Matt Johnson

Boston

Freelance Contributor at Freelance

Author: Blindsight (2020) & Branding That Means Business (2022) Consumer Psychology, Neuroscience & Neuromarketing @hult_business | @thinkers50 2023 📚❤️er

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Articles

Christopher Rufo’s Pyrrhic Victory

1 month ago | quillette.com | Matt Johnson

The Trump administration has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from elite universities, including US$2.26 billion intended for Harvard, US$1 billion for Cornell, and US$400 million for Columbia.
RFK, Jr. and the End of Expertise

2 months ago | quillette.com | Geoffrey Kabat |Matt Johnson

During the Senate confirmation hearings earlier this year, it became clear that the man nominated by Donald Trump to become Secretary of Health and Human Services was completely unfit to run America’s leading public-health agency. Now that he has been confirmed, it is time to reckon with the likely consequences of that decision. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. insists he’s not anti-vaccine and that he just wants to ensure that vaccines are safe.
A Hollow Kind of Patriotism

2 months ago | quillette.com | Matt Johnson

In his speech at the RNC accepting the vice-presidential nomination last summer, J.D. Vance said: “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” This apparently banal observation has been a rallying cry for conservatives throughout the Trump era.
What Mr. Beast Teaches Us About The American Dream — Neuroscience Of

Mar 21, 2025 | neuroscienceof.com | Matt Johnson

There’s something uniquely captivating about peeking behind the curtain of a great mind. Whether it’s Beethoven’s notebooks, Steve Jobs’ keynote drafts, or a director’s storyboards, seeing how brilliance unfolds is a rare and privileged glimpse into the architecture of ambition.
The Political Foundations of the DOGE Scam

Mar 11, 2025 | quillette.com | R. Shep Melnick |Sonya Michel |Andy Lamey |Matt Johnson

At an unusually contentious cabinet meeting on 6 March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy got into an extended and heated argument with Elon Musk. Each side accused the other of lying. What was the burning issue at the heart of this confrontation? Ukraine? Immigration? Tariffs? No, the number of federal civil servants who should be fired immediately.
Podcast #270: ‘The Politics of the Academy Have Been Defeated’

Feb 1, 2025 | quillette.com | Helen Pluckrose |Matt Johnson |Gerald M. Steinberg |Aaron Sarin

Jonathan Kay: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Quillette Podcast, hosted on alternate weeks by me, Jonathan Kay, and by Iona Italia. Quillette is where free thought lives. We are an independent, grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary. You are about to hear a free preview of this week’s episode. To hear the full episode, and to get access to all our podcasts and articles, visit us at Quillette.com and click the Subscribe button.
Hatred and Indifference in Modern Australia

Dec 7, 2024 | quillette.com | Claire Lehmann |Lawrence Cahoone |Charlotte Allen |Matt Johnson

Two days after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis, I was sitting at my desk in the Sydney Central Business District. Zoe, my colleague, stood up from her desk with a worried look. Holding her phone, she told me that the New South Wales Board of Deputies had received a police warning: the safety of Jews in the city could not be guaranteed. The message she had just received was encouraging them to leave.
Podcast #262: Interintellect and the Modern-Day Salon

Dec 5, 2024 | quillette.com | Lawrence Cahoone |Charlotte Allen |Matt Johnson |Brian Stewart

Introduction: My guest this week is Anna Gat. Anna is a Hungarian émigré who is now happily based in New York. A former poet, screenwriter, and playwright, in 2016 Anna founded Interintellect: a platform that allows people to create discussion forums, talks followed by Q&A sessions, and more informal meetups, both online and in person. Interintellect now hosts one or two salons every day and subscribers to the platform number in the tens of thousands.
The Recline of the West

Dec 5, 2024 | quillette.com | Charlotte Allen |Matt Johnson |Brian Stewart |Lawrence Cahoone

Some commentators fear that the West is in decline or dying or committing suicide. Others look forward to this development. Still others claim there never has been a “West” to worry about. Each may be right about a different appendage of the elephant. The unipolar moment—the “end of history” in 1989 when the Cold War concluded and the West with its allies seemed triumphant—led to new globalisation, economic gains in the developing world, and an expansion of liberal democracy.
The Eerie Beauty of ‘Flow’

Dec 4, 2024 | quillette.com | Charlotte Allen |Matt Johnson |Brian Stewart |Joel Kotkin

On the surface, Gints Zilbalodis’s Flow is simple enough that even a toddler can enjoy it. The plot and stakes are lessons in ruthless efficiency. A lonesome cat—named Flow in promotional material—has to survive on a small boat when a flood surges across the Earth. As the film progresses, the boat’s “crew” comes to include a capybara, a lemur, a secretary bird, and a golden retriever.