This Is Your Brain on Conspiracy Theories

Humans Just Can’t Handle What Evolution Gave Us     Wild conspiracy theories have polluted our country these days, and everyone is rushing to figure out why so many Americans are sucked into these clearly false and highly paranoid ideas. Apparently, 50% of Republicans believe that Hilary Clinton and others are involved in a child pornography ring run out of a pizza parlor, 42% believe that hydroxychloroquine is effective against Covid-19, 30% of them are aligned with that nutty Q-Anon stuff, and about 68% believe that Donald Trump won the election. But…

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The Evolution of Waiting

  How Westerners Fail at the Waiting Game   So now we wait.   Yes, we’ve already waited ten whole months, but now we have to wait even more to get the vaccine that will save us from Covid-19 and break us out of this time of suspended animation.   But why is it so hard to wait?   We should be used to waiting; we do it all the time as we wait for the bus, a companion to show up, at the doctor’s office, a baby to be born, a…

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The Most Selfish Culture on Earth-Or Maybe Not

Once Considered Unkind, the Ik Turn out to Be Nice When anthropologist Colin Turnbull lived among the Ik people of Uganda between 1964 and 1967, he found a bleak, loveless, unkind society where everyone was only out for themselves. Turnbull wrote about his experience in the best-selling 1972 book The Mountain People, an ethnographic follow up to his highly acclaimed The Forest People about the cooperative and socially entwined Mbuti pygmies of the Republic of Congo. The contrast between the two cultures couldn’t have been more shocking. The Ik were held up as evidence that…

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Scary Monkeys Threaten Town

Just as They Have Been Taught to Do.... A recent article in The New York Times tells the scary story of over 8,000 macaque monkeys taking over a town in Thailand during the Covid virus. The citizens of Lopburi were used to these animals roaming the ancient ruins and the temples in the area where they were fed by tourists. But now, the tourists are gone and the monkeys, who are conditioned to expect an unstoppable bounty of snacks and lunches, are hungry and on the prowl. Although small by money standards, and cute by…

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