“It's important to note that this isn't just limited to the regimes people often worry about—like Russia, China, Iran, or Venezuela. It's also happening with regimes that are nominal partners of the United States.”
— Casey Michel

The quote archive

Psychology

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

When you gaze into your dog's eyes, your oxytocin level—the so-called 'love hormone'—rises, and the same thing happens in your dog. It's a powerful pair bond. More recently, though, researchers have found the same effect with cats.

— Jay Ingram

Canadian science communicator and former host of Daily Planet

A true pet's value lies entirely in its relationship with us, and vice versa. The first fossil evidence of that bond goes back around 30,000 to 40,000 years: dogs buried with humans, including one remarkable case of a dog that had survived two bouts of canine distemper, presumably because its human companion cared for it.

— Jay Ingram

Canadian science communicator and former host of Daily Planet

It forces you to confront the fact that we know almost nothing about the true nature of reality. Whatever image you have of what's real or possible is obliterated in an instant. You're faced with a world that isn't just strange, but so utterly incomprehensible that it transcends imagination.

— Andrew Gallimore

We never have direct access to the world in itself; we only have access to the model our brain is constructing. It works as a sort of 'best guess.' The brain isn't trying to find the absolute truth or create a perfect replica of the outside world's structure.

— Andrew Gallimore

Music ties into memory in two ways. First, music itself can be tremendously impactful, so we remember it — and we also remember everything happening around us when we heard it.

— Daniel J. Levitin

Neuroscientist & author of "This Is Your Brain on Music

In real life, emotions rarely arrive in neat, isolated packages. They're layered, overlapping, constantly shifting. Pure happiness, for instance, is rare; most of the time it's tinged with something else. And music, more than words, captures that mixture.

— Daniel J. Levitin

Neuroscientist & author of "This Is Your Brain on Music

We tend to remember the things in life that deliver the biggest emotional wallop. The death of a family member, the birth of a child, a wedding, an accident, an injury, or a major global event.

— Daniel J. Levitin

Neuroscientist & author of "This Is Your Brain on Music

Music is often better than speech at conveying and understanding emotion, because music has a kind of openness and ambiguity to it. Words, on the other hand, tend to put things into boxes.

— Daniel J. Levitin

Neuroscientist & author of "This Is Your Brain on Music

It might feel—if you haven't yet learned the rules of these hidden markets—that the outcomes are based on luck, chance, or things beyond your control, but you actually have a lot more agency in them than you think.

— Judd B. Kessler

Without understanding the rules of the game, you might assume that your outcomes are determined mostly by luck. People who end up unhappy about what they get conclude that they were unlucky or that the system was rigged against them. After enough of these experiences, they believe that's just how the world works.

— Judd B. Kessler

We often talk about misinformation and disinformation, but the deeper issue is the speed and flow of trust, because we're responding to feeling rather than expertise and credibility.

— Rachel Botsman

Author & Leading Expert on the Sharing Economy & Collaborative Consumption

Being able to trust is actually what makes us human. It's a very innate thing. And often, distrust and mistrust are learned behaviours that start to set in around the age of four.

— Rachel Botsman

Author & Leading Expert on the Sharing Economy & Collaborative Consumption

The number one thing is misread intentions. You assume someone has ill intent toward you and you don't check in on those intentions. Then a narrative forms in your head, and that's when you start spiralling.

— Rachel Botsman

Author & Leading Expert on the Sharing Economy & Collaborative Consumption

Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown. Trust isn't, at its essence, an asset or an attribute or a currency. It's a belief. It's what we believe about someone or something.

— Rachel Botsman

Author & Leading Expert on the Sharing Economy & Collaborative Consumption

They were outnumbered twelve to one north of Kyiv, and completely outmatched in terms of tanks, planes, artillery—all of it. Outmatched, yet they pushed back those Russian forces that colossally outnumbered them.

— Dr. Nicholas Wright

We need fear, but fear has to be harnessed, and a crucial way we harness it is through training. Training helps you turn fear from something that paralyses you into something that spurs you to take the right decisions in very difficult situations.

— Dr. Nicholas Wright