Robert Herritt is a writer in New York City.

Whiz! Bam!

Mind reading machines! Telekinesis! In Michio Kaku’s new book our minds will be doing all kinds of cool things with gadgets very, very soon, but somehow this scientist misses the big questions about what we really know about consciousness and the mind.

Breaking

How do you define what appears on your TV screen and in your newspaper? Pop philosopher Alain de Botton tells us what he thinks the news should be—and what it should do.

Decisions

It’s one of philosophy’s thorniest questions—the trolley problem—and a new book explores its interesting history, the many answers to it, and what it reveals about our failure to talk about moral questions in public today.

Genius Bar

In the future, genius machines will guide our lives, and wages for those not in the top 10 percent will stagnate—or so predicts Tyler Cowen in his new book.

Chimp Ethics

Primatologist Frans de Waal develops a bottom-up theory of human behavior, but Robert Herritt says that he overreaches.

Ignoble Savage

Should we run barefoot and eat like hunter-gatherers? Robert Herritt on a new book that debunks paleo living as a misreading of evolution.

Chaos Theory

Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that we need to have more chaos and stress in our daily lives to test our institutions, says Robert Herritt.

‘Beyond Human Nature’

Robert Herritt on the flaws of Jonah Lehrer-style pop science and a nature-versus-nurture book done right.

Cool under pressure? Easy social charm? You might just be a psychopath. A new book says that most of the world’s most successful people—presidents, doctors, CEOs—are too.