Hi there! Please find below a selection of the books and papers that I've used in my talks. If you have any questions, you're welcome to get in touch with me directly via email. All the best, Ashkan Fardost hello@ashkan.io *** BOOKS *** MEDIA & COMMUNICATION THEORY “Understanding Media” by Marshall McLuhan "Preface to Plato" by Eric A. Havelock "Orality and Literacy" by Walter J. Ong "The Gutenberg Galaxy" by Marshall McLuhan "Interfaces of The Word" by Walter J. Ong "Laws of Media" by Eric & Marshall McLuhan SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY & COGNITIVE SCIENCE "The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nisbett "The Master and His Emissary" by Iain McGilchrist "Women, Fire & Dangerous Things" by George Lakoff “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt "Handbook of Cultural Psychology" by Shinou Kitayama & Dov Cohen "Madness & Modernism" by Louis Sass "The Mind's Eye" by Oliver Sacks ANTHROPOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life” by Emile Durkheim "Cosmos & History: The Myth of The Eternal Return" by Mircea Eliade “Reason and Revolution” by Herbert Marcuse “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” by Max Weber “Escape from Freedom” by Erich Fromm “Digital Libido” by Alexander Bard & Jan Söderqvist HISTORY “Ultra Society” by Peter Turchin “The Evolution of Civilizations” by Carroll Quigley "Empire and Communications" by Harold Innis “Guns, Germs & Steel” by Jared Diamond “Brand Luther” by Andrew Pettegree TECHNOLOGY & DATA SCIENCE “Everybody Lies” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz "The Inevitable" by Kevin Kelly *** PAPERS *** "A cross-linguistic evaluation of script-specific effects on fMRI lateralization in late second language readers" (Koyama et al., Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014) "Native language differences in the structural connectome of the human brain" (Wei et al., NeuroImage, 2023) "Occupational Neuroplasticity in the Human Brain: A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies" (Wu et al., Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2020) "Effects of Literacy in Early Visual and Occipitotemporal Areas of Chinese and French Readers" (Szwed et al., Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2014) "Culture Wires the Brain: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective" (Park & Huang, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2010) "Superior Underwater Vision in a Human Population of Sea Gypsies" (Gislén et al., Current Biology, 2003) "Cross-cultural effect on the brain revisited: Universal structures plus writing system variation" (Bolger et al., Human Brain Mapping, 2005) "Culture and Neuroplasticity" (Kitayama et al., Handbook of Advances in Culture and Psychology, Vol 5, pp 38-100, 2015) “Agriculture as a major evolutionary transition to human ultrasociality” (Gowdy J., Krall, L., Journal of Bioeconomics, 2014) “Eusociality: Origin and consequences” (Wilson, E. O., Hölldobler, B., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005) “Human Identity and the Evolution of Societies” (Moffett, M. W., Human Nature, 2013) “The ultrasocial origin of the Anthropocene” (Gowdy, J., Krall, L., Ecological Economics, 2013) “Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion” (Peoples, H. C., Duda, P., et al., Human Nature, 2016) “Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality” (Purzycki, B. G., Apicella, C., et al., Nature, 2016) “Religious and Sacred Imperatives in Human Conflict” (Atran, S., Ginges, J., Science, 2012) “Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols: The evolution of religion as an adaptive complex” (Alcorta, C. S., Sosis, R., Human Nature, 2005) “Subsistence and the Evolution of Religion” (Peoples, H. C., Marlowe, F. W., Human Nature, 2012) “The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion” (Bulbulia, J., Biology & Philosophy, 2004) “The ecology of religious beliefs” (Botero, C. A., Gardner, B., et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014) “The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality” (Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Science, 2008) “The Universality of Ancestor Worship” (Steadman, L. B., Palmer, C. T., et al., Ethnology, 1996) “The Recognition Signal Hypothesis for the Adaptive Evolution of Religion: A Phylogenetic Test with Christian Denominations” (Matthews, L. J., Human Nature, 2012)