On February 19, 75 years ago, an executive order from President Roosevelt lead to the mass incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans. This moment in history is particularly resonant this year because of the recent executive order that banned people from certain countries from entering the United States. One way to honor the lessons of the Japanese American experience, which was called a injustice based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,” is to reflect on how people responded at that time....

Dealing with a colleague who steals ideas you shared with him in a social setting. Question: Confront him, talk to the boss, or curtail communications? Categorize under: Workplace fair play Advisor Michael Carroll The “open source” approach to creativity, in which we freely discuss our ideas with colleagues, has its benefits. But it’s an approach based on trust. And as Ernest Hemingway put it: “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them....

After hours of listening, we’ve pulled together a list of the standout mindful podcasts in 2018. Podcasts About the Brain How Our Personal Narratives Become Facts Episode: Pt.I: Emotions / Pt.II: High Voltage, Invisibilia This wonderful if offbeat podcast (its title is Latin for “invisible things”) fuses science with narrative storytelling. These episodes investigate psychologist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s case that how we conceptualize (and deal with) emotions is totally backward: “Emotions aren’t a reaction to the world; they actually construct the world....

That’s such a far cry from the rugged individualism many of us grew up with. In high school, I remember reading Emerson’s essay “On Self-Reliance” with delight. Its quintessentially American view urging us to avoid conformity and trust your own voice. And I did. But now, that bold individualism doesn’t feel so alluring. What’s calling now—individually, collectively— is banding together. What’s so clear is the need to support one another, to bring kindness where there is pain, generosity where there is need, vulnerability where there is hardness, all softened, smoothed, and strengthened by love, the loving-kindness of interconnection....

HH: Barry, why is happiness a tricky word? BB: I think one of the most important things is, for one thing, to unpack that word, and to look at all its different dimensions. It’s such a tricky word because it’s so fuzzy and multidimensional in its meaning. The moment you say I want to be happy, or even better if somebody asks you are you happy? If I ask you, right now, are you happy?...

It was like a starter’s pistol had gone off in the neuroscience lounge. The discovery of mirror neurons would launch a “revolution” in understanding empathy and cooperation, predicted one researcher. Mirror neurons were “the driving force” behind the “great leap forward” in brain evolution, claimed another. They “will provide a unifying framework and explain a host of mental abilities that hitherto remained mysterious,” asserted a third, calling these cells “the neurons that shaped civilization....

From The Guardian: Scientists measured levels of alpha-amylase, an enzyme in saliva that provides a biological indicator of stress. Women with high levels of the biomarker were 29% less likely to get pregnant each month than those with low levels, the researchers found. The team tracked 373 American women aged 18 to 40 who were free from known fertility problems and had just started trying to conceive. Their progress was followed over a period of 12 months, or until they became pregnant....

Researchers studied 282 older adults with limitations due to back pain. (The average age of the group was 74.) Participants were split into two groups—the control group underwent an education program, and the active meditating group received an eight-week mind-body program. Participants learned three different meditation practices: In one practice, called “self-examination,” participants lay down and focus their attention on different areas of the body without judging thoughts or sensations....

Since entering lockdown mode, my days are narrow and familiar, but at the same time, different and undependable. The footholds I counted on to scale my day have given way. In place of a reliable routine are last-minute Zoom meetings, round-the-clock emails, willy-nilly walks, and family meals that resemble cows grazing in the field with all of us nibbling from the refrigerator at whim. One day flows into the next, and entire days have changed personalities....

“Children are like emotional Geiger counters,” says E. Mark Cummings, psychologist at Notre Dame University, who, along with colleagues, has published hundreds of papers over twenty years on the subject. Kids pay close attention to their parents’ emotions for information about how safe they are in the family, Cummings says. When parents are destructive, the collateral damage to kids can last a lifetime. My experience led me to approach marriage and parenthood with more than a little caution....

Understanding the Teen Brain Some 36 million people in the US are between 12 and 24 years of age—a vital period of development many neuroscientists call the age of the adolescent brain, or the teenage brain. We’ve recently seen a profusion of books (see below) pointing out that many of us—and our institutions—have misapprehended the teenage brain and the human beings carrying one around. One high school board member put it to me that “Teenagers are idiots....

The culture of mindfulness often reinforces this attitude in subtle ways: books, articles, and podcasts present these practices as a kind of panacean remedy for all our ills, so we struggle to understand why others wouldn’t want to give it a try. Being excited about mindfulness may seem harmless, but when we get too pushy about it in our most intimate relationships—especially with our partners and spouses—it can become a source of relational friction, and even conflict....

What I can’t forget, however, is the trauma of the workday morning. I went to bed wrapped in the quiet solitude of my personal life; I woke up to find my bed down the corridor from my office. It was a long corridor, and it took a lot of effort to drag myself down it—splashing my face with water, donning work clothes, and swilling coffee as I went. I would have given anything to make that hallway much, much shorter....

But she says the mental impact was more difficult—the feelings of fear and loneliness her new body inspired, not being able to do the things she used to. That drew her to Thailand, where she attended her first meditation retreat. Shapiro, now an author and professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, has conducted two decades of research into the health benefits of mindfulness. In this Tedx Talk from the fall, she talks about her personal journey to learning mindfulness, as well as how meditation and mindfulness can affect our health:...

That’s the number of people who applied to Mars One, a private non-profit company that plans to set up a human colony on Mars by 2025. Last month, Mars One narrowed the pool to 100 candidates. We found a few people who listed meditation as one of their interests. Elena is one of them. She’s a doctor with two kids, living in the UK. “I’m attracted to the unknown. I want to know as much as possible what is out there,” she says in a video on her Mars One profile....

Psychologists who conduct these programs believe there is healing power in nature, bolstered by research that suggests green spaces are good for our health, our well-being, and even our relationships. But what is the secret ingredient in nature that brings about these benefits? A recent study, led by researcher Craig Anderson and his colleagues (including the Greater Good Science Center’s faculty director, Dacher Keltner), suggests it could be awe—that sense of being in the presence of something greater than ourselves that fills us with wonder....

Why is it so difficult to properly enjoy what’s right in front of us? And why are so many events easier to enjoy or savor after they’ve happened? In this animation from The London School of Life, philosopher Alain de Botton talks about why we have trouble staying anchored in the present moment, and the role memory and mind wandering play. We edit out the bad parts. The brain is a great editor, sifting through our experiences to construct meaningful narratives....

As with pretty much anything health-related, we may know better, but we don’t stick to what we’d tell our best friend: Keep to a regular bedtime and a consistent routine, and avoid whatever disrupts sleep, like caffeine, alcohol, and screens. Not that complicated, but what’s often hardest is what’s frustratingly out of our full control. Even following solid advice, sometimes we suffer through rotten nights, feeling anxious or struggling to settle ourselves....