Why Women Aren’t C.E.O.s, According to Women Who Almost Were

"It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s about loneliness, competition and deeply rooted barriers."

Read more in the NYT.

The Smartphone Psychiatrist

Frustrated by the failures in his field, Tom Insel, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, is now trying to reduce the world’s anguish through the devices in people’s pockets.

Read more in the Atlantic.

Thanks +Rohan Kshirsagar 

“Because I Moved 5 Shirts”… Portrait Of An Unexpected Twitter Storm

Read Katie's reflection on the viral post.

Could Women Be Trusted With Their Own Pregnancy Tests?

"Unmarried teenagers would jump off bridges, and other crazy reasons at-home kits weren’t approved until the late 1970s." Read more in the NYT.

HT +Ginny Fahs 

Earning Less Than Their Wives Makes U.S. Men More Partisan

A few insights on why gender stereotypes suck for everyone involved:

Masculinity, in essence, is something that men earn, rather than something they naturally have, and it therefore exists in a permanently tenuous state. The man card can be revoked at any time. That means that men have to find some way to reinforce their gender role in response to anything that might be seen to threaten it. Loss of income relative to a spouse seems like an especially potent threat to masculinity: earning less than their wives has been linked to men needing erectile dysfunction medication, as well as an increased likelihood of sexual infidelity.

And this Democrat vs. Republican insight was worth evaluating:

I found that Republican men who contributed less to their household income than they did two years prior became significantly less supportive of abortion rights, and the more income that they lost relative to their spouses, the more their support for abortion dropped. 

... Among Democratic men, losing income relative to their spouse led them to be, on average, about 0.5 points more supportive of abortion rights, while men who gained income relative to their spouses actually became less supportive. When faced with gender role threat, liberal men come to hold more liberal views on abortion, while conservative men come to hold more conservative views.

Read more in HBR.

The Post-Human World

"A conversation about the end of work, individualism, and the human species with the historian Yuval Harari." An except:

I like to begin with the simple things. Look at GPS applications, like Waze and Google Maps. Five years ago, you went somewhere in your car or on foot. You navigated based on your own knowledge and intuition. But today everybody is blindly following what Waze is telling them. They’ve lost the basic ability to navigate by themselves. If something happens to the application, they are completely lost. 

That’s not the most important example. But it is the direction we’re talking about. You reach a juncture on the road, and you trust the algorithm. Maybe the junction is your career. Maybe it’s the decision to get married. But you trust the algorithm rather than your own intuition. 

The most important invention that’s spreading now is biometric sensors. They may become ubiquitous. Humans will consult their biometric data to determine how to live. That is really interesting and scary stuff, because we will no longer be in charge of our identity. We will outsource our executive decisions to biometric readings of our neurochemical signals to decide how to live.

Read more in the Atlantic.

Thanks, Kathy Wang

Equal Pay for Men and Women? Iceland Wants Employers to Prove It

Read more in the NYT.

Thanks, +Claire Packer 

A Disobedient Woman

Read the Nicaraguan reflection in the NYT.

Thanks +Claire Packer 

The path to market for digital tools for mental health and neurological conditions

What will digital clinical trials look like? Prescription "video games" and Digital therapeutics. It's all starting to happen. Read more in MobiHealthNews.

Thanks, Rohan

Kernel is trying to hack the human brain — but neuroscience has a long way to go

Read more in the Verge.

How Do Connectomes Contribute to Human Cognition?

Find out the answer in Scientific American.

I Used to Be a Human Being

"An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too." 

Read Andrew Sullivan's piece in the New Yorker. Thanks, +Adam Behrens 

In 2017, Pursue Meaning Instead of Happiness

Read more in the Science of Us.

The Coming Pressure on Professional Women

Read more in Bloomberg View.

How to Become a ‘Superager’

An excerpt: 

The road to superaging is difficult, though, because these brain regions have another intriguing property: When they increase in activity, you tend to feel pretty bad — tired, stymied, frustrated. Think about the last time you grappled with a math problem or pushed yourself to your physical limits. Hard work makes you feel bad in the moment. The Marine Corps has a motto that embodies this principle: “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” That is, the discomfort of exertion means you’re building muscle and discipline. Superagers are like Marines: They excel at pushing past the temporary unpleasantness of intense effort. Studies suggest that the result is a more youthful brain that helps maintain a sharper memory and a greater ability to pay attention. 

This means that pleasant puzzles like Sudoku are not enough to provide the benefits of superaging. Neither are the popular diversions of various “brain game” websites. You must expend enough effort that you feel some “yuck.” Do it till it hurts, and then a bit more.

Read more in the NYT. Thanks, Dad