Your antennae are up months before it comes. You’ve gotten to the point where, if Leo Varadkar says something won’t happen, you brace yourself for its certain announcement, in good time. When the axe finally falls, you’re on holidays in Donegal in July, and the uncomfortable reality sinks in that the house and the rain-sodden … Read more
In the controversy surrounding the leaking of a confidential document by then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar last year, a key point has been missed regarding whistleblower Chay Bowes’s motivations. As an insider and former head of the VHI Homecare division Bowes gained significant insights into the operation of the Irish health system, especially the HSE. This … Read more
In response to COVID-19: how are we to explain people drawing starkly differing conclusions from the same data? To understand this requires a search for context and motivation. In the second series of the Duffer Brothers Stranger Things, set not uncoincidentally in 1984, there is a critical scene in which the story reaches its conclusion. … Read more
Fear plays a major role in influencing the decisions we make and the actions we engage in. Research has shown that there are sound evolutionary reasons for this. The selection pressures from these types of danger have resulted in domain-specificity in the reactivity of the fear system, meaning that the system has evolved special sensitivity … Read more