I don't think we've made a huge amount of progress in the last few decades. Our drugs are not demonstratively better than they were a while ago. And I kind of know why it's so for the drugs, which has to do with financial incentives. It's just very expensive to develop a new drug. But our best evidence suggests therapy and drugs do work. They're better than not doing them.
In his expansive new book, "Psych: The Story of the Human Mind," Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, lays out, in his words, "basically everything I know about the mind." And when he says everything, he means it. Where does consciousness come from? Does IQ matter? What makes us happy? Was Sigmund Freud a madman? The answers to these questions (and more) are all in Paul's book — and in this episode.
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