How do I see the video/hear the audio? There are two ways to experience the multimedia content on this site:
What is a podcast? Podcasting is a method of distributing multimedia content over the web. When you use a program called a "podcatcher" to subscribe to a podcast, the podcatcher will periodically check to see if new content (in this case, audio or video files) has been added to the podcast. If new content is available, the podcatcher will automatically download the new file(s) for you, making them available to play on your computer, iPod, or other digital media device.
What do these buttons mean?
will take you to a page that will allow you to subscribe via one of several different podcatchers. You can also right-click (control-click for Mac) and copy the address into the podcatcher of your choice.
will allow you to subscribe to the podcast via the iTunes music store, if that is your preferred podcatcher. It's free to subscribe and download podcasts from iTunes, but you have to have iTunes installed on your computer (download it now).
Still confused? The University has posted information about RSS, the technology behind podcasting as well as information about subscribing to RSS feeds. If you want to learn more, you can also read Wikipedia's article on podcasting.
More questions? Please e-mail chiasmos@uchicago.edu.
"The Mind of the Market"
January 14, 2008
A talk by author and psychologist Michael Shermer.
Michael Shermer explains how evolution shaped the modern economy-and why people are so irrational about money. How did we make the leap from ancient hunter-gatherers to modern consumers and traders? Why do people get so emotional and irrational about bottom-line financial and business decisions? Is the capitalist marketplace a sort of Darwinian organism, evolved through natural selection as the fittest way to satisfy our needs? In this eye-opening exploration, author and psychologist Michael Shermer uncovers the evolutionary roots of our economic behavior. Drawing on the new field of neuroeconomics, Shermer investigates what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and establishing trust in business. He scrutinizes experiments in behavioral economics to understand why people hang on to losing stocks, why negotiations disintegrate into tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy. He brings together astonishing findings from psychology, biology, and other sciences to describe how our tribal ancestry makes us suckers for brands, why researchers believe cooperation unleashes biochemicals similar to those released during sex, why free trade promises to build alliances between nations, and how even capuchin monkeys get indignant if they don't get a fair reward for their work.
Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University (1991). He was a college professor for 20 years (1979?1998), teaching psychology, evolution, and the history of science at Occidental College (1989-1998), California State University Los Angeles, and Glendale College. Since his creation of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, he has appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, Tom Snyder, Donahue, Oprah, Lezza, Unsolved Mysteries (but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!), and other shows as a skeptic of weird and extraordinary claims, as well as interviews in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel. Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown.
From the World Beyond the Headlines series and the Chicago Society.