Professionally, Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who specializes in the study our sense of morality. He is also an eloquent speaker and writer on the broader human condition. He has written the popular books The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind, both of which we highly recommend.

TED talks:

• The Moral Mind
• Religion, evolution, and self-transcendence
• (TED homepage)

Post-partisan social psychology This was a speech at a social psychology conference, which primarily points out that the social sciences are almost entirely devoid of conservatives, and calls for affirmative action. But more generally, we like his critique of how whole areas of investigation have been rendered taboo by liberal tenets of faith. There are a number of interesting comments about this talk on edge.org.