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July 29, 2022

Porosity Complicated

By: Rebecca McInroy

Last week’s episode focused on the concept of “porosity” a term developed by anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann and psychology researcher Kara Weisman, to help understand the root of religious and spiritual beliefs. They argue that at the heart is the concept of a porous boundary between mind and world and that people in all human societies have conflicting intuitions about this boundary.

Here at Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman,  Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy find this concept interesting and thought we would spend a little time, not only understanding it but complicating it.

In this second in our three-part series on porosity we ask a few questions about how it manifests in our daily lives and why we should care.

“Porosity is The Heart of Religion”

 


Episodes

February 10, 2023

Learning and The Brain

OpenAI is previewing a new tool called ChatGPT that uses AI to generate text based on prompts.  This raises a wide variety of questions. In the last episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and  Rebecca McInroy explored the relationship between competence vs. comprehension. In part II we ask, what […]

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February 3, 2023

Competence vs. Comprehension

OpenAI is previewing a new tool called ChatGPT that uses AI to generate text based on prompts. This raises a wide variety of questions, many of which can be better understood when we look at what Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke, explore in this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, with Rebecca McInroy; the […]

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January 27, 2023

How To Reframe Stress

In our last episode, we talked about how stress and discomfort aren’t always negative. Sometimes you can harness your energy by learning to reframe the negative feelings, but how do we do that? In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy talk about the process of […]

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January 20, 2023

Reframing Stress

Stress and discomfort aren’t always negative. Sometimes you can harness your energy by learning to reframe the negative feelings. As Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob discuss in this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, some new research by Ayelet Fishbach and her colleagues suggests that doing this can help you get more done.

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January 13, 2023

Why We Love Our Pets

Having a pet is a big responsibility. Pets can be expensive, wake you up in the middle of the night, limit your travel plans, and bring home gifts that aren’t quite what you asked Santa for. Yet, we love them, they bring us joy, and they are really wonderful for us psychologically. In this episode […]

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January 6, 2023

Why We Laugh

What is the evolutionary benefit of laughter? In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke explore why we laugh.

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December 30, 2022

Making Change Stick

It’s that time of the year when we resolve to drink less, exercise more, save money, etc. It may feel really good to intend to do “better” in the new year, but as Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss in this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, real change takes planning and […]

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December 23, 2022

Celebration

Sometimes we put off celebrating until we achieve a big goal instead of taking a moment to enjoy the little achievements along the way, and that’s a problem. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss the evolutionary reasons behind the importance of celebration, gratitude, and […]

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