"I kind of am with the Chomsky's on this. I feel like something weird happened to our brains and we're like, hey, combined with our throats kind of dropping in some members of our species," he says. "There are all kinds of weird cockamamie theories about how this could have happened ... But of course, proof is just hard to come."
The Summer of Cormac McCarthy continues – this time we dive into his one piece of non-fiction, the short essay “The Kekulé Problem.” How does our unconscious mind solve problems that conscious deliberation can’t crack? Why does it often work elliptically, in code, rather than giving us the answer directly in language? Is McCarthy right that the unconscious doesn’t trust language because it’s such a newcomer to the human brain?
Plus we select the finalists for our listener selected episode – thanks to our beloved patrons for all their terrific suggestions!
"The Kekulé Problem" by Cormac McCarthy
Pinker & Bloom 1990
Dijksterhuis & Strick 2016
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