This week, Julia chats with George Mashour, the Robert B. Sweet Professor and Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. Professor Mashour was the founding director of the University of Michigan Center for Consciousness Science and the Michigan Psychedelic Center. 

In this episode, Julia and Professor Mashour discuss the reinvigorated study of psychedelics and the light it may shed on different dimensions of consciousness. Professor Mashour weighs in on the ongoing normative debate about how psychedelic drugs should be defined. Should they be defined on a molecular level by their mechanism of action in the brain or based upon the subjective experience they produce in the user? 

He relates the results of an exciting recent study that uses psychedelic drugs as a tool to alter normal states of consciousness. This enables him to compare brain network dynamics in these altered states of consciousness with those dynamics in normal states of consciousness and with those in lowered states of consciousness induced by anesthesia. In some ways, this technique allows us to peer into the brain to find out what brain activity is associated with particular experiences. Professor Mashour also offers his perspective on two of the most prominent theories of consciousness and a groundbreaking ongoing adversarial collaboration evaluating them. 

JOIN OUR SUBSTACK! Stay up-to-date with the podcast and become part of the ever-growing community 🙂 https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Professor Mashour’s paper

Professor Mashour’s website

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at [email protected]

Eric chats with Matt Abrahams, leading expert in the field of communication and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Matt is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and communications consultant. He has helped numerous presenters prepare for high-stakes talks, including Nobel Prize award presentations, and appearances at TED and the World Economic Forum. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award-winning podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart, The Podcast.

In this chat, Eric and Matt discuss all things public speaking and stage fright, introducing Matt’s upcoming book Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot which provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously.

JOIN OUR SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Matt's upcoming NEW BOOK
Matt's LinkedIn
Matt's website

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Welcome to Week 8 aka the LAST WEEK of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!

Kate chats with Gillian Sandstrom, a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology of Kindness at the University of Sussex and the Director of the Sussex Centre for Research on Kindness. Gillian’s work focuses on the benefits of minimal social interactions with “weak ties” and strangers, and the barriers that prevent people from connecting with others. In this episode, Gillian tells Kate about the misconceptions that prevent people from talking to strangers and the surprising benefits that can come from engaging in fleeting interactions with strangers, even if we will never see them again. 

Check out Gillian’s paper, Why do people avoid talking to strangers? A mini meta-analysis of predicted fears and actual experiences talking to a stranger, which received an Honorable Mention in the Journal of Self and Identity’s 2021 Best Paper Award, here.

You can learn more about Gillian’s exciting research on her website: gilliansandstrom.com. You can also connect with her directly on Twitter @GillianSocial.

Welcome to Week 7 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!

Eric chats with Jon Jachimowicz, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. Jon studies people’s passion for work, specifically how people can pursue, fall out of, and maintain their passion over time. He also studies how people perceive inequality. Jon has won numerous academic awards and was listed as a Poets & Quants 40 under 40 honoree and Forbes 30 under 30.

In this episode, Eric and Jon chat about passion narratives at work and in life more generally. Jon discusses his new, not-yet-published research on how passion one day can lead to more work on that day but cause exhaustion the next day. Jon argues that people do not have a fixed level of passion and that the link between passion and productivity is more complex than we might think. He then discusses how to maintain passion in the long run, at work and outside of work. Should we even pursue our passions? What does it mean to engage in “passion shaming”? How can passion narratives lead to more inequality? Do passion narratives vary across the world?

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Jon's website
Jon's Twitter @jonj

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Welcome to Week 6 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!

Eric chats with Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and Co-Director of the Greater Good Science Center. Dacher has worked on many topics such as compassion, power, and social class. He has introduced hundreds of thousands of people to “The Science of Happiness” through his online course and podcast with the same name. He has written multiple best-selling books, most recently on awe.

In this chat, Eric asks Dacher about all things awe, from traveling to psychedelics to Beyonce. Does everyone feel awe? Should everyone feel it? What is the most common form of awe? How can awe help people through grief? What does it have to do with ASMR? Does awe make people naïve? Finally, Dacher shares what it was like to work on movies such as Inside Out and adds some kind words about his former advisor and psychology legend, the late Lee Ross.

WE NOW HAVE A SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Dacher's new book on awe
Dacher's website

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Welcome to Week 5 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!

Joseph chats with Dr. Jay Van Bavel, an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at the New York University. His research examines how collective concerns namely group identities, moral values, and political beliefs—shape the mind, brain, and behavior. In this episode we chat about his new book titled “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”.

You can find Jay and Dominic’s book here: https://www.powerofus.online/

You can also find him in on twitter @jayvanbavel

To learn more about Jay’s research you can visit his lab website, the Social Identity and Morality Lab: https://www.jayvanbavel.com/lab

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Welcome to Week 4 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!

Kate chats with James Gross, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Lab. His work focuses on emotions: What they are, how they unfold over time, and how people regulate them in different contexts. In this episode, James shares insights from a recent study examining the effects of brief emotion regulation interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic across 87 countries. James also discusses the broader implications of his work and talks about how people can learn to work with their emotions instead of fighting against them. 

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01173-x 

WE NOW HAVE A SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Welcome to Week 3 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!

Eric chats with Juliana Schroeder, Associate Professor in the Management of Organizations at Berkeley Haas. She studies how people think about the minds of other people, and how they are often wrong trying to understand what others are up to. Her work has been discussed in outlets ranging from Vice to The Atlantic and Forbes.

In this episode, Eric and Juliana chat review her exciting recent work on “undersociality.” Talking to other people is often meaningful, not just for extraverts, and yet we hesitate to talk to others, making overly pessimistic predictions about how awkward and unpleasant such interactions would be. This leads us to “mistakenly seek solitude.” Juliana discusses what we can do to motivate ourselves to talk to others more, why that is so beneficial, and why she herself struggles to do it.

WE NOW HAVE A SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Juliana's review paper on undersociality: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661322000432?casa_token=KI1Vjeg9NKUAAAAA:aTAEDP2eF1ay3I0rGI74FHNW21s83r_KvXCQMvr5auCxaVnhEah82tbASwjzwfc-68D54q8Kc2E 

Juliana's key empirical paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/a0037323 

Juliana's Twitter

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Welcome to Week 2 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!

Eric chats with Abigail Marsh, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Georgetown. Her work has focused on phenomena as diverse as empathy, altruism, aggression, and psychopathy. In 2017,  Abby published her book, The Fear Factor, describing her fascinating research with extreme altruists on the one hand and individuals with psychopathy on the other. She is the former President of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society.

In this episode, Abby challenges the common assumption that individualism means selfishness. Instead, she has found that individualism predicts more kindness, just like being healthy and wealthy predicts being kinder to others. Eric and Abby discuss if our understanding of individualism is wrong, if kindness might look different in individualistic versus collectivistic cultures, and if people are too cynical these days.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Abby's paper
Abby's book The Fear Factor
Abby's Twitter @aa_marsh

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Welcome to Week 1 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement! 

This week, we revisit the conversation between Eric and Josh Greene, Professor of Psychology at Harvard. Josh is a leading researcher of moral judgment and is the author of Moral Tribes. Several graduating classes have named him their favorite professor at Harvard! 

In this chat, Eric asks Josh how he has raised over 2 million $ for charity through Giving Multiplier. Listeners are invited to give to both their favorite and some of the most effective charities - and have their donation matched at a higher rate than usual at this link! Josh also shares how he is trying to fight polarization with games, how to do the most good as a researcher, why cooperation is the story of life, what his next book is about, the future of moral psychology, and how his thinking has changed since he first started thinking about moral philosophy in high school.

JOIN OUR SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Do good by donating through Giving Multiplier (with higher matching rate!)
Paper showing why Giving Multiplier works
Josh’s book Moral Tribes

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]