The Connection with Marty Moss-Coane

What are you? That’s a question that people who are biracial get asked all the time, either directly or indirectly. Are you Black? Are you White? Are you Latino?

If you are mixed race in the U.S., you are part of the fastest growing segment of the population. The presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris, who is of Black and South Asian heritage, has put a spotlight on the issue of identity and race, just as Barack Obama did in 2008 when he ran for president.

On this week’s edition of The Connection, what do you call yourself if you are mixed race? We’ll talk about the challenges and advantages of having multiple racial identities, especially with our country’s troubled past. We are joined by three guests. Psychologist Sarah Gaither heads Duke University’s Identity and Diversity Lab. Journalists Daralyse Lyons and Malcolm Burnley are cohosts of the podcast, On Being Biracial.

Did you have a favorite stuffed animal or blanket when you were a kid? Do you still have it today? Childhood possessions are filled with memories and meaning so we hold on to them for many years.

In this hour we explore the uniquely human behavior of owning things and why we become attached to our belongings. We’ll look at how they connect us with a person or experience and become part of our identity. And we’ll talk about the downsides of having too many possessions – there are more than 50,000 self-storage facilities in the country filled with our overflow. Our guest is psychologist Bruce Hood author of Possessed: Why We Want More Than We Need.

Dr. Arik Kershenbaum decodes howls, whistles, squeals, grunts and other sounds of the wild.

Generally speaking, when we use the word intelligent we are referring to IQ or cognitive strengths. That’s the ability to process and understand information and use it to generate new knowledge.

But what about EQ or emotional intelligence? That’s the ability to manage and express one’s feelings and recognize feelings in others. It turns out there are different kinds of intelligence.

On The Connection this week we talk about what it takes to recognize, understand, express and regulate your emotional life. We’ll look at how it connects you with yourself and others and how we can use it to make a better world.

Our guest Marc Brackett says that being an “emotional scientist” is a good place to start. Brackett is a psychologist and the founding director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale University. He’s the author of Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Our Selves and Our Society.

Do you have a recurring dream — a story that comes back again and again when you drift off to sleep. Maybe it’s a classic anxiety dream about taking a final exam you never studied for or standing in front of crowd completely naked.

On this edition of The Connection: why do we dream? What is our brain doing while we sleep? Why is the content of our dreams so bizarre? How can we better remember our dreams? How can our dreams help us address problems that we struggle with when we’re awake?

We’re joined by Harvard University psychologist and dream researcher Deirdre Barrett is the author of Pandemic Dreams and The Committee of Sleep. She’s also the President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

In 1900, the average person could expect to live until their 47th birthday. By 2000, life expectancy was 77 years, an extraordinary gain of 30 years over the course of a century! Using those same metrics, many children today will live to be 100.

So now that more people are living longer, is it time to rethink the aging process? What do we do with those extra years, how do we rebalance work, education and family life and create quality out of quantity?

There are challenges that come with getting older, most notably loss and there are opportunities for growth. There are also baked-in prejudices about old people and there’s a premium, especially in America, on looking young. We’ll talk about all that with our guests psychologist Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity and physician Lisa Walke, Chief of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

Journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger almost died. His new book explores coming to terms with his own mortality and what might come after death.

When Pixar’s Inside Out opened in movie theaters almost a decade ago, viewers were introduced to 11-year-old Riley and the emotions that defined her young life…joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust, each drawn as a different character.

In Inside Out 2, Riley is 13 and she’s dealing with the raging emotions that come with PUBERTY!….embarrassment, envy, ennui and most notably anxiety…a big-mouthed, bug-eyed, character with wild, carrot top hair.

This week on The Connection…understanding the important role that all emotions, including anxiety, play throughout our lives. Our guests were consultants on the film. Psychologist Dacher Keltner is co-director of the Greater Good Science Center at University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is titled Awe. Psychologist Lisa Damour specializes in treating adolescents. Her most recent book is The Emotional Lives of Teenagers

No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, disappoint people we care about and fall short from time to time. We know that’s true and yet, it is tough to be criticized. It can make us feel like a failure…ashamed, exposed, vulnerable.  This episode — giving and taking criticism at home and at work. We’ll talk about the difference between constructive and destructive criticism, the role of trust and empathy when delivering and receiving negative feedback, why the “feedback sandwich” doesn’t work, and how to handle the loudest critic of all: the one in our head. Psychologist Andrea Bonior, author of Detox Your Thoughts: Quit Negative Self-Talk for Good and Discover the Life You’ve Always Wanted and Christine Porath, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Most of us try to be honest but sometimes we don’t tell the truth.

Psychologists Christian Hart and Drew Curtis have made researching lying their life’s work. They found that the average person tells about one lie a day, while chronic liars fib ten times a day. Their latest book is titled Big Liars.

On this episode, we delve into the psychology of deceit, what we are learning about people who lie as a way of life and how to be on the look out for signs of lying.

Hart and Curtis found that the most successful politicians are the ones who bend the truth. The more honest ones generally don’t get re-elected. And since we are headed into what promises to be a political season filled with mis and disinformation, it’s going to be vital knowing how to tell the difference between what’s false and what’s true.