In this episode we are pleased to bring you our interview with David, aka Danny Blanchflower, who is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, adviser to the United Nations, and former external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee.

In our opening segment we review our previous discussions of the u-shaped life happiness curve, why we care about the happiness of our youth, and Professor Blanchflower's connection to the social science literature related to this topic (3:40-15:30).

In our interview with Danny we discuss how he became interested in exploring trends in happiness as a labor economist, how happiness is measured in social science, the original observation of the u-shaped happiness curve in which well being dips in the midlife, data from his  new paper that reports on the observed increase in depression among young people across 34 different countries, and some of the ongoing debate about the possible link between this you epidemic in anxiety and depression and cell phone/internet usage (13:50-81:45).

Finally, in our closing segment, Alvin and I briefly preview some of the discussion on the possible causes of the youth anxiety and depression that we will cover in more depth in our next episode (81:50-95:48).

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter (X): @midlifepod2023

Professor Blanchflower's latest paper on youth happiness: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32337

Professor Blanchflower's blog: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/blanchflower/category/econwalkingabout/

After Babel Substack article from Professor Blanchflower: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/youth-health-declines-82-countries

Peter Gray paper on reduced independent activity and childhood happiness: https://www.petergray.org/_files/ugd/b4b4f9_f2cb98d004af4ebf9644c8daa30b040e.pdf

This episode was inspired by a revelation that Alvin recently made to Jack in an offline discussion, and Alvin was convinced to share this story to help us do a more thorough evaluation of where we fall on the continuum of the classic midlife crisis.

Twitter: @midlifepod2023

Fungi Adventures (guided outdoor camping excursions in Asheville, NC): https://www.andresfungiadventures.com/

In this episode we follow up our recent conversation on personality and personality change with a discussion of attachment theory and how different attachment styles might impact relationship compatibility.

In the opening segment we briefly revisit the issue of the reported youth mental health crisis, discuss Jonathan Haidt's new book "The Anxious Generation", and Jack quizzes Alvin on his knowledge of gen Z slang in a new segment called The Gen Z word of the day.

In our main segment, we review the statistics for divorce in the United States, Alvin gives an overview of Attachment theory and the different attachment styles, and then Alvin and Jack use attachment theory to reflect on their divorces and hopefully view them in a more positive light.

Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ 

Twitter (X): @midlifepod2023 

In this episode we are excited to bring you part 2 of our interview with Dr. Brent Roberts, Professor of Psychology and renowned personality psychologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

After the interview we briefly reflect on how our broader identities may have changed over the years but our “personality zones” have likely remained fairly stable, and we briefly discuss the point Dr. Roberts made about how what we do as parents likely has much less impact on our kids’ outcomes than we might intuitively think (1:13:21-1:33:48).

David (Danny) Blanchflower papers:

2021 Perspectives on Psychological Science paper: https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2216/files/2021/07/u-shape-perspectives.pdf

2023 International Journal of Psychiatry paper: https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2216/files/2023/02/a-response-to-another-attempt-to-move-beyond-the-crosssectional-u-shape-of-happiness-a-reply-by-galambos-krahn-johnson-a-2.pdf

Nancy Galambos paper:

2021 International Journal of Psychiatry paper:

Email: [email protected]

Twitter (X): @midlifepod2023

In this episode we bring you part one of our interview with Dr. Brent Roberts, a renowned personality psychologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

We open the epidsode by summarizing our online personality test results, discuss the different domains covered in the Myers-Briggs test, and then reflect on how our personality traits may have shifted over the past 25 years (4:10-27:00).

In our interview with Professor Roberts, we discuss why he pursued a career in studying human personality and personality change,  how social scientists measure personality, the Big 5 personality traits and some other domains of personality beyond the Big 5, and the general trends in how personality changes over the life span. We conclude this part of the interview by discussing how personality traits may be connected to the proposed U-shaped life-happiness curve, and Dr. Roberts discusses the differences in how economists and psychologists interpret the data related to changes in happiness over the lifespan and whether the U-shaped life-happiness curve is just a myth

In our post-interview wrap up, we reflect on the (hopefully) positive take-home points from the interview and we briefly discuss a paper from a team of psychologists who critique the validity of the U-shaped life happiness curve (1:11:28-1:26:00).
Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @midlifepod2023

Paper about the U-shaped happiness curve (open access):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7529452/

In this episode we are excited to have on Keegan Kjeldsen, a touring doom metal musician and host of The Nietzsche Podcast.

We open the episode explaining why we sought out Keegan for an interview, and then Alvin gives a quick history of Nietzsche's life. If you're more familiar with Nietzsche and would like to skip straight to the interview, that starts around minute 22:00 in the audio feed.

We discuss with Keegan how he ended up hosting a podcast devoted to Friedrich Nietzsche, how philosophy applies to the real world and why we should pay attention to philosophical writing, Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence and how that might lead one to celebrate and embrace life, the possible connection of the reevaluation of values and changes that occur in the midlife, how Nietzsche's quote: What does not kill me makes me stronger might inform our view of the potential fragility of gen z, and what books of Nietzsche's you might look at first if you're interested in exploring any of these topics further. Finally, we end with our Real or Fake segment, in which Keegan and Alvin have to guess whether a philosophy paper is real or an article from The Onion.  

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @midlifepod2023

The Nietzsche Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nietzsche-podcast/id1573808070

Keegan's Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/untimelyreflections

Keegan's book pre-order ("The Ritual Madness of Rock & Roll"): https://www.blackrosewriting.com/biographymemoir/theritualmadnessofrockandroll

Happy new year and welcome to season two of the Midlife Crises podcast. Since we just rang in the new year, we thought it would be fun to open up season two by reminiscing about the Y2K scare and New Year's 2000 in our Where Were You When segment.

In our main segment we decided to begin by identifying what the definition of a midlife crisis is and whether midlife crises are just a myth, and then Alvin summarizes an analysis of posts he did from the past month in the midlife crisis sub-Reddit page.

We highlight some of the common themes and issues identified by folks dealing with midlife crises, we reflect on how some of these issues resonate with our personal experience, and we conclude by discussing how folks can hopefully embrace these changes we experience in the midlife and use them as motivation to find new purpose in life.

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter/X: @midlifepod2023

In this episode, we come up with the Midlife Crises list of top 5 holiday/Christmas movies (and no, Die Hard is not a Christmas movie...), and we reflect on 2023 and the first season of the podcast. We discuss some of the topics we plan to cover in 2024, and identify a couple of personal New Year's resolutions we would like to accomplish in the coming year. We hope everyone has a great holiday season and a happy New Year. If you have strong opinions on the Die Hard Christmas movie debate, or have other holiday movies you would like to recommend to us, please email us or hit us up on Twitter/X.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter/X: @midlifepod2023

In this episode we are excited to have on as a guest

Clarissa's podcast: https://www.thrivethrumenopause.com/

Clarissa's women's coaching website: https://clarissakristjansson.com/about

Clarissa's blog and other media resources: https://linktr.ee/thrivethrumeno

Clarissa's Twitter/X feed:

Clarissa's books:

https://www.amazon.com/Mindful-Menopause-Balance-Vitality-Clarity/dp/916399416X

https://www.amazon.com/Potent-Power-Menopause-Perspective-Transformation-ebook/dp/B09ZHCZZVT

In this episode Alvin and I review a research article that attempts to track how wisdom changes over the life span. This is a little longer than our normal run time, so if you want to break this up into smaller segments, we spend the first 25 minutes catching up and talking about some of our favorite and most hated Christmas songs as we enter the holiday season. In minutes 25-68 we talk about what wisdom is and how researchers attempt to measure wisdom, and briefly discuss the difference between making measurements in the hard sciences vs. the social sciences. We take a break from the research discussion in minutes 68-77, where I quiz Alvin in our Real or Fake segment about whether an article about Zoophilia is real, or is a fake report from the Onion. Then in the final 37 minutes of the episode we discuss whether the research shows that our wisdom peaks in the midlife, what factors might contribute to higher wisdom, our reflections on whether we might have had high levels of wisdom in our young adulthood, and some suggestions about how folks might increase their wisdom later in life.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter/X: @midlifepod2023

Wisdom Across the Lifespan paper: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/69/2/209/543518

Development of SAWS paper: https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-020-1456-9

Very Bad Wizards episode on zoophilia: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-272-neigh-means-yay/id557975157?i=1000634845734

Zoophilia article from the Journal of Controversial Ideas: https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/2/255