The You Project

Jay Belsky is Emeritus Professor of Human Development at the University of California, Davis, and an internationally recognised scholar in developmental psychology. His research integrates evolutionary theory, longitudinal data, and life-course perspectives to better understand how early experiences influence later health, behaviour, and adaptation. The good Prof. has just released his first book for a non-academic audience (super understandable and practical) called ‘The Nature of Nurture’: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development. I had a great time with the Prof. and I hope you do to.

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In his most famous book Man’s Search for Meaning, Austrian Psychiatrist, Neurologist, Holocaust Survivor and Author Victor Frankl said “in some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” I love that quote. Although we try to avoid it, sometimes suffering can be our best teacher, insight giver, developer of resilience, skill and courage. This is one of my favourite chats with Bobby in a long time. I personally find this stuff inspiring, enlightning and very relevant for my goals, values and purpose. Along the way, we also chatted about adaptability, understanding others, reframing the situation we find ourselves in and the process of getting in a flow state. I think you will enjoy this.

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Not only is our friend and TYP regular Dr. Jeff a world-renowned specialist in the areas of regenerative and longevity medicine, but he’s also a Neurosurgeon and Spinal Surgeon. So, not a dummy after all. This episode is a deeper dive into an earlier conversation we started about 1, 000 episodes ago. I think this conversation is relevant for virtually everybody. Enjoy.

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Tamsin Simounds is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, author, founder and now, guest on The You Project; surely the highlight of her career (lol). She has just released a new book called ‘The Experiment Mindset’ (as per our title) and as we discovered during our conversation, we have a lot in common. Almost to the point of being weird. I loved meeting Tamsin, she has great energy, great knowledge, great real-world strategies and like me, she is something of a Pracademic. Enjoy.

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Apparently, this is Patrick’s 135th appearance on The You Project. You’d think we would be pretty amazing by now but no, those 134 previous episodes don’t seem to have moved the needle a lot. We’re still inappropriate, still easily distracted, still argumentative (not so much Tiff) and still trying to stay on track with the alleged focus and theme of the show; technology. Yet to my complete surprise, this fortnightly conversational lucky dip is favoured by some.

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So the father of six (Gillespo) and the and the Bloke and the Hybrid (Tiff) with zero kids between them, had a chat about parenting, recent research on the relationship between screen time and mental health in kids, the ancient and apparently outdated concept of kids doing chores, addiction wiring and the very real experience of withdrawal when kids are separated from their screens. I’ll never know, but it’s quite possible that I would’ve made a terrible parent. 

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Dr. Olivia Ong is back at TYP Central and this time we endeavour to gain a deeper understanding of burnout - what it is, what it isn’t, who it affects, how it affects us, how to recognise it and what we might do about it. Enjoy.

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This was another genuinely fascinating conversation with Prof. Robert Coplan from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. It turns out that being alone is bad for some and great for others. And that we don’t need to be alone, to be lonely. We spoke about the difference between loneliness and solitude, the fact that some people suffer when they don’t get enough time on their own, how introverts are often mistaken for extroverts, that some of us need to find the right ‘dosage’ for being around others, that some people are mitigating loneliness with AI and we discover that I might actually be a social misfit. No shock there, I guess.

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Your mind could be the most powerful drug you will ever have at your disposal. A single thought can change your physiology. Lower or increase your heart rate. Produce stress hormones or happy hormones. Elevate or lower your blood pressure. Shift your emotional state. Put you into a state of calm or a state of panic. And in some well documented cases, heal people from incurable diseases. In this episode of TYP, my favourite molecular biologist (Prof. Bill Sullivan) and I do a deep dive in to the power of the mind and beyond. Enjoy.

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Self driving cars, self driving trucks, driverless taxis and maybe in the not-too-distant future, self-flying passenger planes. F**k that. That’s a big fat “no thanks” from me. I’ll take the human pilot option, thanks. This was yet another fun conversational escapade with Patrick and Tiff, full of appropriate and inappropriate subject matter. As always. Enjoy. Or avoid.

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