Robert Sapolsky

It can be far more than a mere academic matter when a scientist thinks that human behavior can be entirely explained from only one perspective.

For example, being raised by a single mother increases the risk of adult antisocial behavior, but not because of the parenting; instead, because of typically lower income, kids more likely live in a neighborhood with tough peers. (b) Peers have impact on linguistic development

Parental influence is often actually mediated via peers.

the opposite of play is not work—it’s depression

Cultures (starting with parents) raise children to become adults who behave in the ways valued by that culture

“Well, to make it more beautiful

Mass executions, torture, villages torched with inhabitants trapped inside.

instituting the thirty-year dictatorship of Suharto known as the New Order.

when a paramilitary group would arrive to exterminate every person in some village, they would, incongruously, bring along a traditional gamelan orchestra.

Here are things that are rarer in recent centuries: