Stone Age Brain

Rick Shenkman is the author of "Political Animals:  How Our Stone Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics" (Basic Books, 2016). You can sign up for Rick's blog! Just submit your email address below and you'll receive an email every time he blogs. It's free. Your email will never be sold or transferred.

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• 
  Feb 13, 2016
  

  Our Brain Dislikes Disorder.  That Explains a Lot.

  by Stone Age Brain

  It's another reason Trump's winning followers.  In a world of disorder he promises order. -- Rick Shenkman
  

• 
  Jan 22, 2016
  

  Trump’s Genius

  by Stone Age Brain

  He understands this one important truth about politics.  The election is not about him, it's about us and our feelings. -- Rick Shenkman
  

• 
  Jan 10, 2016
  

  Ted Cruz’s Stone-Age Brain and Yours

  by Stone Age Brain

  Why we have a hard time feeling for the victims of collateral damage -- and how historians can help.
  

• 
  Jan 8, 2016
  

  What's the Voters' Problem? That's a Lot Harder to Determine than You Might Suspect.

  by Stone Age Brain

  Rick Shenkman explains why the easy answers are wrong.
  

• 
  Jan 7, 2016
  

  We’re suffering from Stone-Age thinking in 2016: Interview

  by Stone Age Brain

  "Your book turns on a thesis about our having Stone-Age brains. What's that mean?"
  

• 
  Dec 17, 2015
  

  Why Millions of Voters Are Pre-Wired to Support Donald Trump

  by Stone Age Brain

  How our stone-age psychology explains our susceptibility to lies and demagoguery in modern politics.
  

• 
  May 30, 2015
  

  New Study: The world's a lot more violent than reported

  by Stone Age Brain

  The famed social scientist Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb is out with a new paper that claims violence in the past and present has been underestimated.
  

• 
  May 22, 2015
  

  Why Americans Support the Iran Deal for the Wrong Reason

  by Stone Age Brain

  Given the way our brain is wired, we believe we can divine how other people think, including Iranians we have never met.  But can we? 
  

• 
  Apr 3, 2015
  

  This is why colleges need to hire historians

  by Stone Age Brain

  Historians can now point to neuroscience as proof they are needed. 
  

• 
  Apr 2, 2015
  

  Is Western society responsible for violence and environmental degradation?

  by Stone Age Brain

  Science has an answer. The answer is no.
  

• 
  Apr 1, 2015
  

  Are we born with a universal grammar?

  by Stone Age Brain

  New research suggests Noam Chomsky's theory of a Universal Grammar is wrong.
  

• 
  Mar 25, 2015
  

  Do our genes determine how we behave? Nah.

  by Stone Age Brain

  Today scientists are a lot less confident than they used to be about the effect our genes have on our behavior. No one gene determines if we'll rob a bank, do somersaults, or win the Nobel Prize.
  

• 
  Mar 10, 2015
  

  Hillary's Emails: A Prediction

  by Stone Age Brain

  In which I predict how she handled the email controversy at her news conference.
  

• 
  Nov 11, 2014
  

  This study claims how we worship may be dependent on the environment

  by Stone Age Brain

  What's exciting is not so much the conclusion, but the evidence. 
  

• 
  Nov 9, 2014
  

  It Happened a Long Time Ago -- A Really Long Time Ago

  by Stone Age Brain

  Historians think in short bursts of time.  We need to take in the really long perspective to do our jobs right. 
  

• 
  Oct 29, 2014
  

  How bad can an El Niño be? This bad.

  by Stone Age Brain

  Could empires have fallen, in part, because of changes in the weather? 
  

• 
  Jun 2, 2014
  

  What You're Missing If You're Not Watching Cosmos

  by Stone Age Brain

  Neil deGrasse Tyson shows that scientists first issued an alarm about climate change in the late 19th century.   
  

• 
  May 28, 2014
  

  What Can a Classics Professor Teach Us About Climate Change?

  by Stone Age Brain

  What a drought in 1200 BC can teach us.
  

• Jun 2, 2009
  

  Cheney finally admits no connection between Saddam and 9-11

  by Stone Age Brain

  As anyone who has read my book knows, it was the Bush administration's success in making people believe that Saddam was behind 9-11 that triggered my decision to write Just How Stupid Are We.