Every day, we consume a mind-boggling amount of information. We scan online news articles, sift through text messages and emails, scroll through our social-media feeds — and that’s usually before we even get out of bed in the morning. In 2009, a team of researchers found that the average American consumed about 34 gigabytes of information a day. Undoubtedly, ... Show More
Nov 18
Patti Smith on the One Desire That Lasts Forever
<p>Patti Smith, “the Godmother of Punk,” has lived a wild life and accumulated so much wisdom in the process. In the 1960s and ’70s, Smith was a fixture of the New York City creative scene — hanging out with the likes of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Mappleth ... Show More
1h 17m
Dec 2024
The Books We Read in High School (Part 1)
Recently, professors at elite colleges told Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch that their students don’t read whole books anymore. They blamed cell phones, standardized tests, and extracurriculars, and they mostly agreed that the shift began in high school. In this episode of Radio A ... Show More
25m 27s
Feb 2025
188. Mind Reading 101: To Know What Your Audience Thinks, Just Ask
<p><em>How to really know what your audience is thinking.</em></p><p>To be a great communicator, you have to get out of your own head. But that’s not all, says <a href="https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/matt-lieberman/">Matt Lieberman</a>. According to him, you also have to get ... Show More
27m 8s
Mar 2025
M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)
This book is available open access here. The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024), Mazviita Chirimuuta argues that the standard ways neuroscientists simplify the human brain to build models for their research purposes mi ... Show More
50m 44s
May 2025
100: Mailbag: An Embarrassment of Riches
<p>Abby, Patrick, and Dan mark one hundred episodes of Ordinary Unhappiness! They start by looking back on the show’s run so far, and what they’ve gotten from engaging with psychoanalysis as a living body of knowledge, as a corpus of classic texts, as a way of seeing the world, a ... Show More
1h 30m