Psychologist and author Maria Konnikova joins the show to talk poker, life, and what one teaches you about the other. She talks with us about working with Walter Mischel as a graduate student, her decision to leave the academic track to become an author, and her latest book, The Biggest Bluff, in which she describes how she became a tournament-winning professional poker player.

Bonus: who will win our round of Lodden Thinks?

Special Guest: Maria Konnikova.

Sponsored By:

• The Great Courses Plus: The Great Courses Plus is a Video-On-Demand service brought to you by The Great Courses – the leading global media brand for lifelong learning and personal enrichment. With thousands of in-depth videos taught by the world’s greatest professors, you’ll always have something fascinating to learn about. Promo Code: BEERS

Links:

• E.H. Taylor, Jr. Bourbon
• ÉPHÉMÈRE SEA BUCKTHORN BERRY | Unibroue
• Michael Inzlicht (@minzlicht) / Twitter
• Maria Konnikova
• The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win: Konnikova, Maria: 9780525522621: Amazon.com: Books
• Supermarket Sweep - YouTube

Yoel and Mickey interview one of the most influential social scientists of our generation, Harvard University's Joe Henrich. Why are people from the West so peculiar, so different from other people the world over? What led the West to be particularly prosperous? If not intelligence, what marks humans as so special? What are the various approaches to the evolutionary study of human behaviour? Does psychology suffer from a theory crisis? Has religion been a net plus to the survival of human groups?

Bonus: Who is lazier, psychologists or economists?

Special Guest: Joe Henrich.

Sponsored By:

• The Great Courses Plus: The Great Courses Plus is a Video-On-Demand service brought to you by The Great Courses – the leading global media brand for lifelong learning and personal enrichment. With thousands of in-depth videos taught by the world’s greatest professors, you’ll always have something fascinating to learn about. Promo Code: BEERS

Links:

• Whale's Tale IPA | Cisco Brewers
• Jelly King (Mango/Passionfruit) – Bellwoods Brewery
• Perpetual IPA - Tröegs Independent Brewing
• Why Are We in the West So Weird? A Theory - The New York Times
• WEIRDest People in the World | Joe Henrich
• The weirdest people in the world?
• The cultural evolution of prosocial religions
• A problem in theory | Nature Human Behaviour
• Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history | Nature
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter | Joe Henrich
• Kid Cudi - Just What I Am ft. King Chip - YouTube

Robb Willer and Simine Vazire join the podcast to debate whether social science, in its current form, can usefully contribute to our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Is psychology ready to give trustworthy advice to policy-makers?

Plus: Yoel shirks his beer-drinking, yet again.

Special Guests: Robb Willer and Simine Vazire.

Sponsored By:

• The Great Courses Plus: The Great Courses Plus is a Video-On-Demand service brought to you by The Great Courses – the leading global media brand for lifelong learning and personal enrichment. With thousands of in-depth videos taught by the world’s greatest professors, you’ll always have something fascinating to learn about. Promo Code: BEERS

Links:

• GRIFTER PALE --The Grifter Brewing Co
• Royal Canadian Mead
• Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response | Nature Human Behaviour
• Is Social and Behavioural Science Evidence Ready for Application and Dissemination?
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Where Are The Self-Correcting Mechanisms In Science?

Yoel and Mickey welcome Neil Lewis, Jr. of Cornell University to the podcast. Is psychology ready to be applied to help the response to the COVID-19 pandemic? What are the opportunity costs of applying a psychological intervention? How does Neil navigate Twitter so effectively? What will Neil be doing over at FiveThirtyEight? What can meta-analyses and registered reports tell us about stereotype threat?

Bonus: How is Mickey like Jesus?

Special Guest: Neil Lewis, Jr..

Links:

• How To Make a Gin Basil Smash
• Sucker Punch | doubletroublebrewing.com
• HazeMama - Great Lakes Brewery
• How many (and whose) lives would you bet on your theory?
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Is Social and Behavioural Science Evidence Ready for Application and Dissemination?
• Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response | Nature Human Behaviour
• What I've learned about being a Black scientist | Science | AAAS
• Arlo Parks - Cola (Official Music Video) - YouTube

After over a year of (mostly) avoiding controversial topics, Yoel and Mickey dive in to talk about orthodoxy, dissent, and "cancel culture." Does the narrowing of acceptable views make us dumber or does it represent a drawing of new moral boundaries that make us more kind? How does the silencing of dissent lead to self-censoring? Why does it appear like some people are given more permission to dissent than others? Is cancel culture leading to a right-wing backlash?

Bonus: Why was the podcast account suspended from Twitter?

Links:

• LINEHOUSE LONDON
• JW CITRUS APA | Gillingham Brewing Company
• Juicy Ass IPA | Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery
• Picnic - Henderson Brewing
• A Letter on Justice and Open Debate | Harper's Magazine
• The Princeton Faculty's Anti-Free-Speech Demands - The Atlantic
• Harper's Letter: Artists and Writers Warn of an 'Intolerant Climate.' - The New York Times
• Opinion | Do Progressives Have a Free Speech Problem? - The New York Times
• How Steven Pinker Became a Target Over His Tweets - The New York Times
• Thread: Since so many claim that cancel culture doesn't exist... / Twitter
• ‘White Fragility’ Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work? - The New York Times
• Who Opposes Defunding the N.Y.P.D.? These Black Lawmakers - The New York Times
• On a D.C. street beset by gun violence, calls to fix policing, not defund it - The Washington Post
• 73% of Americans say race, ethnicity should not factor into college admissions | Pew Research Center
• Views on America's Growing Racial, Ethnic Diversity | Pew Research Center
• Large Majorities Dislike Political Correctness - The Atlantic
• The Ezra Klein Show - Free speech, safety, and ‘the letter’ | Listen via Stitcher for Podcasts
• Tech Firms Hire 'Red Teams.' Scientists Should, Too | WIRED
• An Actual Study Asked: Are Women With Endometriosis Hotter?
• Free speech has not been “canceled” - Vox
• Americans tune in to ‘cancel culture’ — and don't like what they see - POLITICO
• Identitarian Deference Continues to Roil Liberalism | by Matt Bruenig | Jul, 2020 | Medium
• PCgate!
• Open Lettergate!

For their 50th episode, Yoel and Mickey welcome Northwestern University psychologist Claudia Haase to the podcast to discuss relationships and mistakes. What was life like in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall? How can Yoel and Mickey iron out their relationship problems? How is life as a working academic and mother during a global pandemic? Why are people so scared to admit to their mistakes? How can we learn from failure?

Bonus: Should you delete Twitter?

Special Guest: Claudia Haase.

Links:

• Daisy Cutter Pale Ale — HALF ACRE
• Corona (beer) - Wikipedia
• Bloodmoon – Whitewater Brewing Co.
• Stella Artois - Belgian Pale Lager Beer
• Society of Beer Drinking Ladies Brew 0001 - Henderson Brewing
• Life-Span Development Lab – Northwestern University
• Emotion regulation predicts marital satisfaction: More than a wives’ tale
• Exploring the Basis for Gender Differences in the Demand-Withdraw Pattern
• "Happy Wife, Happy Life" is some sexist bullsh!t. : unpopularopinion

Yoel and Mickey have a far ranging conversation with University of British Columbia professor of philosophy, Evan Thompson. Despite growing up with a daily meditation practice and contributing to the cognitive science of mindfulness, why does Evan not consider himself a Buddhist? Is Buddhism a religion that is truly different from other religions? Is the self an illusion, as is popularily portrayed by Buddhist modernists such as Sam Harris? What do failures to replicate social psychology studies of embodied cognition mean for the larger enterprise of embodied cognition? Can science and traditional Buddhism co-exist? Why is Evolutionary Psychology a doomed entreprise?

Bonus: Which city is superior, Toronto or Vancouver?

Special Guest: Evan Thompson.

Links:

• Mickey is Donny
• Beers — 33 Acres Brewing Company
• Old Forester 1920 Prohibition Style Whiskey | LCBO
• Psycho Thrill Seekers Double IPA | Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery
• Lindisfarne Tapes ~ Schumacher Center for New Economics
• Self, No Self? | Evan Thompson
• Waking, Dreaming, Being | Evan Thompson
• The Embodied Mind | Evan Thompson
• Why I Am Not a Buddhist eBook: Thompson, Evan: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store
• Why I Am Not a Buddhist | Robert Wright & Evan Thompson [The Wright Show] - YouTube

Yoel and Mickey host Rachel Ruttan, who is an assisant professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the Rotman School of Management. What is organizational behavior and how is it different from psychology? What makes for a good research idea? How is figure skating like academia? When big corporations espouse social values, does it cheapen people's commitment to these values?

Bonus: What is the best way to suss out if a new friend smokes weed?

Special Guest: Rachel Ruttan.

Links:

• Barnstormer Brewing & Distilling Co.
• BOTTLE SHOP – Blood Brothers Brewing
• Value Corruption: The Effects of Instrumentality on the Desacralization of Values | Academy of Management Proceedings
• Having “been there” doesn’t mean I care: When prior experience reduces compassion for emotional distress. - PsycNET
• I, Tonya (2017) - IMDb
• Ruby Haunt - Strangers - YouTube

Yoel and Mickey welcome back returning guest Keith Maddox from Tufts University to talk about his research on racism. What is shadeism? Can anything be done to make it easier to talk about race and racism? What happens to poeple who confront racism? Has social psychology overplayed the impact of implicit prejudice? Has psychology overplayed the role of the individual racist, and not focused enough on structural racism?

Special Guest: Keith Maddox.

Links:

• White Lion Brewing - White Lion Brewery
• Juice Caboose - Juicy IPA – Railway City Brewing Company
• First Class Lager - 473ml Can – Barnstormer Brewing & Distilling Co.
• 135 Black-owned restaurants and other businesses in Toronto you can support right now
• Want to See Food and Land Justice for Black Americans? Support These Groups. | Civil Eats
• Home – Haley House
• Appetite for Change | Health, Wealth and Social Change
• Detroit Black Community Food Security Network
• Confronting Bias Through Teaching: Insights From Social Psychology - Chelsea Crittle, Keith B. Maddox, 2017
• Reframing anxiety to encourage interracial interactions
• I Don’t Need ‘Love’ Texts From My White Friends: I need them to fight anti-blackness

Yoel and Mickey try to settle their feud with the boys from Very Bad Wizards, Tamler Sommers and David Pizarro. They discuss what psychology, philosophy, and art can and can't do. Does psychology get more respect than it deserves? How has philosophy contributed to supporting the COVID-19 pandemic response? In principle, is it possible to measure authoritarianism or love or neuroticism? How has VBW not become an icon of the IDW?

Bonus: Who loves Tamler's step-mother the most?

Special Guest: Very Bad Wizards.

Links:

• Fin du Monde | Unibroue
• Roman Candle – Bellwoods Brewery
• Small Batch Whiskey | Premium Bourbon | Basil Hayden's
• Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response | Nature Human Behaviour
• David Pizarro's gift to the podcast
• Is the 'Intellectual Dark Web' Politically Diverse?