Welcome to Issue #82 of ThinkSpace Thursday
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📚 Light Reading
We wouldn’t want Oppenheimer today
We don't encourage genius; we disparage it.
How to be happy according to Plato
What did Plato, one of history’s most renowned philosophers, think about how to become a happy person?
You can feel nostalgia for things that you haven’t yet lost
Nostalgia is a longing for the past, but psychologists are coming to realise it can focus on the future too.
🔎 Study of the Week
The socioeconomic conditions associated with the Dark Triad traits
For women but not men, higher childhood socioeconomic status predicts higher Dark Triad scores (psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) in adulthood. For men but not women, childhood instability (a chaotic or unstable home) predicts higher Dark Triad scores in adulthood.
📺 Video of the Week
Don’t compare your film to someone else’s trailer. Jason Manford with some wise advice (3 min.)
🎙 Podcast Episode
The Yale lecturer and New York Times bestselling author, Matthew Croasmun, discusses what really matters most in life, how we can discern what’s worth wanting, and how to develop the wisdom to navigate life’s challenges.
🗣 Quote of the Week
“Life can be compared to a piece of embroidered material of which, everyone in the first half of his time, comes to see the top side, but in the second half, the reverse side. The latter is not so beautiful, but is more instructive because it enables one to see how the threads are connected together.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer
👀 Perception Watch
The Twitter logos are not moving or changing size at all.
😲 WTF
In 1962, an epidemic of laughter broke out in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) that lasted almost a year. Several thousand people were affected in several villages. It wasn't fun, though—other symptoms included crying, fainting, rashes, and pain.
Forty years later, Christian F. Hempelmann, a Purdue University linguistics doctorate candidate, began researching the mythicised event. Hempelmann argued that it was extensive stress, not bliss, that victimised the residents. And in today's world of 12-hour workdays, he said it could happen again.
😁 In the Memetime
📖 Book Club
Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to a hospital with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. This book is a mystery tale with lashings of chills and spills.
🤔 Contemplation Corner
John Steinbeck wrote this for his two young sons in 1952. Do you agree?
🎧 The Song of the Week
“Without music, life would be a mistake.” — Nietzsche
Listen to the ThinkSpace Thursday playlist on Spotify.
🧠 Transcend Your Limits with ThinkSpace
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August Masterclass:
👍 Thanks for Reading
As always, if you enjoy ThinkSpace Thursday, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. If you’re not finding it valuable, please consider unsubscribing—no hard feelings!
Live well, and I’ll see you next week.
John