Blogs with the same feeling as This American Life?

October 2, 2009 10:20 AM

I'm looking for blogs about psychology, storytelling, emotions, why people do the things they do, the human condition, or just good blogs with people's stories.

I've been finding some good stuff in this past AskMe. (For example, this blog would be great, if it were still active.) Is there more out there? They can be funny, curious and thoughtful, analytical, whatever, so long as what they're really about is what makes people tick. (In case this question is too vague, my past book questions are asking for similar stuff.)

Basically, I'd like to spend the bus ride home from work every day shifting out of "to do" list mode and remembering what it's like to be a human being.

posted by salvia to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

It's not perfectly on-point for your question, but along these lines I just love The Last Psychiatrist. And it just so happens they have a MeFi reference up top right now! Funny coincidence, I hadn't even checked it today.
posted by rhizome at 10:50 AM on October 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Cognitive Daily

PsychologyToday blogs

Overcoming Bias (very analytical, focused on cognitive biases)

Garden of Forking Paths (free will)

Splintered Mind (philosophy mixed with psychology)

This might be a little out of left field, but my dad's blog has stories, observations on life and the human condition, etc.

I won't link to it here, but if you go to my blog in my profile I have a "psychology" tag you might be interested in.
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:24 AM on October 2, 2009

Best answer: some from my feedreader: Raising Smart Girls, Loving the Tasmanian Devil, Sliding vs. Deciding, Bitch PhD, Casaubon's Book, The Hathor Legacy, Alas A Blog. I also heart everything on salon.com's Life section (not technically a blog, but since I subscribe to RSS, it in some way becomes one for me)
posted by Jurate at 11:51 AM on October 2, 2009

Gaijin Smash - an interesting look at Japanese culture and students from the perspective of an American ESL teacher. Hilarious and interesting stories about adapting to new social norms, how the locals react and interact with him, and the odd little behaviors every culture has.
posted by chambers at 2:54 PM on October 2, 2009

Best answer: The psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley has a blog called OnFiction with this mandate:

OnFiction is a magazine with the aim of developing the psychology of fiction. Using theoretical and empirical perspectives, we endeavour to understand how fiction is created, and how readers and audience members engage in it.

Articles are added three times a week, and we maintain archives of academic papers, magazine articles, film and book reviews, original fiction, as well as annotated lists of psychologically significant works of fiction and books on the psychology of fiction.
posted by Beardman at 3:27 PM on October 2, 2009

Response by poster: All of these are great so far, thanks for the suggestions.

I slightly prefer the ones that are literary to the more scientific or newsy ones...
posted by salvia at 7:29 PM on October 2, 2009

Best answer: You might like Blue to Blue then -- he's a psychiatrist with a love for poetry, literature and meaning.
posted by fraula at 12:32 AM on October 3, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. I enjoyed checking out all of these blogs, and I'm just marking as best the answers with blogs I'm still reading regularly.
posted by salvia at 10:09 PM on March 25, 2010