Childhood Patterns, Dangerous Female, MAGA Kabuki
Links and recommendations
You can now catch my latest conversation with journalist Meghan Daum and clinical psychologist Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. on the Open Therapy podcast.
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
From the archives:
The Ideology of the Dangerous Female
The Psychology of Morality:
My new lecture series “The Psychology of Morality” is now available exclusively at Peterson Academy.
I delivered six lectures in front of a live studio audience that explore the origins of morality. The course examines the distinction between moral philosophy and moral psychology, showing how emotions and intuitions often guide our judgments more than rational principles. It also investigates frameworks such as Haidt’s moral foundations theory and Gray’s moral dyad theory. The series also covers dark personality traits and their relationship with moral behavior, and concludes by examining the relationship between morality and happiness, sex differences in moral judgment, and moral development across the lifespan.
Enroll here for immediate access.
Here’s the trailer:
Links and recommendations:
No, Seriously, Decriminalizing Drugs Kills People by Charles Fain Lehman
The Curious MAGA Kabuki Celebrity of Sophie Cunningham by Ethan Strauss
Backrooms: the Dangers of Nostalgia, and When Therapy Fails (written by a Therapist) by Jeremy the therapist
The Average Kid is Better Than the Average Adult by Bryan Caplan
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here
Three interesting findings:
1. Men with two children had an estimated brain age that was 0.6 years younger than their childless peers had, and for men with three children, it was 0.7 years younger. That’s similar to the brain benefit associated with exercising 2.5 hours a week. (source).
2. Whereas men in their twenties and above tend to find younger women more attractive, teenage boys tend to be more attracted to women somewhat older than themselves. Men’s preference isn’t for younger age per se, but rather traits associated with fertility. (source: A Billion Years of Sex Differences by Steve Stewart-Williams).
3. Sentences are getting shorter and simpler. The Economist analyzed hundreds of New York Times bestsellers and found that sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s. (source).
The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
If you have gained any value from this newsletter and want to support my work, please buy a copy today. For yourself. For a friend or a loved one. If you can’t afford it, please support your local library.
Order your copy now:
Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
There's a great book called "Man Against Being: Body Horror and the Death of Life" that goes into men's fear and hatred of women. It's definitely worth reading; it explains a lot about nearly all the religions and cultures we have today.