Human Potential Lab

Today it’s great to have Ruth Richards on the podcast. Dr. Richards is a psychologist, psychiatrist, professor at Saybrook University, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She has published numerous articles, edited/written three previous books on everyday creativity, and received the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement (Division 10, American Psychological Association). Dr. Richards sees dynamic creative living as central to individuals and cultures, and a new worldview. Her latest book is called “Everyday Creativity and the Healthy Mind: Dynamic New Paths for Self and Society”, which recently won the won a Nautilus Silver Award.

In this episode we discuss:

• What is “everyday creativity”?
• What is “universal creative potential”?
• All the ways people can do things differently
• The four P’s of creativity
• Openness and creativity
• Chaos and complexity in creativity
• The role of the unconscious mind in creativity
• The link between mental illness and creativity
• The controlled chaos of creativity
• The healing function of creativity
• Can consciousness get in the way of creativity?
• Can creativity heal the world?

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"We should be humble in the face of temptations to engineer society in opposition to our instincts. Fortunately, we do not need to exercise any such authority in order to have a good life. The arc of our evolutionary history is long. But it bends toward goodness." -- Nicholas Christakis

Today we have Nicholas Christakis on the podcast. Christakis is a physician and sociologist who explores the ancient origins and modern implications of human nature. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, where he is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science in the departments of Sociology, Medicine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistics and Data Science, and Biomedical Engineering. He is also the codirector of the Yale institute for Network Science, the coauthor of Connected, and most recently, author of the book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society,which on its first week became a NY Times bestseller.

• Why breadth of knowledge across fields is important
• The evolutionary forces that have shaped our capacity for living socially
• Can you love your own group without hating everyone else?
• How can crowds be a force for good?
• How the capacity for friendship is connected to the evolution of cooperation
• Can you love your own group and evenloveother groups as well?
• Framing group dynamics in terms of collective narcissism
• The “social suite†of human nature
• The “forbidden experimentâ€
• Experiments on artificial societies
• How long will Homo Sapiens last?
• The importance of elephant friendships
• How evolution has shaped our societies
• The importance of recognizing our common humanity

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Today it’s a pleasure to have Molly Crockett on the podcast. Dr. Crockett is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. Prior to joining Yale, Dr Crockett was a faculty member at the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology and a Fellow of Jesus College. She holds a BSc in Neuroscience from UCLA and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge, and completed a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship with economists and neuroscientists at the University of Zürich and University College London.

In this episode we discuss:

• The discrepancy between outrage in real life vs. online outrage
• Cultural evolution and the selection and amplification of online content
• How basic reinforcement learning principles drive the design of online systems to maximize the amount of time we spend on the platforms
• Is the “habitual online shamer” addicted to outrage?
• Habitual behavior vs. addiction
• Is “outrage fatigue” happening en masse?
• Should we be thinking about rationing our outrage (reserving it for issues we find most important)?
• The costs and benefits of outrage
• Why people punish and the discrepancy between the actual reasons why we punish (inferred from behavior) vs. self-reported motives
• The difficulty doing science on topics that are incredibly heated in public social discourse
• The intractably intertwined nature of science and social justice
• What technologies might be doing to the way that young people construe the social world
• The human capacity for forgiveness
• Twitter Q & A

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Today it’s an honor to have Ryan Niemiec and Robert McGrath on the podcast. Ryan is an author or co-author of nine books, an award-winning psychologist, international keynoter, and education director of the VIA Institute on Character. Robert is Professor of Psychology at Farleigh Dickinson University, senior scientist at the VIA Institute, and has published extensively on the topic of character and virtue. Together, they are author of the new book, The Power of Character Strengths: Appreciate and Ignite Your Positive Personality. Find our your character strengths at viacharacter.org.

In this episode, we discuss the following:

• What is a positive personality?
• The measurement of character strengths
• Why are so many people interested in learning about their character strengths?
• How self-knowledge can impact people positively in their lives
• The difference between virtue and character
• The three main sources of a good character
• Is it possible to have a perfect character?
• Does the perfectly virtuous person exist?
• Is enlightenment actually possible?
• The developmental trajectory of character strengths
• Is the development of character strengths for everybody, including those experiencing adversity?

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“At a certain point, the outcome is the opportunity. We have to focus on the bottom line: what is it going to take to get kids ready?” — Colin Seale

Today it’s great to have Colin Seale on the podcast. Colin was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York to a single mother and an incarcerated father. He has always had a passion for educational equity. Tracked early into gifted and talented programs, Colin was afforded opportunities his neighborhood peers were not. He founded thinkLaw (www.thinkLaw.us), an award-winning organization to help educators leverage inquiry-based instructional strategies to close the critical thinking gap and ensure they teach and REACH all students, regardless of race, zipcode or what side of the poverty line they are born into. When he’s not serving as the world’s most fervent critical thinking advocate, Colin proudly serves as the world’s greatest entertainer to his two little kiddos and a loving husband to his wife Carrie.

In this episode we discuss:

• Colin’s pragmatic approach to solving educational inequalities
• The main goals of ThinkLaw
• The benefit of people of different races talking about their common humanity
• How we can have high expectations for every child
• The twice exceptional movement
• How we continuously lead genius on the table
• The excellence gap in gifted education
• Equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome
• The right kind of love
• How the victory is in the struggle
• Giving children a reason to have grit
• Why we need to recognize disruptors as innovators
• Creating the space for divergent thinkers

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“There can be no autonomy without the autonomy to choose, without coercion or constraint, or in spite of it, who our lovers will be.” — Wednesday Martin

Today we have Wednesday Martin on the podcast. Dr. Martin has worked as a writer and social researcher in New York City for more than two decades. The author of Stepmonster and the instant New York Times bestseller Primates of Park Avenue, she writes for the online edition of Psychology Today and her work has appeared in The New York Times and Time.com. Dr. Martin’s latest book is called “Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free.”

In this episode we discuss:

• How Wednesday tries to make the sex research “delicious and fun”
• How female infidelity is mired in so much misunderstanding
• How Millenial women are more sexually adventurous compared to Millennial men
• What’s the consensual non-monogamy movement?
• How we evolved to be “cooperative breeders”
• What is “female flexuality”?
• Why we need to stop pathologizing those who embrace non-monogamy
• How women are driving the polyamory movement
• The good reasons why monogamy is hard and the other options that exist
• How your attachment style and sociosexuality are linked to consensual non-monogamy
• Disagreeable women and sociosexuality
• Rethinking sex differences in the drive for sexual novelty
• Pornography viewing differences between men and women
• Common triggers of violence in relationships
• Rethinking the motivations underlying sex differences in cheating
• How better science can help us all have hotter sex

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“At the end of your life, you won’t remember the thoughts or intentions you had. You’ll remember the actions you took. You’ll judge yourself by how you showed up, by what you did, what you said, how you acted, and whether you performed the way you knew you could in any of the stages of life.”   

Today we have Todd Herman on the podcast. Herman is a performance advisor to Olympians, pros, and business leaders, and he creates proven systems to help teams & achievers win with less stress. Herman’s latest book is “The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life.”

- How alter egos are part of the human psyche

- The difference between childish and childlike

- Why having an alter ego is about being the best version of yourself

- Multiple self theory and the importance of context

-  The Core Self vs. The Trapped Self vs. The Heroic Self

- How to go from an ordinary world to an extraordinary world

- How to activate the person you truly want to become

- How to get into the “wow” mindset

- Todd’s traumatic backstory and how it has led to his superpower

- The hidden forces of the enemy

- How the creative imagination is like the backdoor to performance

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Finding your voice, learning how to say what you mean, and how to listen deeply: this is one of the most rewarding journeys you can take.” — Oren Jay Sofer

Today we have Oren Jay Sofer on the podcast. Sofer teaches meditation and communication nationally. He holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University, and is a member of the Spirit Rock Teacher’s Council. He is also a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner for healing trauma, and he is the Senior Program Developer at Mindful Schools. Sofer is author of Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication.

• The importance of slowing down
• Marshall Rosenberg’s system of nonviolent communication
• How our behaviors can viewed as an attempt to meet a deeper need
• Entering relationships from a sense of deprivation vs. a place of growth
• The importance of relational awareness
• The undervalued skill of healthy communication
• Why intention is the single most important ingredient in dialogue
• Martin Buber’s distinction between the I-Thou vs. I-It relationship
• The importance of the “do over”
• How to heal after a breakup
• The importance of forgiveness and how it happens on its own time schedule

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Today it’s an honor to have Richard Katz on the podcast. Dr. Katz received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and taught there for twenty years. The author of several books, he has spent time over the past 50 years living and working with Indigenous peoples in Africa, India, the Pacific, and the Americas. He is professor emeritus at the First Nations University of Canada and an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Saskatchewan. He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His latest book is Indigenous Healing Psychology: Honoring the Wisdom of the First Peoples. Author royalties will be given back to the Indigenous elders whose teachings made the book possible.

In this episode we discuss:

• How being an outsider allows you to see the limitations of the world you are living in
• Richard’s friendship with Abraham Maslow
• Setting the record straight: The real influence of the Blackfeet Nation on Maslow’s theory of self-actualization
• How modern day psychology has oppressed the verbal-experimental paradigm
• The limitations of modern measurement
• The tension between the scientific method and the narrative approach to psychology
• Are all modes of the scientific process valid?
• How indigenous people are misunderstood, under-respected, and under-appreciated
• What the field of psychology could be if it incorporated indigenous ways of being

Link

Kalahari People’s Fund

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Today I’m really excited to have Kati Morton on the podcast. Morton is as an entrepreneur, YouTube creator, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in Santa Monica, CA. Morton has built a global mental health online community, and is author of the book “Are U OK?: A Guide to Caring for Your Mental Health.”

In this episode we discuss:

• What’s the difference between mental health and mental illness?
• Breaking down the stigma of mental illness
• What should you look for when looking for a therapist?
• What are some warning signs of a terrible therapist?
• What’s the best way to deal with a toxic co-worker?
• What's the link between vulnerable narcissism and borderline personality disorder?
• How do you know if you need mental help?
• What are some of the most validated forms of therapy available today?
• How do you break up with friends that you’ve outgrown?
• The importance of healthy assertiveness
• How a very small no can equate to a very large yes
• How can you get more mental help when you need it?

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