Fraternities are influential and the top ones are morally bankrupt

 Salon -"There’s social status in breaking social norms": When the corrosive effects of Greek life spill out

 

Chauncey DeVega interview with Max Marshall

 

 This interview with Marshall covers some of the history of fraternities (trying to exclude the rural poor from their clubs) , and their current status (still enormously influential as a network). The most popular, richest frats are not gentleman's clubs, but really a den of illegality and immorality-- the power in being the bad guys. They do not believe that the law or social conventions apply to them, but this is not just the cynical exemptions that those in power seek. Marshall suggests that the values are indeed inverted: there is more status in being wicked than honorable. One interesting point Marshall makes is that the movie "Animal House" saved frats-- they were languishing as establishment bastions in the 70s, but rebranded themselves as counter-cultural havens (without the economic resistance) after the movie was so successful.

The Triune theory of cognitive evolution is popular but (probably) wrong

 Big Think - What Carl Sagan Got Very Wrong About the Human Brain

Ross Pomeroy

Carl Sagan wrote a book about human evolution (a field admittedly out of his ken) that advocated for a particular and rather fringe academic theory. The Triune brain theory by Paul MacLean theorized that the human brain had three parts of layers: a reptilian, mamalian/limbic, and cognitive (primates and humans). This theory did not have much respectability with academics who studied the issue then (or now), but Sagan's reputation and popularization of the theory means it is has had a widespread effect on popular understanding (e.g. the bad theory is often found in text books).