A Thousand Things to Talk About

720: Chores

716: Squee

The lexicon available to us to express delight, excitement, joy, or any number of other emotions, doesn’t always feel quite adequate, at least in the English language. There could be ten thousand available words, but that doesn’t mean one will...

713: Clean Your Plate

I’ll give fair warning here — if you have any kind of a fraught relationship with food, then following up on any of the research mentioned in today’s episode (or heck, today’s episode in general) could be very triggering. I...

711: Too Hard On Yourself

In 2013, two researchers published in the Journal of Psychology integration a review of the research and discussion of the phenomena of self-criticism. That particular paper defined self-criticism as, quote: a conscious evaluation of one-self that can be a healthy and...

710: Leadership

Leadership is one of those topics that seems to come up time and time again. Back in episode 486, we examined what it means to be a supervisor, and the fact that only one-third or so of people aspire to...

706: Personal Style

Though the phrase “style switching” is generally used to refer to how someone chooses and then alters their words, phrasing, and cadence of speech, there’s a number of other situations where that same type of shifting applies. It’s important to...

700: Never With Co-Workers

Not entirely surprisingly, most of the research about what you should and shouldn’t talk about work is done mostly by companies that want to do some search engine optimization and earned media from having their survey or study reported on....

698: On-Screen

In February of this year, there was a big spike of search volume for 1 in 4 blank have appeared on TV. Turns out that was a clue on a crossword, and the answer the crossword was “Americans.” Try as...

697: Future Vision

In general, humans tend to be terrible at thinking about the future. There’s a lot of reasons for this, but it certainly has an impact. Why is this? As Jane McGonigal writes in Slate, quote: Our future selves are strangers to...

696: Semi-Sweet

In 1897, a researcher who was looking for additional uses for coal tar derivatives tasted something sweet on his hands, and in an example of the most brave type of science, he tasted everything in his lab to figure out...

Producer Takeover

Jeremiah grabs the mic.

695: Freak

To streak or fleck randomly, or perhaps a brave Scottish man, or maybe imprudent. Whatever linguistic base you choose to look at, the word freak has had a surprisingly similar usage for the last 500 years or so. Then again,...

694: Generational Stereotype

Technically, I’m an older millennial. In many ways, one could argue that I’m the stereotypical millennial – I work a job in social media job, I’ve got a podcast, I got married via a handfasting, heck, I’ve even made my...

693: Friendship Age

The friends that you have around you have a big impact on your life. Research tells us that our friends can do everything from impact our health choices to the level of happiness we express.. Or even how long we...

692: Single Issue Voter

No matter what kind of democratic or vote-based governmental system you happen to be a part of, if you have the right to and access to voting and choose to vote, there’s something that leads to you voting for who...

691: Good Service

No matter what kind of business you’re in, usually being in a business means relying on customers actually being willing to pay for whatever it is you are selling or doing. A big part of that particular effort is providing...

690: Official Teacher

Learning is a lifelong process, and that means in many ways so is teaching. While many or most of us have the experience of interacting with official teachers that have been given or have taken the official role of providing...

688: Comeback Culture

A while ago, I went to an event that had 1970s disco as the theme. Among all of the full-body jumpsuits, sequins, white athleisure wear, and glitter – I overheard a number of very interesting conversations. Specifically, that the clothes...

687: Surprising

In 2015, a new book hit the market that explored something truly surprising — surprise itself. Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected by Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger explores what surprise is, why it’s important to have surprise...

686: Place to Live

If you’re lucky enough to have a choice of where you may live, then it’s a choice that could have a big impact on the life that you live from that point forward. While the question of correlation and causation...

685: Creative

For such a popular and often-discussed topic, creativity sure can be tough to define. After all, part of the joy of creativity is that it really depends on how you personally interact with the creative parts of your existence. Freakonomics...

684: Useful study

The value of a college degree — or a path of long-term intense study, no matter what the topic — is one of those things that is consistently and hotly debated around the world. The idea is, of course, that...

683: Interest Rates

In central banks around the world, setting and adjusting interest rates serves as one of the primary methods of impacting how money flows around their economies. Those interest rates don’t directly impact the interest rates that consumers pay or receive,...

682: Reviewed

The internet runs on reviews, and many of our actions these days do too, even if we don’t realize it. For example, RevLocal found in a 2018 survey that 42% of people simply will not use a business with less...

681: Incarcerated

Incarceration, as a practice, tends to be one that is intended to separate individuals entirely from the social and personal bonds that create communities. The experience of that separation has a very big impact on the communities that individuals are...

Archive: 216

If you want encouragement on not giving up, you can find it just about anywhere. Elbert Hubbard is often quoted for saying “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” while self help books far and wide have some...

Archive: 519

Full episode script Body size and it’s supposed connection to health isn’t a new thing in the world, but it has been a particular obsession in the Western World for the last hundred years or so. Quoting extensively from a Slate...

Archive: 450

Have you ever met someone with your same first and last name? Full episode script In a 2012 story for NPR, Alan Greenblatt talked to hundreds of people who share names with celebrities, highlighting that some companies were starting to use these...

Archive: 384

Back around 2003 in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control (of all agencies) started tracking statistics about cell phones and landline use in the United States. They did so to ensure that their health interview statistics accounted for...

Archive: 469

It was exactly 1 year ago, to the day, that I caught a cold. So it’s particularly amusing in some ways that once again, I’ve got a cold bad enough that I can’t get through recording a single episode...

680: Outdoor Access

Do you work or spend your days somewhere that you don’t have a window or access to the outdoors? A 2011 study out of Norway tells us that you’re five times more likely to bring in plants or photographs of...

679: Career Choice

For my high school graduation, one of my aunts gave me a book published in the 1920s – How to Choose a Career Path. While it’s tempting to giggle at the fact that the book suggested either nurse or teacher...

678: Sports fan

Sports are one of those things that can be incredibly polarizing — before you even talk about what kind of sport, what kind of team, or the referees of those particular sports. In 2017, Gallup asked Americans if they considered...

677: Monthly personal goals

Try as I might, I have not been able to find a good history of or even “we were there first” claim for the idea of 30 day challenges. What I have found, however, is literally thousands of options for...

676: A year ago

Perspective and memory are interesting things. Our memories of the past are shaped and re-shaped by a nearly infinite number of factors that all interact in ways we only somewhat understand. Combine that with questions about things we’ve already experienced,...

675: Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping is a task that both is reflective of the current norms of a culture — and can impact that same culture. It’s a combination of the relationship we have with food, food production, eating habits, food preparation habits,...

674: Competition

In 2012, researchers published in the Psychological Bulletin took a look at prior research and new research that asked i competition had any impact on performance. Quote: The first meta-analysis revealed that there is no noteworthy relation between competition and performance....

673: Health Tracking

Back in episode 206, we talked about measuring health, specifically through self-tracking apps and measurements. To quote partially from that episode: The numbers those devices measure – number of steps, calories in and out, sleep, movement — are all things that...

672: Tragic Dates

Tragedy and trauma are pretty much a universal. Nearly everyone has something in their life that is painful or difficult to remember or process. It may be a national tragedy, an international event, or a very personal moment. Whatever the...

671: Uncomfortable

Uneasy, awkward, disquieting… while there are plenty of definitions and synonyms for “uncomfortable” there isn’t really a hard line of what’s uncomfortable vs what is painful, especially when you’re talking about emotional responses. For every person this varies, but the...

670: Parade

In one form or fashion, many people have likely been a part of a parade of some kind. Then again, that really depends on how you define “parade” — because there are many types. Quoting from Merriam-Webster’s breakdown of the...

669: Classy

Sometime between 2006 and 2011, an idea started to filter up through the morass of information that was and is the internet — offering online college classes — for free — to anyone who wanted to take them. Now called...

667: Communities

Community is important, both sociologically and in our collective psyche. According to Google’s nGram viewer, use of the word community in books has increased ten times over in the last 100 years, and there’s a very good reason or it....

666: Millennial

Ok, first, let’s all agree that there was likely a collective groan at the mere mention of the world Millennial. The Pew Research Center defines this generational group as anyone born between 1981 and 1996, and it’s a generation that...

665: Spend more

Is there anything more stressful than the worry that a decision you’ve made may have been the wrong one, without ever really knowing for sure? Money, as a proxy for resources, is often a source of stress because how we...

664: Comfort Reading

Quote: Your favourite books are like irresistible […] your first loves – we are fated to return to them, even though we know they can never change, they’ll always be just as they were. […] just like those shadowy former...

663: Credit Score

Big personal disclosure time. In my adult life, I’ve been literally through the full range of credit scores, as measured in the United States. I’ve had scores as low as just over 370 and as high as the 790s. The...

662: Recess

Look up the research on recess – as in times of unstructured, often outdoor, play for kids, and it’s all pretty darn clear. Recess helps improve test scores. Recess helps improve physical fitness. Recess creates kids with better problem solving...

661: Counter-culture

Quote: ”People really could imagine a different way for society to be organized,” said Gustin Reichbach, 56, who marched with Students for a Democratic Society at Columbia in 1968 and is now a New York State Supreme Court justice. ”Nobody’s talking...

660: Single Moment

Human memory is not logical. It is not linear. And it is not perfect. What human memory is, however, is very flexible. Which, let’s be honest, can sometimes be kind of frustrating. When it comes to remembering the things that...