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Losing My Nuance

Episode 1 of 5

Oliver Burkeman explores how both natural selection and the construction of modern society suppress nuanced thinking.

Oliver Burkeman has been concerned for a while that Nuance has been vanishing from public discourse. For a long time, he thought it was just other people’s problem. But now he realises that even he himself is losing the nuance that was integral to his view of the world.

In the first episode Oliver explores why our brains are primed for binary decisions, rather than nuanced thought. He finds out from Dr Kevin Dutton, author of Black and White Thinking, how natural selection has programmed us for lightning quick snap decisions and simplified categorisation of our world in order to survive. And he speaks to Professor Susan Neiman, author of Why Grow Up? About how difficult it can be to develop the skill of nuanced, critical thought, and how doing so may not just be an act of growing up, but as an act of resistance against a world designed to keep us infantilised, and our thinking simplistic.

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14 minutes

Last on

Wed 12 Jan 2022 09:30

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Dr Kevin Dutton

Dr Kevin Dutton is a researcher at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and a member of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN) research group. His latest book, Black and White Thinking, is out now.

Professor Susan Neiman

Professor Susan Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the author of numerous books including Why Grow Up?, Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin, Evil in Modern Thought, and Moral Clarity.

Broadcasts

  • Mon 28 Dec 2020 13:45
  • Sat 8 Jan 2022 05:45
  • Wed 12 Jan 2022 09:30