The Leading Brain summary

Football fans know Zinedine Zidane as one of the greatest football players ever – but many also remember him for one moment during the 2006 World Cup final, when he headbutted an Italian player.

The collective reaction of spectators everywhere was along the lines of, “What was he thinking?!” But the truth was, Zidane likely wasn’t thinking at all.

The commonalities between Barack Obama and Jennifer Aniston may not be readily apparent, but like many others, they’ve both found it difficult to quit smoking. Regardless of your strengths in other aspects of life, habits can get the better of us no matter who we are.

Psychologists at the University of Southern California believe that habits account for around 45 percent of our day-to-day lives.

Something’s not right. This was the feeling a lieutenant fireman had one day as he led his team in putting out a kitchen fire. As they were struggling to put out the flames in the kitchen, he was noticing that the living room was far hotter than it should be. He quickly ordered his team to evacuate, and just seconds after they did, the floor of the living room collapsed into a pit of flames.

This is another example of the power of the unconscious mind. The fireman didn’t think there was something wrong, he felt it. His unconscious mind was trying to tell him something, otherwise known as an intuition, and he acted upon it. It shows us that, sometimes, thinking less is the smartest thing you can do.

In 1961, comic books were forever changed when the writer Stan Lee unveiled one of his greatest creations, the Fantastic Four. Each member of the team has their own unique superpower: invisibility, super strength, the ability to create and control fire and the power to stretch like taffy.

The Fantastic Four are definitely the stuff of wild fantasy – but they can also teach us something about how the best teams in business operate.

There’s a saying you probably heard as a child that goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It’s a nice thought, but scientists now know what a lot of kids are well aware of: words can and do hurt.

When someone attacks with sticks or words, the same areas in the brain are activated, which shows that physical pain and social pain have a lot in common.