Hidden Brain

Jonathan Height is a psychologist at New York University he's the author of The Righteous Mind by good people are divided by politics and religion and the anxious generation how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

Jonathan Height is a psychologist at New York University he is the author of The Righteous Mind why good people are divided by politics and religion and the anxious generation how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

Oh yes it's exactly the movie The Matrix based on the novel No Remancer by William Gibson and the key line is that The Matrix is a consensual hallucination.

I teach a course at NYU Stern called work wisdom and happiness I was co-teaching it with Barry Schwartz professor Swarthmore who wrote a book on wisdom and he assigned an article from the New Yorker that involved death and dying and you know I can imagine that some students would find it uncomfortable but we long had the idea in the academy that discomfort is not a reason to not talk about something in fact you know our founding story is really Socrates the GAD fly of Athens trying to make people uncomfortable but suddenly we started getting reactions from students whether it be in my teaching evaluations or other comments you know that I shouldn't assign something makes people uncomfortable or if you do you should have given a trigger warning we'd never seen that before this was new so in some ways I'm seeing a connection between the work that you were doing with the moral foundation theory where you basically argue that one of the things that people on the left care about deeply is protecting people from harm and the examples you're telling me of what happened on college campuses of people saying in fact there are all these new dimensions of harm that we hadn't thought about previously that we should do something about absolutely absolutely I came to believe during this work that monomania is dangerous monomania means focusing on one thing becoming obsessed with one thing and you might say well care how could that be bad care is lovely but what happens if you have a one foundation morality everything's about care well you treat everyone as vulnerable as easily harmed you want to protect them and before you know it you have violated children's needs for challenge we are not fragile children are not fragile we actually need to be challenged in order to grow and what an extraordinary disservice we're doing to our students if we let them graduate from college thinking that ideas that upset them should be shut down as young people and their parents increasingly experienced the real world as a place of danger and threat John realized there was a powerful new force that offered them comfort and safety instead of venturing outside the home kids were retreating into virtual worlds and video games instead of asking someone out on a date teenagers were hiding behind their phones and in place of close deep friendships intimacies that come with the risk of heartbreak and betrayal social media platforms offered a seductive world of likes emojis and positivity Mr Zuckerberg you and the companies before us I know you don't mean it to be so but you have blood on your hands you have a product you have a product that's killing people that's when we come back you're listening to Hidden Brain I'm Shankar Vedanta you can make money the hard way becoming a bullfighter or save money the easy way with the Xfinity mobile it tributes making money as a human cannonball now they're March 21st learn how existing Xfinity customers can get a free line of unlimited intro for a year when they buy one unlimited line that's hundreds of dollars and savings on your wireless bill visit xfinitymobile.com today restrictions apply Xfinity mobile requires Xfinity internet reduced beats after 20 gigabytes of usage per line did it thresholds my very one more plus members save on meeting up with friends save on having them over for dinner with free delivery with no hidden fees or markups that's groceries plus napkins plus that vegetable chopper to make things a bit easier plus member save on gas to go meet them in their neck of the woods plus when you're ready for the ultimate sign of friendship start a show together with your included paramount plus subscription one more plus member save on this plus so much more start a 30 day free trial at walmartplus.com paramount plus a central plan only separate registration acquires see Walmart plus turns and conditions chapter one wafer welcomed you to the waver hood our hero Titus Burgess ambled down the stilish street of an enchanting utopia a woman waived from a chic lounger welcome to the waver hood she said where wafer helps everyone create a home they love Titus stared in awe Bohemian boulevard Trinsettor Terrace mid-century circle Titus you're reading the wafer catalog oh you'll love chapter two wafer is fast and free shipping saves a potluck wafer every style every home

In his book "Defawy Maast", the NPR journalist Stevens' Keep explores the life of Abraham Lincoln.

In his book, Differ We Must, how Lincoln succeeded in a divided America.

Stevens keeps a dress we all have much to learn from Lincoln.

There's a book called How Civil War Starts, and it's written by a woman named Barbara Walter.

She, by the way, works as an analyst for the CIA and looks at political stability around the world.

And so they have metrics where they sort of track the data. And her position is that when we think about our first civil war, what we think about is armies in a field with muskets and uniforms. And her position is that that's not how political violence will take place here.

That one of the things we're seeing here in the US is an increase in small militant groups who mobilize and do whatever they can to destabilize the status quo.

And so we're not seeing the violence, obviously, that we see in Gaza today, but we are seeing our own versions of escalation of political violence, which are highly concerning.

And I did it because I felt ashamed because in 2021, I had spent two years prior to that writing a book called The Way Out, which was about overcoming toxic polarization.

And I wrote about ways to help with it.

And about a year after I wrote the book, I was sitting and thinking about what I was proposing to other people and thought, you know, I can't just sit here with this estranged relationship with this kind enough man. I have to try to walk my own talk.

He said, 'I'd be happy to sit down and talk with you, but why walk? Are you CIA? Are you worried about surveillance?' You know, he was very concerned about that whole notion.

And I said, 'No, just try to trust me in this. So there's a reason, I have a rationale here. I'll explain it to you.' So he agreed, and we agreed to meet and go for a walk in the park.