The Brain’s Politics: How Campaigns Are Framed and Why

Everything we learn, know and understand is physical — a matter of brain circuitry. This basic fact has deep implications for how politics is understood, how campaigns are framed, why conservatives and progressives talk past each other, and why progressives have more problems framing messages than conservatives do — and what they can do about it. In September, 2012, University of California at Berkeley cognitive science and linguistics professor George Lakoff discussed these issues with moderator Heather Hendershot, director of the graduate program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT.