Positivity Matters

Guy Trainin — https://cehs.unl.edu/tlte/person/guy-trainin

Professor, Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education, University of Nebraska–Lincoln | Principal Investigator, Art TEAMS (Teaching with Arts and Emerging Media) | Co-host, Azadeh and Guy on AI

Guy Trainin's lab is communities: schools, libraries, and the places where people gather, where he looks for what is already wonderful and asks how it can become even better, and what the community gets out of the work, since the relationship has to run in more than one direction. In this conversation he shares what his arts integration research has found: young children's reading, and especially their writing, got better when they drew, made art, or made music first; movement is magical, relaxing people and giving them the togetherness of moving in sync; and a little bit is not enough, because the difference comes at the point where there is enough art to transform the work. He talks about why naming strengths gives people language and the knowledge that they are not alone, how humor works like movement to put people on the same wavelength, how playfulness breaks the patterns relationships fall into, and what he would build with the means to do it: a whole school system innovating for the kids who need it most.

Guy's top five VIA character strengths: Creativity, Humor, Forgiveness, Curiosity, and Social Intelligence. Discover your own with the free VIA Character Strengths Survey: https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths

Follow Guy's writing on AI and education at Guy's Substack, https://guyonai.substack.com, and his podcast, Azadeh and Guy on AI. Learn about Art TEAMS at https://artteams.unl.edu. Mentioned in the conversation: Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

Recorded: Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

Dr. Robert (Bob) Woody, Steinhart Foundation Distinguished Professor of Music and head of music education at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Glenn Korff School of Music, joins Nick to talk about play, kindness, and the psychology of making music. Starting from self-determination theory’s needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they explore why music, made together, may be among the arts most closely tied to well-being, from Mildred Parten’s stages of play to the trouble with turning music into a competition. Bob describes strengths as things we practice rather than gifts that come easily, kindness among them, and traces how school music’s roots in the military, the church, and the court shaped teacher-centered classrooms that music educators keep working to make playful and friendly. He tells music students that perfectionism is not a virtue, that self-compassion rather than self-criticism leads to growth, and that realistic, task-focused thinking serves a performer better than either positive or negative thinking, and he and Nick find a Good Will Hunting moment for students who need to hear it more than once. They look back at the 1999 Positive Psychology Summit held in Lincoln, celebrate karaoke and a good KJ, and read Robert Henri, the Nebraska-raised painter and teacher behind The Art Spirit, beside Charlie Parker’s advice to learn your instrument and then forget all that and just wail. Bob previews his book on performance anxiety for music teachers and his commitment to music-making for everyone, and the conversation carries on past the official close: a degree in community music, Robert Putnam’s finding about choirs in Italy, stadiums singing in unison, and the day Bobby McFerrin used his musicianship to get UNL’s music students making music together.

Through the Real Hope lens: three neurobiological drives run in each of us, care powering belonging, play powering autonomy, and seeking powering mastery, the felt sense of growing competence, and turned outward they become three kinds of kindness: Compassionate makes a hard time easier, Radiant makes this moment more awesome, and Constructive builds up a better future. When all three flow both ways, that is friendship, the place where the three drives meet. Bob’s top VIA strengths, curiosity, kindness, perspective, honesty, and humor, were read on the show. His radiant strength, humor, adds up to a karaoke regular’s delight in people “singing for fun.” His constructive strengths, curiosity, perspective, and honesty, add up to years spent “looking into the research” and reporting “what’s real,” and to a coming book for music teachers on performance anxiety. His compassionate strength, kindness, adds up to telling music students, again and again, that “compassion is the key to growth.” His kindness plot begins responsive, as students arrive convinced they must be their own worst critics; goes proactive and constructive in teaching that perfectionism is not a virtue and that self-compassion, not self-criticism, leads to growth; goes proactive again in playful, friendly classrooms, karaoke nights, and a hoped-for degree in community music; and opens outward to everyone, because “it’s a human birthright to be a music maker.” It points toward friendship: “play and friendship are some really core ideas that I’ve tried to apply in my work.”

Try this week: sing one song this week just for the fun of it, ideally with a friend, and let it be imperfect.

Bob’s top VIA character strengths, as read on the show: Curiosity, Kindness, Perspective, Honesty, and Humor. Discover your own character strengths with the free VIA Survey: https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths

Mentioned in this episode: self-determination theory; Mildred Parten’s stages of play; Good Will Hunting; Brian Sutton-Smith; Robert Henri and The Art Spirit; Charlie Parker; Robert Putnam and Bowling Alone; and Bobby McFerrin.

Lana Ruvolo Grasser Winters

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Wayne State University | Ben L. Silberstein Institute for Brain Health | Director, The Ruvvy Resilience Lab

Neuroscientist Lana Ruvolo Grasser Winters directs The Ruvvy Resilience Lab at Wayne State University, where she pursues research that is "deeply responsive to the needs and wants of community members." She talks about the creative arts and movement-based interventions — dance and movement therapy, art therapy, and yoga — that she and her Wayne State colleagues brought to youth and families resettled as refugees after their mental health programming was cut, and the ripple effect that followed, which she estimates has now reached more than a thousand people across Michigan. She explains why positive experiences benefit us "of their own accord," what functional near-infrared spectroscopy can show about two brains dancing the tango, why "nothing is necessarily good or bad in neuroscience," and why a university that put well-being first would find that "when we are well, we perform our best."

Lana's top VIA character strengths: Love, Fairness, Forgiveness, Leadership, Honesty. Find yours with the free VIA survey: www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths

Follow Lana's work: Instagram @r2la.b · YouTube @TheRuvvyResilienceLab · The Brain Blooms Newsletter: brain-blooms-newsletter.beehiiv.com

Mentioned:

· Hearth Summit Detroit and The Wellbeing Project: www.hearthsummitdetroit.com

· the tango fNIRS video from a University College London study, shared by Tango Amistoso: facebook.com/reel/1731375574855859

Recorded: Tuesday, October 27th, 2026

Betsy Emmons — https://journalism.unl.edu/person/betsy-emmons/ | Associate Professor of Advertising & Public Relations, University of Nebraska–Lincoln | Sports PR & Promotion | Accredited in Public Relations (APR)

Betsy Emmons teaches sports media and public relations in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, after more than two decades teaching at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and years in sports PR before that. The conversation runs from the fandom that led her into sport PR — “working in sports is so fun, and it is exactly all the joy that you think that it is” — to translating character strengths into kindness, to the one-on-one mentoring students name when they nominate her for teaching awards: “tell me what your dreams are, how can I help you?” And it lands on the journey she describes with striking honesty: an Enneagram 3’s reckoning with achievement — “achievers can be blind to the suffering around them” — and the future she has chosen: “If you’re going to move into a position of leadership, or a position of seniority or authority: always look, on the ladder, to people who were coming up, too — and lend them a hand.”

Betsy’s top VIA character strengths, as she shared them: Love of Learning, Humor, Hope, Curiosity, and Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence. Try the free VIA Survey of Character Strengths yourself: www.viacharacter.org

Follow Betsy’s work through the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln: https://journalism.unl.edu/person/betsy-emmons/

Recorded: Monday, October 5th, 2026

Omani Carson — www.linkedin.com/in/omanicarson

Founder and Chairman, Carson Group | Founder, Omya | Founder, Momentis Family Office | Co-founder, Dreamweaver Foundation | Author

Recorded on his first full day as Omani, the day after a judge signed his legal name change, this conversation meets Omani Carson at what he calls “a really proud time in my life.” He tells how the name Tate-Omani, “walking into a stiff wind,” was given to him, and how about a decade ago he made the shift from a life run on fear and scarcity to one led by love and abundance. He makes the case for going with your strengths (“If you work on your weaknesses, someday you’ll have a little stronger weakness”), shares the saying he and his wife Jeanie live by (“You haven’t lived until you do something nice for someone who never expected it, who can never repay you”), and walks through the exercise he teaches in his coaching work and at Omya: write your eulogy, then plan your years backward from it. The conversation opens mid-stream, without the usual introduction, and it closes on his final phrase: “Live every day like it’s your last. And most certainly, one day, you’ll be right.”

Omani also shares his own experience of psychedelic-assisted therapy and his views on it. Those views are his own, and nothing in the episode is medical advice.

Omani’s mission, as he shared it at the Do More Good Movement’s 2024 conference: “I can motivate others to live a more purpose filled life.” Strengths heard in that mission, as the host’s own inference and not a test result: Woo and Developer (CliftonStrengths).

Find your own strengths, free: www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths

Since this conversation: Omani joined the Do More Good Movement’s ROI of Why 2026 in Omaha on the panel “From Hustle to Whole.” Speaking at the Hustle Conference in Omaha on September 30, 2026, Jay Wilkinson described a transition under way in the movement and the bringing together of conferences, with Omani’s newer work in the plan. Jay’s talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ubO9Ew4vc | ROI of Why 2027, April 19–21, Omaha: www.domoregood.com/roi-of-why-2027

Books mentioned (published as Ron Carson): Tested in the Trenches | The Sustainable Edge | Proven in the Trenches

Also mentioned: Secret Kindness Agents by Ferial Pearson

Recorded: Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025

Millie Heckler (https://millieheckler.com): Dancer | Choreographer | Singer-Songwriter | Movement Guide

Millie's mission, in her words, is to dance as much as she can and to create spaces where people can dance. She teaches hip-hop dance at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and is the founder of puSHErbody, a dance company and community initiative. Drawing on years of street dance, including dancing professionally with pioneer Rennie Harris, and her training at the Xuan Gong Fu Academy of Internal Martial Arts in Berlin, she talks about song — finding endless movement inside a structure — the dance battle as a way of pushing each other toward the best versions of ourselves, and the paradoxical truth that in order to find freedom, you need discipline.

Millie's top VIA Strengths (free insight: https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths): Spirituality • Gratitude • Honesty • Curiosity • Social Intelligence

Follow Millie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/millieheckler/

Recorded: Friday, September 18th, 2026

Darci Gamerl: Oboist | English Hornist | Composer | Arts Leader 

Darci is one half of Bel Canto Duo 

Darci’s top VIA Strengths (free insight): Honesty • Spirituality • Judgement • Curiosity • Perspective

Recorded on August 13th, 2026 

"Taking Flight: The Eighth Wonder of the World" with the Bel Canto Duo • Saturday, August 29, 2026 • 2-4pm • Sheldon Museum of Art

David Shaw made a permission slip for you! 

David's VIA Strengths:

Creativity

Curiosity

Leadership

Love of Learning

Fairness

Self-Regulation

Love

Spirituality

Hope

Judgement

Recorded: August 5th, 2026

Matthew Corson-Finnerty: Building a Community of Play People

Matthew designs games and playgrounds and is a builder of connectedness through The Play People – a community for all who are interested in Play:

 • Playful Cities

 • Children's Advocacy

 • Play in the Arts

 • Play in Health

 • Play in Communities

 • Play in Education 

 • Play in Nature

 • Much more!

Season 3, Episode 9 | Recorded: August 1, 2026

President Jeffrey Gold: Walking Alongside Others as they Build Pathways to Meaningful Goals

Dr. Jeffrey Gold is the ninth president of the University of Nebraska System.

Dr. Gold serves on the Clinician Well-Being Collaborative of the National Academy of Medicine with the former Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy.  

President Gold's Top 10 CliftonStrengths:

1. Achiever

2. Learner

3. Ideation

4. Individualization

5. Responsibility

6. Connectedness

7. Arranger

8. Belief

9. Strategic

10. Developer

Recorded: June 23rd, 2026