Rebecca is that weird person reading a book by herself in a restaurant. She’s a parent, an atheist in a very red state, an amateur pianist, a student of the German language, and curator of a joyfully bizarre music collection, with room for everything from grime-punk to metal to Bach cantatas. She is curious about so many things, but particularly cognitive science, music, language, parenting, the history of medicine, and psychology and mental health. Rebecca has degrees in English and Linguistics and has held a variety of writing jobs over the years, including grant writing for nonprofits, copy editing for a publishing company, and most recently, proposal writing. Email: brannicr [at] gmail.com
by Rebecca Baumgartner It feels like every week tech journalism brings us a dispatch about the “end” of something: we’re told now that we’re reaching the end of foreign-language education due to advances in AI translation. It’s true that no field of study is immune from journalistic swagger about our AI-saturated future, but this seems…
by Rebecca Baumgartner During the recent Christmas shopping rush, I had to park at the very back of a crowded Target parking lot. By the time I trekked across the lot and reached the door of the store, my knees felt a bit achy. Not a big deal. After about half an hour of walking…
by Rebecca Baumgartner I never intentionally set out to read what one critic referred to as “landfill nonfiction,” and yet it seems harder than ever to avoid falling into such a book by accident. The term is a bit harsh, but you probably already have some idea of what kind of books I’m talking about. …
by Rebecca Baumgartner I’m currently reading The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in translation, and it’s got me thinking about how much we rely on translators to bring us literature from around the world, and how important it is to be able to trust what they tell us. I can only imagine the patience and creativity, the…
by Rebecca Baumgartner A few months ago, I was eating dinner at a restaurant and the manager stopped by to see how I was doing. When he saw me reading War and Peace, we got into a conversation about what the book was about, why it was so long, and whether it was worth it…
by Rebecca Baumgartner I was looking at a grammar worksheet my fourth-grader recently brought home, and the instructions said to “Underline the predicate of each sentence.” I paused for a moment. What exactly is a predicate, again? Is it a fancy way of saying verb phrase? Or direct object? Or…what, exactly? You might think I…
by Rebecca Baumgartner “So why are you learning German?” I don’t remember who first asked me this, but over the following two weeks, it was a question I’d answer about 60 times. And each time, I struggled to come up with a satisfying answer – and not just because of the limits of my intermediate-straining-towards-upper-intermediate…
by Rebecca Baumgartner In the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” (2013), two romantic partners, Martha and Ash, move into Ash’s childhood home together. As they’re settling in for their first night in their new home, Ash finds a photo of himself as a little boy, one of the few left out after his mom…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Imagine someone sitting cross-legged on the floor and breathing deeply. Now imagine someone sitting on a couch and playing a video game. Which of these is mindfulness and which is escapism? What differentiates them? Why does one seem healthier or more virtuous than the other? And what assumptions about human cognition and…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Do you watch TV with subtitles, even when watching something in your native language? I never used to, but over the past 10 years or so, it started to feel more and more necessary, and now if I try to watch something without them, I inevitably miss a few bits of dialogue…
by Rebecca Baumgartner I don’t want to write this and you don’t want to read it. But this is the world we live in. As I write this, it’s been three weeks since a man without a criminal record legally purchased a trunk-full of guns, opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets mall and killed…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Last year, I watched a Kurzgesagt video about the science of how gratitude practices can make you happier, so I decided to start a gratitude journal. It could only help, right? I started jotting down a variety of things I was grateful for: my family, my piano, my cats and dog, my…
by Rebecca Baumgartner A Conversation “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” –Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1791 “Many others … say that it is dangerous and absurd to base modern public safety on…
by Rebecca Baumgartner A few years ago when I was working at a large corporation, I walked into the lobby one morning in March, bleary-eyed and clutching a thermos of coffee, and was startled to see an enormous pink banner covered in flowers, proclaiming in a swirling cursive font that the company was “honoring women”…
by Rebecca Baumgartner The cultural cachet of classical music and the countercultural tone of metal music would initially seem at odds with each other – one represents the Man, the other rails against him. Even many of the aficionados of both types of music would agree with that assessment. However, the listener unencumbered with such…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Parenting is one of the domains where certain people scoff at the idea that reading a book or article could possibly be helpful. “That’s nice and all,” the complaint goes, “but when it comes to real life, all those ideal scenarios fly out the window.” The other group of parents, the ones…
by Rebecca Baumgartner While watching a Christmas movie recently and hearing a character describe something as a “Christmas miracle,” my 8-year-old son scornfully exclaimed, “That’s not a Christmas miracle, that’s a Christmas coincidence!” He was right, of course, but despite that outburst, he’s not the kind of kid who would tell the other third-graders that…
by Rebecca Baumgartner There’s a fascinating figure wandering aimlessly around the halls of psychology on the internet, and his name is Robert Epstein. Epstein is a 69-year-old psychologist who trained in B.F. Skinner’s pigeon lab in the 70s and now works at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California, a nonprofit supporting…
by Rebecca Baumgartner We prefer not to think about our own ignorance. We hope it sorts itself out as we get older and presumably wiser. We especially resent having it pointed out to us – which of course is very counterproductive if the goal is to get rid of it. The better approach is to…
by Rebecca Baumgartner There’s a pervasive idea that there must be works of art and culture that contain “people who look like me,” where “looking like” is usually scanned as race, ethnicity, sex, or gender expression. This clique-ish attitude masquerades as liberalism and can twist your head in knots if you let it: rather than…