Ethan Watters
Ethan Watters is an author and journalist who has spent the last two decades writing about psychiatry and social psychology.
PROJECTS
Pacific Standard
We Aren’t the World
In the Summer of 1995, a young graduate student in anthropology at UCLA named Joe Henrich traveled to Peru to carry out some fieldwork among the Machiguenga, an indigenous people who live north of Machu Picchu in the Amazon basin. The Machiguenga had traditionally been horticulturalists who lived in single-family, thatch-roofed houses in small hamlets composed of clusters of extended families. For sustenance, they relied on local game and produce from small-scale farming. They shared with the...
Texas Monthly
The Love Story that Upended the Texas Prison System
In 1967, a 56-year-old lawyer met a young inmate with a brilliant mind and horrifying stories about life inside. Their complicated alliance—and even more complicated romance—would shed light on a nationwide scandal, disrupt a system of abuse and virtual slavery across the state, and change incarceration in Texas forever.
Pacific Standard
The Organ Detective: Hidden Global Market in Human Flesh ...
The Organ Detective: Hidden Global Market in Human ...
Discover Magazine
Why Do People Behave Nicely?
Why Do People Behave Nicely?
No one may ever know unless social psychologists shake off their fascination with jerks
woollymag.com
Fermenting Unrest
I’m a sucker for food trends. I get my dietary health advice primarily from tabloid headlines, and I usually believe only information that confirms my preexisting tastes and biases. “Drinking more coffee leads to a longer life,” says CNN. Got it. Red meat “can be part of a heart healthy diet,” proclaims Fox News. Great! “Adding Red Wine To Hot Chocolate Is The Answer For Everything,” reports the Huffington Post. I knew that all along.
Kombucha was a little bit outside of my comfort zone, but ...
The New York Times
The Way We Live Now - 10-14-01 - In My Tribe - NYTimes.com
The new meaning of friendship for a generation delaying marriage
Modern Luxury
The Next Big One Is Coming—Ready or Not
Some thoughts about the disaster in San Francisco's future
Pacific Standard
The Problem With Psychiatry, the ‘DSM,’ and the Way We Study Mental Illness
Psychiatry is under attack for not being scientific enough, but the real problem is its blindness to culture. When it comes to mental illness, we wear the disorders that come off the rack.
Crazy Like Us: The Book
CRAZY LIKE US
The most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture across the globe has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters, but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself. American-style depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia have begun to spread around the world like contagions, and the virus is us.
nikolas.net
Nikolas Weinstein designed a huge glass installation for Frank ...
Creating of one of the world's largest glass sculptures comes with a lot of heartbreaks.
Pacific Standard
The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Your Cherished ...
The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and You...
openletters.net
Ethan Watters – on why he gambles. | Open Letters
Ethan Watters – on why he gambles. | Open Letters