O.K., so he studies the vaginal fatty acids of menstruating chimpanzees. Dr. Ryo Oda is also the author of a study that found that, well, really nice people look that way to others. (One clue: they smile a lot, genuinely.) Ordinary college students,...

She's baaack. My girl crush continues with this latest TED video featuring the empress of MIT's eponymous Saxelab, Rebecca Saxe. Saxe studies human theory of mind and morality. She discusses her experiment involving the hypothetical case of a white...

Is it possible to be too empathic, too tuned in to what others are feeling and thinking, even to point where it impairs your functioning? Sure, this is America, any excess is possible. Columbia researchers have found that folks with Borderline...

What, exactly, is wrong with shorn-n-horn-rimmed talk temptress Terry Gross (Fresh Air)? Does she, like, have any human emotions -- at all? I swear she's on the autism spectrum. Just today on the radio, she goes (paraphrase)"hmm you seem to be...

So, here comes this new book, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, by Frans de Waal, which seems to draw upon examples of animal empathy to prove its existence in humans. I haven't read the thing yet, but at this (albeit early)...