Meeting at Annapolis
Historian Peter Onuf talks about the meeting at Annapolis, convened to amend the Articles of Confederation. While those efforts failed, because not enough states attended and the agenda was too limited, the eventual resu..
Memes
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks about memes, which he calls the cultural equivalent of the gene in biology. According to Professor Dennett, a meme is an idea, but not just any idea. To qualify as a meme, an idea must be..
Memory Contamination (Part One)
Experimental psychologist and author Elizabeth Loftus explains that, "...if you let the memory fade a little bit so it weakens, it then becomes more and more vulnerable to suggestion, to post-event contamination."
Memory Contamination (Part Two)
Experimental psychologist and author Elizabeth Loftus explains that, while all people are susceptible to memory contamination, children between the ages of three and six appear to be more susceptible than older children ..
Memory Distortion
Experimental psychologist and author Elizabeth Loftus talks about experiments in which subjects are asked to recall details of a simulated accident they've witnessed. Dr. Loftus explains that, as part of the experiment, ..
Memory and Videotape Recorders
Experimental psychologist and author Elizabeth Loftus explains that, "...memory does not work like a tape recorder. We don't just record the event and play it back later the way a videotape might work." Instead, Dr. Loft..
Memory and the Soul
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about efforts to make memory the subject of scientific inquiry. He discusses the argument that what it is to be a person is not the province of "the soul," but of the memories each of us has..
Men, Women and the Union Movement
American history professor Alice Kessler-Harris traces the history of the labor movement in the United States, beginning with the collectives of the early 19th century, through the huge unionizing drives of the 1930's.
Mental Accounting
Nobel Prize winning professor of psychology Daniel Kahneman talks about mental accounting, which bears some resemblance to framing. Dr. Kahneman explains that the way people manage money in certain instances is related t..
Mental Retardation and Genetics
Dean Hamer, Director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the National Cancer Institute, talks about the role genetics plays in many forms of mental retardation. In the case of PKU, a type of retardation that's c..