronic inflammation
Could depression, dementia, and poor oral health all have one uniting link? The gut microbiome contains 200 more genes than human cells, and research shows its strong impact on mental illness, brain health, and chronic inflammation. Profess
The 3-part habit loop your brain is running 40% of the time | Charles Duhigg
About 40% of everything you do today is a habit your brain automated, and the neural loop driving it doesn't distinguish between good and bad habits. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators, explains why trying t
Vanessa Van Edwards: 7 cues that make you instantly more likable
You only have a few seconds to make a first impression, and the non-verbal cues you’re sending may be silently working against any kindness your words communicate. Charisma is learned, not innate, and even if you consider yourself an “awkwa
The difference between creative people and you: Tolerance for useful restriction | David Epstein
David Epstein, author of Range and Inside the Box, walks through decades of research exploring why constraints, not freedom, are the engine behind creativity, focus, and breakthrough.
The quantum realm, the cosmological realm, and the multiverse, in 69 minutes
Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi takes us from the quantum realm to the cosmological and out to the multiverse, answering physics’ underexplored questions. He digs through the actual nature of electrons, why your speed through space is always
Bessel van der Kolk: The body’s silent record of trauma
Trauma doesn’t vanish when danger does. According to psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, the body acts as an archive, holding fear, pain, and survival instincts long after the moment passes. Van der Kolk explains why conventional treatments f
Michael Spitzer: How music rewires the brain
Music is at least a million years older than language, yet we still see it solely through the lens of entertainment. Professor Michael Spitzer argues it's something closer to a biological system, one that was shaping the human body long bef
Nicole LePera: The child who learned to disappear is still running your adult relationships
Dr. Nicole LePera, the holistic psychologist and NYT bestselling author behind Reparenting the Inner Child, breaks down the 6 archetypes of childhood trauma. LePera explains why insight alone never produces lasting change and walks through
Mark Manson: How to pull yourself out of a cheap dopamine spiral
Most people are trying to solve the wrong problem, optimizing for happiness when happiness isn't actually a goal, it's a byproduct. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, argues that the entire self-help industry has be
Brad Stulberg: Getting 1% better every day is mathematically impossible. Do this instead
Most people chasing excellence are chasing the wrong thing entirely. Brad Stulberg argues that the 4am routines, optimization stacks, and recovery scores are just elaborate performance passed off as “excellence.” Stulberg breaks down the bi
Rachel Yehuda: Your brain changes after trauma. Science can reverse it
Trauma doesn't end when the danger does, and for decades, science couldn’t explain why. Rachel Yehuda, a leading PTSD researcher, has spent her career inside that question, uncovering how trauma leaves impressions on our genes, sometimes pa
