Mary Martin

This Camera Takes 1,000 Years to Capture a Single Photograph

The picture of the mind that most people have is still one in which passion and reason are separate, and emotions get in the way of clear thinking. But metacognitive feelings show the constant interaction of ‘reason’ and ‘passion’ in our mental processes. Moreover – as we’ll explain – these feelings are consequential. In fact, cognitive prowess... See more

A new study reveals that regardless of task difficulty, people’s minds increasingly wander with time, reaching a 50% distraction rate towards the end of activities. Analyzing over 10,000 participants in 68 studies, the research found no significant difference in distraction levels across various tasks. This phenomenon persists even without external... See more

The unwanted and the shadow imagination are real and necessary parts of our inner landscape. They’re wisdom, dipped in discomfort. When teaching mindfulness, I’ve noticed people either move away from their unwanteds or get sucked into them. Those who move away have conditioned themselves to avoid what they don’t want to hear, see, feel, or think.... See more

Though our collective forgetting is enormous, it is mostly unremarkable to those who study the transmission of culture. What puzzles me, and others who study transmission, is why so much unwritten knowledge has survived. Despite the brittleness of cultural practices, skills proliferate with and without records, chaining generation to generation,... See more

Friends without friction

Companion chatbots may weaken our ability to navigate conflict and difference—unless we make key design choices, says a new report