Episode 282: Fearful Symmetry (Borges' "Death and the Compass")

Published: April 16, 2024, 6:36 p.m.

A Rabbi is found dead in a hotel room, stabbed in the chest. The\xa0room is filled with Kabbalah texts and a single page in an typewriter\xa0that reads \u201cThe first letter of the name has been written.\u201d The\xa0celebrated detective and \u201creasoning machine\u201d Erik L\xf6nnrot suspects a\xa0rabbinical explanation but is he seeing patterns that may not be\xa0there? David and Tamler get out their pipes, magnifying glasses, and\xa0deerstalker hats to unravel another Borges mystery: \u201cDeath and the\xa0Compass.\u201d

Plus a new study on why men make errors about whether women are flirting with them, the latest in our series on studies that employ\xa0erotic fiction.

Links:

A Dress Is Not a Yes: Towards an Indirect Mouse-Tracking Measure of Men\u2019s Overreliance on Global Cues in the Context of Sexual Flirting

Pinpointing the psychological factors linked to men's misjudgments of women's sexual interest

Death and the Compass by Jorge Luis Borges [wikipedia.org]