The Psychology of Wonder

"Arguably one of the most significant contributions of psychology is that our understanding of ourselves is more defined by what we believe in our heads than by the actual external world that we experience.  If you imagine you are the center of the universe, then you experience yourself as a different person than one who imagines they live on a speck of dust.  However, even better, if you can imagine living in different kinds of universes, then who you are becomes a fantastic landscape of possibilities."

Pro-Vaxxers are the new pro-lifers: Religious hysteria trumps rational discussion in the vaccine debate

"We were surprised to hear that the bible prohibits believers to be swayed by internet rumours, apparently in two different chapters. The prophetic power of that book has clearly been understated. It's also surprising to hear that the lesson to be learned from someone who died from the small pox vaccine should be held as an example of how it's a good thing to take 'calculated risks'. How's that for some mental gymnastics?"

Why The Afterlife Is Beyond Science

"'But he is merely dreaming all the time, or rather, living with the fantasy created by his strongest desires on earth.'  Over time, whatever form time takes in that condition, the 'dream' fades and the person or soul awakens to his true condition, Myers said."

How extreme isolation warps the mind

"But the most alarming effects were the hallucinations. They would start with points of light, lines or shapes, eventually evolving into bizarre scenes, such as squirrels marching with sacks over their shoulders or processions of eyeglasses filing down a street. They had no control over what they saw: one man saw only dogs; another, babies."

Working Class Monster: How Folklore Became a Class Signifier

"The modern way in which we control social status is through the control of information.  Our technocratic elites are those with a mastery of technology and technique, and thus the arbiters of 'real' information.  This has extended into the world of the Fortean, where the greater accessibility of a wide variety of folklore that might once have been communicated in oral traditions are now available at the click of a button, and thus the technocratic underclass, always suspected of gullibility, superstition, and increased susceptibility to the power of suggestion, can be safely characterized as genuine but unwitting dupes, rather than witnesses or informants, just as the Marxist theologians celebrated the authenticity of the proletariat, while simultaneously pointing out that the ignorant masses did not understand their own alienation from the means of production, and thus allowed themselves to be oppressed by robber barons."

Scientists Tried Trolling Conspiracy Theorists

"So you've got a group of people who only engage with each other, do so vehemently, and are incapable of recognizing when they're being ridiculed. It's almost like being inoculated from critical thinking, but then, we can say pretty definitively that that isn't the case."

Study Reveals Common Development Pattern in Ancient and Modern Cities

"It was amazing and unbelievable. We've been raised on a steady diet telling us that, thanks to capitalism, industrialization, and democracy, the modern world is radically different from worlds of the past. What we found here is that the fundamental drivers of robust socioeconomic patterns in modern cities precede all that."