Although music surrounds us for a large proportion of our time it doesn’t seem to serve an obvious purpose. This talk will primarily explore the role of music in social bonding, and whether music is best understood as the alternative to language.
This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.
Mental health awareness is a very big concern in 2021, particularly with the impact of the pandemic and lockdown. But while being aware that mental health can and does go wrong is important, very little attention is paid to how and why this happens. In his new book, Psycho Logical, neuroscientist, author, and former Psychiatry lecturer Dr Dean Burnett explores all that and more.
This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.
Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe’s history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe.
This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.
Evolutionary perspectives of mothering create a dilemma. Mothers behave in ways that clearly discount the notion of a maternal instinct, but despite advances in our understanding of parenting, the overwhelming majority of students continue to believe in a maternal instinct. We discuss these ramifications and emphasize the need to explore variation in maternal love.
This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.
For years scientists and scholars have been warning us of the danger of denialism. In this talk, Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Denial: The Unspeakable Truth, will argue that we are now seeing both the triumph of denialism and its end. Dr Kahn-Harris argues that denialism emerges when one’s deepest desires are ‘unspeakable’. We have to consider whether a world without it might be even worse.
This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.