Psychology
Dinners for beginners
Never mind teaching children to cook: they need to be taught to eat. Obvious? Totally, but this is the choosing…
A morally dubious mix of Candid Camera and Fawlty Towers: Pushed to the Edge reviewed
Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as…
What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?
What was it like, asks Jay Nordlinger, to have Mao as your father, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc? The…
The contagious madness of the new PC
Obsessive searching for hurt and offence will create it where once it never existed
John Freeman: polymath or psychopath?
They don’t make Englishmen like the aptly named John Freeman any more. When he died last Christmas just shy of…
Bubble-wrap, berry-picking and the secret pleasures of destruction
The secrets of bubble-wrap and other delicious little sensations
Virtual reality versus real reality: wisdom (and motorcycle maintenance) from Matthew Crawford
Bit of Kant, bit of Kierkegaard, bit of motorcycle maintenance. That’s one take on The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew…
Why the internet hasn’t killed estate agents (and what might)
I don’t like to make business predictions, but — barring some apocalypse — I suspect there will be plenty of…
This election has made me understand how it felt to be a lefty under Thatcher
On the weekend of 25 April 2015 I started to believe that the party I supported might not win an…
Humans are doing democracy wrong. Bees are doing it right
What the hive knows about democracy that humans have yet to learn
The awful rise of 'virtue signalling'
Why do the right thing when you can simply say the right thing?
How (and why) we lie to ourselves about opinion polls
A strange ritual takes place on Twitter most evenings at around 10.30 p.m. Hundreds of political anoraks start tweeting the…
A lesson in decision-making from the world’s worst road sign
Driving from Dover on the M20 a year ago I missed the turning for the M25. A month later I…
How to make Ukip supporters love green policies
Few people know this, but hidden within the FedEx logo, between the E and the x, there is a small…
Steve Jobs’s button phobia has shaped the modern world
An irrational fear that has reshaped the technological world
Was the phrasing of the Scottish referendum question designed to create division?
It is a trick which often works on children. Do not tell them to eat vegetables; instead ask whether they…
Why don’t more non-smokers try e-cigarettes?
I was waiting on an office forecourt recently puffing on an e-cigarette when a security guard came out. ‘You can’t…
Churchgoing is good for you (even if you don’t believe in God)
And that’s true whether or not you believe in God
Humans hunger for the sacred. Why can’t the new atheists understand that?
Atheists are blind to a fundamental human need
Teacher training’s war on science
There’s an increasing amount of evidence about how we learn. But you won’t hear about it at teacher training college
The plan with three brains
A good human chess player with a good computer trounces the best human or computer playing alone
You're not as special as you think
My preferred route from the Times’s offices in Wapping on to the main road takes me across a precinct then…
A Slap in the Face, by William B. irvine - review
A friend of mine who works for the NHS has been told recently by a superior that his ‘attention to…
