Daily Media Diet

From Harper's : Britain’s link to Europe was severed 450,000 years ago and its textile heritage was being destroyed by moths. From The Economist : Nearly half of young American employees say they would be more loyal if their boss took a public position on a social issue. From The Economist : Investments that considered environmental, social and governance factors accounted for $13.3trn of assets under management in 2012; that sum was $22.9trn in 2016. Over a fifth of the funds under professional management in America fall into this category, up from a ninth in 2012. From  Nature Human Behaviour : Women are known to have stronger prosocial preferences than men, but it remains an open question as to how these behavioural differences arise from differences in brain functioning. Here, we provide a neurobiological account for the hypothesized gender difference. In a pharmacological study and an independent neuroimaging study, we tested the hypothesis that the neural reward...

From  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin : Decades of research indicate that individuals adhere to existing states ("status quo bias") and value them more ("endowment effect"). The present work is the first to investigate status quo preference within the context of trade-offs in mate choice. Across seven studies (total N = 1,567), participants indicated whether they would prefer remaining with a current partner possessing a particular set of traits (e.g., high trustworthiness, low attractiveness) or switching to an alternative partner possessing opposite traits. Preference for a given trait was highest when the individual representing the status quo (one's romantic partner or an interaction partner) possessed that trait. Concerns about hurting the partner, ambiguity avoidance, and biased construal of the partner and the alternative predicted status quo preference and disapproval of the current partner by network members eliminated this effect. These fi...

From Harper's : The lives of French men and women who were fetuses when their fathers died in WWI were 2.4 years shorter on average. From Harper's : A dead Nazi fighter pilot was found in possession of food stamps and three unused condoms. From The Economist : Employees, many of them in the big, Democrat-leaning metropolitan areas where large companies are often based, increasingly demand that their firms take positions on issues ranging from gay rights to climate change. From The New York Times : Over the course of each year, people have many kinds of interactions and experience many kinds of mistreatment. But there is something unique about positive or negative touch. Emotional touch alters the heart and soul in ways that are mostly unconscious. It can take a lifetime of analysis to get even a glimpse of understanding. From The New York Times : Over the past 100 years or so, advanced thinkers across the West have worked to take the shame out of sex, surely a...

From The New York Times : The famous Grant Study investigated a set of men who had gone to Harvard in the 1940s. The men who grew up in loving homes earned 50 percent more over the course of their careers than those from loveless ones. They suffered from far less chronic illness and much lower rates of dementia in old age. A loving home was the best predictor of life outcomes. From The New York Times : Christie Kim of N.Y.U. surveyed the research literature on victims of child sexual abuse. The victims experience higher levels of anxiety throughout their lifetimes. They report higher levels of depression across the decades and higher levels of self-blame. They are more than twice as likely to experience sexual victimization again. From Harper's : Scientists created a menstrual cycle and anorexia nervosa in dishes and, on a transparent spinach leaf, grew the beating cells of a human heart. From Harper's : An analytic psychologist diagnosed Pinocchio with autism, an...

From  The Guardian  (Kamila Shamsie on "My comfort read"): I dip in and out of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion whenever in need of comfort or solace. They’re old, known friends now, and like the best friends they can still surprise you in lovely ways. From The Economist : One analysis of 11 rich countries estimates that the average mother spent 54 minutes a day caring for children in 1965 but 104 minutes in 2012. Men do less than women, but far more than men in the past: their child-caring time has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59. From The Economist : Married couples engage in a demanding four-handed juggling act that prepares their offspring for success at school, university and the most demanding jobs. Their children marry well, and the cycle begins again. From Harper's : The kea became the first nonmammalian to demonstrate infectious laughter. From The New York Times : It turns out that empathetic physical contact i...

From The Guardian (Kamila Shamsie on "The book I wish I’d written"): At the moment it’s Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone. From The Guardian  (Kamila Shamsie on "The book that influenced me"): Midnight’s Children made me see, aged 15 in Karachi, that there was a place in English language fiction for the kind of world I was growing up in. From The Economist : In America, another analysis shows that black children under two on average receive one hour a day less attention from parents than white children. The explanation seems to be more poverty among blacks. From Harper's : A sea turtle named Piggy Bank died following surgery that recovered 915 coins from her stomach. From The New York Times : In 1945, the Austrian physician René Spitz investigated an orphanage that took extra care to make sure its infants were not infected with disease. The children received first-class nutrition and medical care, but they were barely touched, to minimize their...

From The Guardian (Jim Crace on "The book that had the greatest influence on my writing"): Roget’s Thesaurus – but it has to be the 1955 Everyman’s edition as that’s the one my father gave me on my 10th birthday. I thought it was an inexplicable present at the time (where was my Meccano?) but it’s been at my side ever since and has given undeserved range and depth to my writing. From The New York Times (Simon Sebag Montefiore on "Tell us about the last great book you read"): I read many wonderful novels though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. Few qualify as “great” in the sense of Tolstoy or Balzac but I just finished one that did: I was dazzled by the brilliance of “The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt, a masterpiece of characterization, plot, technical artistry combined with exquisite heartbreaking understanding of loss, love and art. Now that I have finished I regret its pleasures are gone, like a delicious feast — or a vanished love one will n...