This Conversation About the 'Reading Mind' Is...

Over the past month, there have been two dominant stories in American foreign policy. One, of course, is the war with Iran. The other is the much-anticipated summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping of China. And I think if you look closely at both of these stories, you see ...  Show more

President Trump doesn’t seem to care that much about winning the midterms. He’s more unpopular at this point in his second term than basically any of his modern predecessors. Democrats seem poised to retake the House and have a real chance of retaking the Senate. You might expect ...  Show more

Something alarming is happening with reading in America. Leisure reading by some accounts has declined by about 50 percent this century. Literacy scores are declining for fourth and eighth graders at alarming rates. And even college students today are complaining to teachers that ...  Show more

The human brain doesn't come wired to read. Remarkably, recognizing, decoding, and comprehending a single word takes many different repurposed brain circuits working together.  Dr Maryanne Wolf, Dir. of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA brea ...

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

The world doesn’t make a lot of sense right now, including other people and why they think the things they think and do the things they do. So I’m tapping in Steven J. Heine, professor of Social and Cultural Psychology and the author of Start Making Sense: How Existential Psychol ...  Show more