artexplains.com

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About the Author

Xander (Ph.D., Psychology) runs a YouTube channel called ARTexplains—the ART standing for his initials, Alexander R. Toftness—where he uploads scientific videos and scientific-but-humorous videos because he has a condition where he thinks he’s funny. There is no cure. His typical topics are unusual stories from science and history, usually about human folly. He belongs to WeCreateEDU, a collective of educational YouTube channels.

Xander earned his PhD in (cognitive) psychology in 2022, studying individual differences in perception, cognitive consequences of brain injuries (e.g., prosopagnosia, aphantasia), metacognition in college students, and how people learn from videos.

Since 2014, his passion for science communication has driven him to make content for the Internet, making his dream of creating non-fiction… non-fiction. Besides videos, he has a bunch of academic and not-so-academic publications that you can find links to around this website. Highlights include:

• Writing a whole dang neuropsychology book.
• Accidentally getting a ligament of the human body named after him (the Xander Ligament).
• Winning a jury award in the 2019 American Psychological Association’s PsycShort Video Contest with his video on Akinetopsia.
• Running an organ donor pledge drive as part of his video on the history of organ transplantation.
• Working with world-renowned researchers on his video about Munchausen and Malingering.
• Creating a comprehensive documentary about Dr. Cotton’s focal sepsis theory, in which he believed removing teeth cured insanity, with footage from the original insane asylum courtesy of Abandoned New Jersey.

If you are so inclined, you can support his science communication efforts through PayPal at PayPal.Me/ARToftness or through his Patreon page.

Xander can be reached at alexander.toftness@gmail.com for business inquiries (bizinks, as they are called by no one).