The Secrets to Living an Awesome Life

in Life, Psychology, TED Talks | January 7th, 2011

You have heard the mes­sage before – the secrets to liv­ing an excel­lent life. But they bear repeat­ing from time to time. And Neil Pas­richa, edi­tor of the 1000 Awe­some Things blog, com­mu­ni­cates it all in a rather touch­ing and earnest­ly straight­for­ward way. This talk comes from TEDx­Toron­to, staged in Sep­tem­ber 2010.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Ted Talk Under the Sun

Daniel Pink: The Sur­pris­ing Truth about What Moti­vates Us

Vik­tor Fran­kl on Our Search for Mean­ing

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Neuroscience and Free Will

in Philosophy, Psychology, Science | November 23rd, 2010

We have free will. We make our own deci­sions. We have long tak­en these basic assump­tions for grant­ed. But what does neu­ro­science make of this? In this excerpt from the BBC Hori­zon spe­cial, “The Secret You,” Mar­cus Du Sautoy (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) par­tic­i­pates in a brain imag­ing exper­i­ment con­duct­ed by John-Dylan Haynes, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist based in Berlin. And the results? Well, they force us to rethink things a bit. Good­bye Descartes. Good­bye mind before mat­ter. Good­bye to con­scious­ness and free will, as we tra­di­tion­al­ly like to think about them. And wel­come to the world of neu­rons, to brain activ­i­ty that makes your deci­sions before your con­scious self is even aware of them. To delve deep­er into all of this, you can watch Haynes give a 90 minute lec­ture here called “Uncon­scious deter­mi­nants of free deci­sions in the human brain.”

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The Dalai Lama on the Neuroscience of Compassion

in Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science | October 21st, 2010

Last week, the Dalai Lama spent sev­er­al days at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, where he made com­pas­sion his focus. He laid the foun­da­tion with a large pub­lic address before an audi­ence of 7,000. (Watch an excerpt above or the full talk below.) Then things got more focused when the spir­i­tu­al leader of Tibet par­tic­i­pat­ed in a day­long con­fer­ence about the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of com­pas­sion. Host­ed by Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, the con­fer­ence brought togeth­er impor­tant sci­en­tists from many dis­ci­plines – psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, med­i­cine, and eco­nom­ics. You can watch a record­ing of the con­fer­ence here. It’s all in video and ready to go.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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David Lynch Talks Meditation with Paul McCartney

in Film, Music, Psychology | October 18th, 2010

David Lynch has been prac­tic­ing Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion for decades, and, last year, he inter­viewed anoth­er long­time TM prac­ti­tion­er – Sir Paul McCart­ney. The inter­view (find Part 1 above and Part 2 here) turned quick­ly to The Bea­t­les, their involve­ment with the Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi (guru of the TM move­ment), and their famous trip to his ashram in Rishikesh (India) in Feb­ru­ary 1968. There, among oth­er things, they wrote 48 songs – many of which con­tributed to The White Album – before hav­ing a falling out with the guru and leav­ing town.

The film­mak­er sat down with McCart­ney before a ben­e­fit con­cert staged by The David Lynch Foun­da­tion in April 2009. Lynch’s orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides schol­ar­ships to schools so that stu­dents can learn TM. Both Paul and Ringo per­formed at ben­e­fit that night…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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John Cleese on the Origin of Creativity

in Creativity, Life, Psychology | September 23rd, 2010

British actor John Cleese is best known for his comedic tal­ent as one of the found­ing mem­bers of Mon­ty Python, which makes his intel­lec­tu­al insights on the ori­gin of cre­ativ­i­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. This talk from the 2009 Cre­ativ­i­ty World Forum in Ger­many is part cri­tique of moder­ni­ty’s hus­tle-and-bus­tle, part hand­book for cre­at­ing the right con­di­tions for cre­ativ­i­ty.

“We get our ideas from what I’m going to call for a moment our uncon­scious — the part of our mind that goes on work­ing, for exam­ple, when we’re asleep. So what I’m say­ing is that if you get into the right mood, then your mode of think­ing will become much more cre­ative. But if you’re rac­ing around all day, tick­ing things off a list, look­ing at your watch, mak­ing phone calls and gen­er­al­ly just keep­ing all the balls in the air, you are not going to have any cre­ative ideas.” ~ John Cleese

Cleese advo­cates cre­at­ing an “oasis” amidst the dai­ly stress where the ner­vous crea­ture that is your cre­ative mind can safe­ly come out and play, with the oasis being guard­ed by bound­aries of space and bound­aries of time.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing point Cleese makes is that know­ing you are good at some­thing requires pre­cise­ly the same skills you need to be good at it, so peo­ple who are hor­ri­ble at some­thing tend to have no idea they are hor­ri­ble at all. This echoes pre­cise­ly what film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris dis­cuss­es in “The Anosog­nosic’s Dilem­ma,” arguably one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing psy­chol­o­gy reads in The New York Times this year.

Curi­ous­ly, Cleese’s for­mu­la for cre­ativ­i­ty some­what con­tra­dicts anoth­er recent the­o­ry put forth by his­to­ri­an Steven John­son who, while dis­cussing where good ideas come from, makes a case for the con­nect­ed mind rather than the fenced off cre­ative oasis as the true source of cre­ativ­i­ty.

This video per­ma­nent­ly resides in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time on Twit­ter.

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The New Science of Morality (in Video)

in Psychology, Science | July 29th, 2010

Ear­li­er this year, Sam Har­ris argued at TED that we’re on the verge of a sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion. We’ll see the day when sci­ence (par­tic­u­lar­ly neu­ro­science) can rig­or­ous­ly address moral ques­tions, pro­vid­ing definitive/universal answers to ques­tions of right and wrong. The pur­suit of a “moral sci­ence” is noth­ing new. Enlight­en­ment thinkers began this project long ago. But Har­ris has dust­ed it off, mod­ern­ized it a bit, and cre­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy along the way. Just last week, he took part in a con­fer­ence pre­sent­ed by Edge.org: The New Sci­ence of Moral­i­ty. Over the next month, Edge will be mak­ing avail­able 10 hours of video from the two-day con­fer­ence, rolling it out in a seri­al­ized fash­ion. It all kicks off with a talk by Jonathan Haidt, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, known for his book The Hap­pi­ness Hypoth­e­sis: Find­ing Mod­ern Truth in Ancient Wis­dom. You can start watch­ing here…

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Daniel Pink: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

in Business, Economics, Psychology | June 23rd, 2010

RSA offers up anoth­er ani­mat­ed video explain­ing what makes us tick. This time, they’re fea­tur­ing a lec­ture by Daniel Pink, the best­selling author of Dri­ve: The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us. Revis­it­ing research also found in Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty, Pink dri­ves home the point that tra­di­tion­al moti­va­tion schemes – name­ly, bonus­es – rarely achieve their intend­ed results. In fact, the big­ger the bonus, the big­ger the decline in per­for­mance. Or so stud­ies show again and again. So what does moti­vate us? The desire to be self-direct­ed. The will to mas­ter some­thing. The hope to make a con­tri­bu­tion. It’s all what Pink calls “the pur­pose motive,” and it’s the stuff that keeps this site mov­ing along.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dan Ariely on the Irra­tional­i­ty of Bonus­es

Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich on The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Philip Zim­bar­do on The Secret Pow­ers of Time

via Fora.TV

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Dan Ariely on the Irrationality of Bonuses

in Business, Economics, Psychology | June 10th, 2010

You’ve per­haps heard the buzz around Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty: The Unex­pect­ed Ben­e­fits of Defy­ing Log­ic at Work and at Home. (If not, read this review in the NY Times.) Appear­ing at PopTech! last year, Ariely spent 20 min­utes flesh­ing out an argu­ment in his book. A pro­fes­sor of behav­ioral eco­nom­ics at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Ariely turns some basic assump­tions about work­place com­pen­sa­tion right on their head … and even explains why, in some strange way, it makes sense that high­ly com­pen­sat­ed Wall Street bankers could do so much dam­age to our finan­cial sys­tem.

Note: You can lis­ten to Ariely get­ting inter­viewed ear­li­er this week on my favorite San Fran­cis­co talk show. The con­ver­sa­tion revolves around The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty.

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