Human Potential Lab

Today we have Dr. Gleb Tsipursky on the podcast. Dr. Tsipursky is passionate about promoting truth, rational thinking, and wise decision-making. He is a tenure-track professor at Ohio State, serves as the volunteer President of the nonprofit Intentional Insights, is a co-founder of the Pro-Truth Pledge, and the author of a number of a number of books, most notably the #1 Amazon bestseller The Truth Seeker¹s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide. He is currently working on a book on relationships and cognitive bias.

In this interview we discuss:

• Gleb’s humble worldview
• How humans are not adapted to evaluate reality clearly
• “The backfire effect”
• How to make better choices aligned with reality
• When should we rely on our gut?
• How we so often fall prey to the “fundamental attribution error”
• Ways we can recognize the thinking errors that prevent us from seeing reality more clearly
• How friends can be the enemies of wise choices
• The irrationality of political decisions
• The importance of differentiating between the truth and personal values
• How Gleb derives his personal values
• Why people lose so much money in the stock market
• Why you don’t want to invest in a mutual funds
• Why the mainstream media be careful when they criticize conservatives
• The one thing Trump got right in Charlottesville
• How to convince your enemies to collaborate with you
• How Gleb escaped the darkness of mental illness through his rational approach to living
• How we can protect our happiness against emotional traps
• Gleb’s “Pro-Truth Pledge” (https://www.protruthpledge.org)
• How you can live the life you want to live

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Today it’s great to have Cara Santa Maria on the podcast. Cara is an Emmy and Knight Foundation Award winning journalist, science communicator, television personality, author, and podcaster. She is a correspondent on National Geographic’s flagship television series Explorer, and she is the creator and host of a weekly science podcast called Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria. Cara also co-hosts the popular Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast, and hosts the new podcast Fixed That for You. Additionally, she co-authored the Skeptics Guide to the Universe book with her podcast co-hosts and is the spokesperson for National Geographic’s Almanac 2019. Cara is a founding member of the Nerd Brigade and cofounded the annual science communication retreat #SciCommCamp.

In this episode we discuss:

• The importance of studying the good death from a multidisciplinary perspective
• The challenges working with at-risk adolescent youth
• What it was like for Cara to shift focus from public science communicator to graduate school
• Cara’s focus on social justice and diversity within her clinical psychology research
• How depression and anxiety look different in different cultures and among different languages
• Barriers to accessibility to studying psychology through a social justice lens
• Cara’s personal hurdles as a woman in science
• Cara’s personal experience with Neil deGrasse Tyson
• The real meaning of free speech
• How #BelieveAllWomen and due process are not diametrically opposed to each other
• The importance of taking into account base rates when reasoning about the prevalence of sexual abuse
• The importance of being as unbiased as possible when encountering individuals
• Balancing #BelieveAllWomen with #NotAllMen
• The need for a multi-pronged approach to making social change
• What to do when social justice narratives conflict with the data
• The importance of existential-humanistic psychology

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Today it’s great to have Gustav Kuhn on the show. Born in Switzerland,  Kuhn discovered his passion for magic at the age of 13, and much of his teenage years were dedicated to the art of illusion and deception.  At the age of 19 he moved to London to follow his dream of becoming a professional magician, but his career took a dramatic change after he discovered a keen interest for psychology. Gustav went on to study psychology at Sussex University, and towards the end of his PhD, he noticed a direct link between magic and psychology. His unique background in science and magic allowed him to build bridges between these two domains, which helped him establish a science of magic. Kuhn is now a Reader at Goldsmiths University of London, and director of the MAGIC-Lab (Mind Attention & General Illusory Cognition).  He is one of the pioneering researchers in the Science of Magic and he is one of the founding members and president of the Science of Magic Association. His latest book is called “Experiencing the Impossible: The Science of Magic”.

• What is the link between psychology and magic?
• The link between perception and magic
• What is magic? What is not magic?
• The link between magic and well-being
• Early childhood experiences of magicians
• The link between magic and creativity
• The role of misdirection in magic
• The neural basis of magic
• Do we all experience the same magic?
• The “magician’s force”
• The potential for using magic for bad ends
• Will magicians ever become obsolete in the age of machines?
• The link between magic and human-machine interaction
• How we can use science to enhance the magic endeavor

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Today we have David Brooks on the podcast. Brooks is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and appears regularly on “PBS NewsHour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He teaches at Yale University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the bestselling author of a number of books, including The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement; The New Upper Class and How They Got There; The Road to Character, and most recently, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life.

In this episode we discuss:

• The evolution of David’s thinking about character
• The relationship between our commitments and our fulfillment in life
• Brook’s criticism of self-actualization taken to the extreme
• The four crises of our time
• David’s current stance on reparations
• Why David is a “border stalker”
• How David reconciles the need for commitment with identity fluidity
• Commitment vs. individualism
• The importance of healthy transcendence
• The enunciation moment
• What we can do about the current political landscape
• David’s thoughts on polyamory and the single life

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Today it’s great to have Stoya on the podcast. Stoya has been working with sexuality for over a decade. Her writing credits include the New York Times, The Guardian, and Playboy. Her first book of essays, Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn is available through Not A Cult Media, and her experimental porn project lives at ZeroSpaces.com. (Note: This episode is very explicit, so if that’s not your thing, please enjoy one of the other other 167 episodes of The Psychology Podcast. If you do listen to this episode, please stick around all the way to the end, as we really enjoyed tying it all together at the end of the episode!)

In this episode we discuss a wide range of topics, including:

• What is porn?
• What is good porn?
• Can there be feminism under capitalism?
• Stoya’s critique of “liberal feminists”
• The importance of values that transcend sexual preferences
• How our collective conception of “normal sex” leaves out a whole lot of sexual preferences that “normal” people have
• Focault on how preventing the discussion of sex is making us even more obsessed with sex
• The science of sexual fantasies
• Are there any sexual fantasies that are damaging to normalize?
• What we can learn about privacy from pornstars
• The benefits/disadvantages of choosing a porn career
• Comparing/contrasting BDSM with monogamy
• Why BDSM is too wide a category to be considered a sexual orientation
• Why Stoya has to be physically aroused in order to be creative in a porn scene
• How Scott and Stoya know each other
• Which author – from anytime thru history – would Stoya like to go out partying with? And what would her drink of choice be for such an occasion?
• The link between ADHD and creativity

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Today we have David Sloan Wilson and Steven Hayes on the podcast. David Sloan Wilson is president of The Evolution Institute and a SUNY distinguished professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University. Sloan Wilson applies evolutionary theory to all aspects of humanity in addition to the biological world. His books include Darwin’s Cathedral, Evolution for Everyone, The Neighborhood Project, and Does Altruism Exist? Steven C. Hayes is foundation professor in the department of psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno. An author of forty-four books and over 600 scientific articles, his career has focused on an analysis of the nature of human language and cognition, and the application of this to the understanding and alleviation of human suffering and the promotion of human prosperity. Hayes has received several awards, including the Impact of Science on Application Award from the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT).

Together, they edited the recent book, “Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Predicting, and Influencing Human Behavior.”

In this episode we cover a lot of ground, including:

• Steven’s perspective on language and cognition
• The difference between evolutionary science and evolutionary psychology
• How Skinner thought of himself as an evolutionary psychologist
• How evolutionary theory needs to take a step back and taken into account variation selection
• How evolutionary science need to be an applied discipline
• How evolutionary psychology done right acknowledges both an innate and adaptive component
• Why Steven Hayes thinks that 98% of the research we’re doing in psychology might be wrong
• Steven’s criticism of psychometric research (he thinks it’s “going down”!)
• The first time Steven encountered David’s work and how it made him cry
• Steven’s criticism of how the term “genetic” is used in the psychological literature
• Separating “pop evolutionary psychology” from good evolutionary science
• Renee Duckworth’s skeleton metaphor
• The tension between evolutionary change and stability
• Why we need to look at function, context, and longitudinal development in order to really balance flexibility and structure, 
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as managing the evolutionary process
• How multidimensionality and multi-level thinking allows us to manage evolutionary processes like never before
• Their upcoming book on prosociality 

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“There is a surplus of charismatic leaders with a fascinating dark side.” — Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Today it’s great to have Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic on the podcast. Tomas is the Chief Talent Scientist at ManpowerGroup, a professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. He’s the author of Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It)  as well as 9 other books, and over 160 scientific publications. He is the co-founder of DeeperSignals and Metaprofiling and a regular contributor to HBR, FastCompany, and BusinessInsider. You can find him on Twitter @drtcp or at www.drtomas.com.

• Limitations of the “lean in” approach
• Tomas’s alternative explanation for the existence of gender differences in leadership
• How people focus more on confidence than competence
• How we emphasize charisma more than humility
• How we are more likely to select narcissistic individuals for leadership positions than people with integrity
• Gender differences in narcissism
• Is masculinity necessarily toxic?
• Why we waste so much money on unconscious bias training
• How do we get more women in leadership roles?
• The better way to select talented people in the workplace than using gender quotas
• Do nice guys finish last?

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-podcast/support

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“Whether you think you’re better than everybody or worse than everybody, you’re still assuming that you are different than everybody.” — Mark Manson

Today it’s great to have Mark Manson on the podcast. His blog, markmanson.net, attracts more than two million readers per month. Mark is the New York Times and international bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck (with over 6 million in sales in the US alone) and his latest book is called Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why we are a culture in need of hope
• The paradox of progress
• How self-control is an illusion
• How to learn to communicate to yourself effectively
• “Emo Newton’s” laws of emotion
• Mark’s definition of growth
• How to start your own religion
• The paradox of hope
• How hope can be incredibly destructive if we’re not careful
• Kant’s Formula of Humanity
• How to grow up
• Political extremism and maturity
• The difference between #fakefreedom and real freedom
• Why we are bad algorithms and why we shouldn’t fear artificial intelligence so much
• What Mark dares to hope for

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Today it’s a great pleasure to have Dr. Scott Peters on the podcast. Dr. Peters is an associate professor of educational foundations and the Richard and Veronica Teller Endowed Faculty Fellow of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he teaches courses on measurement and assessment, research methodology, and gifted education. His research focuses on educational assessment, gifted and talented student identification, disproportionality within K-12 education, and educational policy. He is the first author of Beyond Gifted Education: Designing and Implementing Advanced Academic Programs and the co-author (along with Jonathan Plucker) of Excellence Gaps in Education: Expanding Opportunities for Talented Students, published by Harvard Education Press.

In this episode we discuss:

• Advocates vs. scientists in the field of gifted education
• Does teacher training in gifted education have any effect on self-reported teaching in the classroom?
• How the desire for good advocacy in gifted education can bias good science
• The real need to advocate for kids who aren’t being challenged in the regular classroom
• The absurdity of teaching children based solely on how old they are
• Is there room at the table for all different perspectives in the gifted education field?
• The problem with the “gifted” label
• How can you balance excellence with equity?
• How to close the “excellence gap” in gifted education
• What domains should be included in gifted education?
• The importance of “frontloading” opportunities in school
• Acceleration vs. enrichment
• What happens when addressing underrepresentation is the main goal of gifted education?
• The value of using local norms for gifted student selection
• Is complete excellence gap reduction a reasonable goal of gifted education?
• Scott’s plan for addressing excellent gaps in gifted education

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“Play is life force itself… when we can sense and amplify its most life-affirming, transformative impulses, it will point us directly to the Playground.”

Today it’s great pleasure to have Gwen Gordon on the podcast. Gordon began her career building Muppets for Sesame Street. Since leaving Sesame Street, Gwen developed Awakened Play, a play-based approach to making behavior change irresistible and transformation delightful. She has applied her insights in organizations ranging from San Quentin Prison to the MIT Media Lab and from IDEO to PepsiCo. Along the way, Gwen has collected a master’s degree in philosophy and an Emmy award in children’s programming. Her latest book is The Wonderful W, which is the first picture book for grownups.

In this episode we discuss:

• What is play?
• How everything is really “fear of the void”
• The doorway to the sense of wholeness
• Gwen’s experience working at Sesame Street
• Correcting the record about how Gwen created the Rockheads on Sesame Street
• Scott’s crush on Miss Piggy
• The shadow side to play
• How the playground is our true habitat
• The incredible importance of adult play
• The inherent paradoxes of play
• How play relates to attachment theory
• How play is a healthy stepping stone to healthy childhood development

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-podcast/support

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