Word: bookings
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...explain in the book that empathy really starts with our bodies: running together, laughing together, yawning together. So yawning really is contagious? Yeah. Dogs catch yawns from their owners. Chimpanzees yawn [in response to those] that we show them. Yawn contagion is very interesting because it's a very deep bodily connection between humans or between animals. Humans who have problems with empathy, such as autistic children, don't have yawn contagion. It's either because they don't pay attention to the yawns of others or they're not affected by them. (Read about the secrets inside your...
There's an example in the book where you talk about apes sharing food as a demonstration of empathy. What's in it for the apes who already have food - why do they choose to give it away? In biology, we usually make a sharp distinction between why things evolved and why animals do things. For example, sex evolved for reproduction. But if you ask people why they have sex, reproduction is not always mentioned. So there's a separation between why the behavior evolved and why the actors actually engage in it. The same is true for altruistic tendencies...
What about people who seem to lack empathy altogether, like psychopaths? You talk about a "mammalian core." There's a book called Snakes in Suits, which is about psychopaths in business. Madoff would be a good example, probably, and Kenny Lay, the head of Enron. I find that such a striking title because it makes them into reptiles. Empathy is not a reptilian thing. Empathy is a mammalian thing. Psychopaths are capable of taking the perspective of somebody else, but only to take better advantage of you. They're able to play the empathy game, but without the feelings involved...
...initiative has discovered a convincing correlation between a particular set of genes and emotional temperament: for all intents and purposes, a ‘happiness gene.’ After it is confirmed that Thassa suffers from this genetic predisposition to happiness, she becomes an overnight Internet celebrity. The book charts Thassa’s rise through the blogosphere all the way up to “The Oona Show” (a fictional analog for Oprah), until she reaches a level of fame whose pressure threatens to break even her seemingly indominable happiness.Powers thus combines the recent public attention...
...begins as Insteadman’s meets one Perkus Tooth, an aging, roving-eyed rock critic and strikingly disparate figure whose hovel on 84th street provides the setting for much of the rest of the story. Tooth serves as the wellspring for the paranoia that motivates much of the book, and brokers Chase’s introduction to the other major players, Oona Laszlo and Richard Abneg.Chase and Tooth shortly develop a fast, if strange friendship defined by Perkus’ love for marijuana, cheeseburgers, coffee, and esoterica. Their daily smoke sessions serve an indoctrinatory function as well: Tooth enmeshes...