“An exceptional book” (Helen Fisher) by a leading evolutionary psychologist and sex researcher that lays out a new theory of sexual conflict, exposing the roots of the dangerous dynamics that underpin men’s predatory behavior — and what can be done to address it.
Sexual conflict permeates ancient religions, from injunctions about thy neighbor's wife to the permissible rape of infidels. It is etched in written laws that dictate who can and cannot have sex with whom. Its manifestations shape our sexual morality, evoking approving accolades or contemptuous condemnation. It produces sexual double standards that flourish even in the most sexually egalitarian cultures on earth. And although every person alive struggles with sexual conflict, most of us see only the tip of the iceberg: dating deception, a politician's unsavory sexual grab, the slow crumbling of a once-happy marriage, a romantic breakup that turns nasty.
When Men Behave Badly shows that this 'battle of the sexes' is deeper and far more pervasive than anyone has recognized, revealing the hidden roots of sexual conflict—roots that originated over deep evolutionary time—which define the sexual psychology we currently carry around in our 3.5-pound brains. Providing novel insights into our minds and behaviors, When Men Behave Badly presents a unifying new theory of sexual conflict, and offers practical advice for men and women seeking to avoid it.
Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in todayÄôs Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sunÄôs radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide. Human genes today show evidence of a Äúgenetic bottleneck,Äù an effect seen when a population of organisms becomes so small that their genetic diversity is greatly reduced. This group of survivors could be the ancestors of all humans alive today. Prothero explores the geological and biological evidence supporting the Toba bottleneck theory, revealing how the explosion itself was discovered and offering insight into how the world changed afterward and what might happen if such an eruption occurred today.
Questions on the origins and meaning of dreams are as old as humankind, and as confounding and exciting today as when nineteenth-century scientists first attempted to unravel them. Why do we dream? Do dreams hold psychological meaning or are they merely the reflection of random brain activity? What purpose do dreams serve?
When Brains Dream addresses these core questions about dreams while illuminating the most up-to-date science in the field. Written by two world-renowned sleep and dream researchers, it debunks common myths while acknowledging the mysteries that persist around both the science and experience of dreaming.
Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold bring together state-of-the-art neuroscientific ideas and findings to propose a new and innovative model of dream function called NEXTUP-Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities. By detailing this model's workings, they help listeners understand key features of several types of dreams, from prophetic dreams to nightmares and lucid dreams. When Brains Dream reveals recent discoveries about the sleeping brain and the many ways in which dreams are psychologically, and neurologically, meaningful experiences; explores a host of dream-related disorders; and explains how dreams can facilitate creativity and be a source of personal insight.
Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming. It shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals, giving us access to a seemingly inaccessible realm of animal experience.
David Peña-Guzmán uncovers evidence of animal dreaming throughout the scientific literature, suggesting that many animals run 'reality simulations' while asleep, with a dream-ego moving through a dynamic and coherent dreamscape. He builds a convincing case for animals as conscious beings and examines the thorny scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises. Once we accept that animals dream, we incur a host of moral obligations and have no choice but to rethink our views about who animals are and the interior lives they lead.
A mesmerizing journey into the otherworldly domain of nonhuman consciousness, When Animals Dream carries profound implications for contemporary debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights, challenging us to regard animals as beings who matter, and for whom things matter.
For readers of Bill Bryson, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Siddhartha Mukherjee, a wondrous, wildly ambitious, and vastly entertaining work of popular science that tells the awe-inspiring story of the elements that make up the human body, and how these building blocks of life travelled billions of miles and across billions of years to make us who we are.
Every one of us contains a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in the earth’s deserts. If you weigh 150 pounds, you’ve got enough carbon to make 25 pounds of charcoal, enough salt to fill a saltshaker, enough chlorine to disinfect several backyard swimming pools, and enough iron to forge a 3-inch nail. But how did these elements combine to make us human?
All matter—everything around us and within us—has an ultimate birthday: the day the universe was born. This informative, eye-opening, and eminently readable book is the story of our atoms’ long strange journey from the Big Bang to the creation of stars, through the assembly of Planet Earth, and the formation of life as we know it. It’s also the story of the scientists who made groundbreaking discoveries and unearthed extraordinary insights into the composition of life. Behind their unexpected findings were investigations marked by fierce rivalries, obsession, heartbreak, flashes of insight, and flukes of blind luck. Ultimately they’ve helped us understand the mystery of our existence: how a quadrillion atoms made of particles from the Big Bang now animate each of our cells.
Shaped by the curious mind and bold vision of science and history documentarian Dan Levitt, this wondrous book is no less than the story of life itself.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
One Day University presents a series of audio lectures recorded in real-time from some of the top minds in the United States. Given by award-winning professors and experts in their field, these recorded lectures dive deep into the worlds of religion, government, literature, and social justice.You are your brain, according to modern neuroscience, but how exactly do your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sense of self derive from this three-pound organ locked inside the black box of your skull? Scientists have been seeking answers to those questions for decades and finding surprising answers in the brains of people with psychiatric and neurological disorders. Join us on a journey deep into the brain, the mind, and the self, as Professor Jessica Payne reveals the startling and exciting recent findings of cutting-edge neuroscience. How does your brain accomplish spontaneous creativity? How much self-control or free will do we really have? And what does the future hold, once brains begin to integrate with neural prosthetics? Get to know your dynamic unconscious mind, a bigger part of who you are than you could ever guess.This audio lecture includes a supplemental PDF.
As the world becomes ever more dominated by technology, John Brockman’s latest addition to the acclaimed and bestselling “Edge Question Series” asks more than 175 leading scientists, philosophers, and artists: What do you think about machines that think?
The development of artificial intelligence has been a source of fascination and anxiety ever since Alan Turing formalized the concept in 1950. Today, Stephen Hawking believes that AI “could spell the end of the human race.” At the very least, its development raises complicated moral issues with powerful real-world implications—for us and for our machines.
In this volume, recording artist Brian Eno proposes that we’re already part of an AI: global civilization, or what TED curator Chris Anderson elsewhere calls the hive mind. And author Pamela McCorduck considers what drives us to pursue AI in the first place.
On the existential threat posed by superintelligent machines, Steven Pinker questions the likelihood of a robot uprising. Douglas Coupland traces discomfort with human-programmed AI to deeper fears about what constitutes “humanness.” Martin Rees predicts the end of organic thinking, while Daniel C. Dennett explains why he believes the Singularity might be an urban legend.
Provocative, enriching, and accessible, What Do You Think About Machines That Think? may just be a practical guide to the not-so-distant future.
An entertaining investigation into the biology and psychology of why we sacrifice for other people
Researchers are now applying the lens of science to study heroism for the first time. How do biology, upbringing, and outside influences intersect to produce altruistic and heroic behavior? And how can we encourage this behavior in corporations, classrooms, and individuals?
Using dozens of fascinating real-life examples, Elizabeth Svoboda explains how our genes compel us to do good for others, how going through suffering is linked to altruism, and how acting heroic can greatly improve your mental health. She also reveals the concrete things we can do to encourage our most heroic selves to step forward.
It's a common misconception that heroes are heroic just because they're innately predisposed to be that way. Svoboda shows why it's not simply a matter of biological hardwiring and how anyone can be a hero if they're committed to developing their heroic potential.
What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team began with a radical step: they taught dogs to go into an MRI scanner-completely awake. They discovered what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems, and a complex understanding of human speech. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns explores the fascinating inner lives of wild animals from dolphins and sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger. Much as Silent Spring transformed how we thought about the environment, so What It's Like to Be a Dog will fundamentally reshape how we think about-and treat-animals. Groundbreaking and deeply humane, it is essential listening for animal lovers of all stripes.
Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. A distinguished physicist's exploration of the question which lies at the heart of biology, it was written for the layman, but proved one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of the structure of DNA. The philosopher Karl Popper hailed it as a "beautiful and important book" by "a great man to whom I owe a personal debt for many exciting discussions." It appears here together with "Mind and Matter," his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Schrödinger asks what place consciousness occupies in the evolution of life, and what part the state of development of the human mind plays in moral questions. Brought together with these two classics are Schrödinger's autobiographical sketches. They offer a fascinating fragmentary account of his life as a background to his scientific writings, making this volume a valuable addition to the shelves of scientist and layman alike.
Join Pulitzer-Prize-winning, bestselling author Jared Diamond in asking some of the biggest questions of our existence.
Do you create your own destiny? Or do you merely play whatever hand the universe has dealt you? This provocative audieries will stimulate your mind by raising these and other timeless questions about free will and determinism. As you analyze these competing philosophies, you will find that every answer raises fascinating new questions about morality, fate, consciousness, and the existence of a higher power.
In this series, host Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn welcomes a total of 13 guest experts to discuss free will, identity, and the possibility of the afterlife. Each episode is crafted as a series of one-on-one interviews.
Kuhn's interlocutors include Jared Diamond, Peter van Inwagen, and Daniel Clement Dennett III. A Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of field-spanning books on human societies, Diamond is a professor of geography at UCLA. Meanwhile, Notre Dame philosophy professor van Inwagen is a leading figure in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of action. Dennett, a philosophy professor and cognitive scientist, is director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.
Recent neuroscientific discoveries have fanned the flames of the free will debate. The implications of this debate are far-reaching and potentially paradigm-shifting. Explore its vital questions with the world's greatest minds.
Note: Lectures 1 and 3-"Is Free Will an Illusion?" and "Why Is Free Will a Mystery?"-were funded in part by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
This course is part of the Learn25 Collection.
Join Pulitzer-Prize-winning, bestselling author Jared Diamond in asking some of the biggest questions of our existence.
Do you create your own destiny? Or do you merely play whatever hand the universe has dealt you? This provocative audio series will stimulate your mind by raising these and other timeless questions about free will and determinism. As you analyze these competing philosophies, you will find that every answer raises fascinating new questions about morality, fate, consciousness, and the existence of a higher power.
In this fascinating audio series, host Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn welcomes a total of 13 guest experts to discuss free will, identity, and the possibility of the afterlife. Each episode is crafted as a series of one-on-one interviews.
Kuhn's interlocutors include Jared Diamond, Peter van Inwagen, and Daniel Clement Dennett III. A Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of field-spanning books on human societies, Diamond is a professor of geography at UCLA. Meanwhile, Notre Dame philosophy professor van Inwagen is a leading figure in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of action. Dennett, a philosophy professor and cognitive scientist, is director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.
Recent neuroscientific discoveries have fanned the flames of the free will debate. The implications of this debate are far-reaching and potentially paradigm-shifting. Explore its vital questions with the world's greatest minds.
Note: Lectures 1 and 3-"Is Free Will an Illusion?" and "Why Is Free Will a Mystery?"-were funded in part by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
This course is part of the Learn25 collection.
