What We Are Reading Today: ‘Experiments of the Mind’ by Emily Martin

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Updated 11 February 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Experiments of the Mind’ by Emily Martin

Experimental cognitive psychology research is a hidden force in our online lives. We engage with it, often unknowingly, whenever we download a health app, complete a Facebook quiz, or rate our latest purchase.

How did experimental psychology come to play an outsized role in these developments?

“Experiments of the Mind” considers this question through a look at cognitive psychology laboratories. 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Pedantry’ by Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Updated 13 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Pedantry’ by Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths.

“On Pedantry” offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates.

Taking readers  from the academies of ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us.