The Playing Field

Sport and Culture Through the Lens of Science

by Steven Kotler

Courage: Working our Way Towards Bravery

I’ve spent a bit of time recently thinking about courage. I’ll be writing a number of posts on this topic over the next few months, but this is my initial offering and to get started the first thing you need to know is that courage is woefully under-studied. Read More

From Prostitutes to Pet Therapy

About an aytpical mental health worker career trajectory in the key of “P”: Prostitutes to Prison to Pahrump to Parrots to Pet Therapy. Read More

The Path of Wisdom Does Not Go Thru New York City

What is wisdom has lately become a topic of much debate. Questions run from: what is wisdom (which I’m not going to try to answer, but this fantastic NY Magazine article does a great job surveying the discussion) all the way up to what produces wisdom—which is the topic on today's table. Read More

The Psychedelic Renaissance: The Drugs Are Back, And They Mean Business This Time!

Psychedelics are back! Scientists have discovered that drugs like LSD and MDMA are out to be our best hope for some of our most difficult conditions. Could "I want to party like it's 1969" really be the future of medicine? Read More

Animals on Psychedelics: Survival of the Trippiest

Everywhere scientists have looked, they have found animals who love to party. Read More

College Football's Giant Blindsport: The Bias of the BCS

The BCS System is supposed to produce a college football champion— some basic psychology says otherwise. Read More

Do animals have ESP, because I have questions...

A lot of people think their pets have psychic powers—here's why I'm starting to take their stories more seriously. Read More

But Is It Murder?

Yesterday, David Yoder of New York gassed 93 dogs to death—he's going to get a slap on the wrist, but should he got to jail for murder instead? Read More

You Are Not You: The Conundrum of the "Me."

The brilliant Jungian psychologist James Hillman once wrote: "There is only one core issue for all psychology. Where is the "me." Where does the "me" begin? Where does the "me" stop? Where does the other begin?" Read More

Altrusitic Dogs and Other Questions About Cooperation.

There's a really, really interesting war brewing these days between the evolutionary psychologists and the ecological psychologists. In very basic terms, the war is about competition and cooperation and which is the more powerful driver of evolution. In not so basic terms, the war is about answering Einstein's fabled question: do we live in a friendly universe? Read More

This Is Your Brain On Slaughter

The Hidden Cost of Our Animal Killing Spree Read More

Ecopsychology: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

New research into ecopsychology could bring us to an entirely different understanding of human nature. Read More

New Ideas About the Origin of Language

There's some new research coming out of the University of Rochester that sheds a bit of light on the origin of language in humans. What these researchers were looking into was if there's one certain area of the brain that gives humans advanced language capabilities over other animals.What they found was a whole lot more... Read More

How Time Flies

If language shapes reality, what happens whens language disappears?

Animals in Mourning—the stuff they don't tell you in books. Read More

Aggressive Athletes: Can We Please Start Telling The Truth

Violence in Sports: Elizabeth Lambert Is Not Guilty As Charged! Read More

How To Spot the Liars: The Next Revolution In Truth Telling

Spotting liars is big business, thankfully it's also bad for business. Read More

Does Hope Trump Racism: The Peculiar Pickle of Obama's Nobel Prize

Does Hope Trump Racism And More Reasons Why The Spat Over Obama's Nobel Prize Is Bunk. Read More

Cannibalism or Dinner?

Ranomafana is located on the southeastern side of Madagascar, at the edge of what is called the "High Plateau," a steep, mountainous region so inhospitable it was all but unexplored. There are seven remote Malagasy villages surrounding Ranomafana. This was not easy walking. Read More

Nicholas Kristof Is Beginning To Annoy Me

Yup, it's true, Nicholas Kristof really is beginning to annoy me. The New York Times Op-Ed correspondent has written a number of recent articles bemoaning the dangers of phthalates- a troubling class of chemicals nearly ubiquitous in modern life. Read More

The Real Deathapalooza

It's been a good month for death. Michael Jackson has left us and left us to ponder the eternal question-what is the sound of one glove clapping. He has also left us to ponder and even bigger question: why do we care so much? Thousands of people filled the streets of Los Angeles and New York after his overdose. Read More

The Paradox of Eco-Choice

In his 2004 The Paradox of Choice, Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz lays out an idea that is difficult to understand for most modern Americans. Read More

The Lie of Miles-Per-Gallon And Other Things I'm Starting To Dislike About The Obama Administration

Two weeks back, there was a rousing bit of good news out of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. According to work done by 240 independent researchers (analyzed by the folks at Yale), severely damaged ecosystems don't take as long to recover as previously suspected. Read More

Should We Tell Our Children That Reality Is A Lie?

I got an interesting email this morning from Peder Johnson. Johnson, a now-retired University of New Mexico cognitive psychologist has been promoting a constructivist epistememology since he first became acquainted with Piaget's work back in the 1970s. It's an epistemological position somewhere between objective realism and solipsism. Read More

Why Nations Have Become A Bad Idea

Let me ask you a question—tomorrow you have to go to war with New Zealand. I know, Kiwis are lovely people, but still, there's no getting out of it. But you have a choice-you get to have one ally. You can have a) Bulgaria or b) Microsoft. Country or corporation-take your pick. Read More

How Much Affection Is Normal?

Affection might be natural, but how much is natural is the question? Read More

Is Happiness Heritable—And, If So, Heritable From Whom?

The latest issue of Bioscience Hypothesis contains an article by Dr. Alberto Halabe Bucay of the Research Center Halabe of Darwich, Mexico which suggests that the hormones and neurochemicals resulting from our mental states can profoundly effect germ cells.

These effected germ cells then express differently and that difference effects the moods of the child-to-be.

Literally. Read More

How Twitter Makes You Stupid

Not too long ago, a man by the name of Victor Davich, wrote what has since become one of the best-selling books on meditation. It's called "8 Minute Meditation" and, exactly as it sounds, it's a collection of concentration exercises that are meant to be practiced eight minutes at a time. Read More

What Do We Mean By Justice?

Last Friday, after 19 years on the bench, Chief Justice David Souter announced his retirement. Since then, in the flurry of resultant media attention, we've learned quite a bit about the issues that will soon decide the next nominee's fate. Read More

Steven Kotler is the author of West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief. His magazine writing has appeared in more than 31 publications.

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