George Lakoff, “The Brain’s Politics: How Campaigns Are Framed and Why”

MIT Media Lab, Bartos Theater 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA

Everything we learn, know and understand is physical — a matter of brain circuitry. This basic fact has deep implications for how politics is understood, how campaigns are framed, why conservatives and progressives talk past each other, and why progressives have more problems framing messages than conservatives do — and what they can do about it.

Minding the News

MIT Media Lab, Room 633 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA

Mark Turner's research on the cognitive underpinnings of network news, with an emphasis on blended joint attention, story-telling, counterfactuality, and hypotheticals.