How we are made by the worlds we inhabit — and how we remake those worlds in turn. Writing about collective life, shared symbols, and the meanings we build together.
Western psychology built a self that stands alone. But for most of human history — and most of the world today — the self is inseparable from the group. Who was right?
Erving Goffman said we are all performing. He could not have imagined the audience we perform for now. On self-presentation, the curated life, and what we lose in the editing.
Field NotesIf you don't have a word for an emotion, can you still feel it? Dispatches from the borderlands of language, culture, and inner life.
ConversationsA philosopher and a neuroscientist sit across from each other with the oldest question. Neither wins, and that turns out to be the point.
ConversationsThe neuroscientist behind the "controlled hallucination" theory of perception talks about what it means to be a self, and why that is wonderful.