Page 2 - Self Deceiving Brain News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

May 11, 2021 Katie Hafner THE WASHINGTON POST – Every day we tell many small untruths, lies uttered by mutual consent that keep societal interactions civil. We say “How are you today?” when we don’t really care to know, or “That was a lovely dinner” when the meal tasted terrible. Parents reproach their children for failing to supply a polite answer instead of the real one. Then there are the lies we tell ourselves. Researchers have found that patients with an optimistic outlook in the face of a terminal medical prognosis will outlive those with a realistic sense of their disease. ...

There’s a fascinating tale that runs through the new book by Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedantam. It’s the true story of the Church of Love — a sort of all-female commune based in Moline, Illinois, that corresponded with lonely men across the U.S., persuading them to send thousands of dollars to support a group of virginal yet lusty women attempting to build a retirement paradise called Chonda-Za. If it sounds too bizarre to be true, well, it was. The women were largely fictitious; the man cashing the checks was a former English teacher, Donald Lowry. At the time the feds swooped in to ...

Aired on Wednesday, April 21st. Our guest is Shankar Vedantam, the bestselling author and host of the popular "Hidden Brain" podcast and public-radio show. He joins us to discuss his new book, "Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain." This book takes a detailed, research-driven look at the fundamental role of self-deception in human life -- that is, its positive as well as its negative aspects. As was noted of this work by The Washington Post: "Powerful.... [Vedantam] explains the phenomenon of deceit in general, and self-deception in particular, with the same pla...