Fluent Psych
What findings and concepts in neuroscience and psychology help us better understand our friends and neighbors? Our families and ourselves? Our partisan politics and weakening social bonds?
Fluent NeuroPsych invites experts to convey the most insightful and relevant knowledge in these fields to a general audience of readers, listeners and viewers like you. Far from abstractions, concepts like “social identity and “motivated reasoning” help us process differing viewpoints while communicating our own views more effectively. After all, objectively speaking, we’re all so very subjective.
Featured
The United States of Narcissism?
The United States of Narcissism? Author Tom Nichols on the risk Americans present to our own democracy “If we believe democracy…
Heard from the Herd
Heard from the herd Psychology and Partisanship, featuring Dr. Abigail Marsh, author of The Fear Factor; Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience,…
Nicest Troll in Town
Nicest Troll in Town On- and Offline identity, Extremism, and Polarization Social media is not fundamentally a source of information or…
posts
What Respected Medical Experts Want You To Know… About Cancer & Exercise
MBO recently produced a three-episode series on cycling with cancer, featuring three protagonists (Gene, Sue and…
Why run 50 thousand miles?
Inspiration, Perspiration & Celebration at the Falmouth Road Race By Dr. Rebecca Breslow On August 15,…
What Experts Want You to Know About Sports, Injuries, and identity
Q: We have seen many pro athletes cling to their athletic identities. Why is it so…
Partisanship as Social Identity
From the Editors | The politics that ate America (identities and all) | Issue 11 |…
The Magic of Misinformation, Conspiracies, and Cults
From The Editors | The Magic of Misinformation, Conspiracies, and Cults | Issue 5 | June 2,…
podcasts
Mom-on-the-run Erin: The Challenges of postpartum Depression
Mom-on-the-Run Erin According to the CDC, one in eight new mothers experience postpartum depression, which in Erin’s case, as with others, came after a difficult pregnancy. “I was on bedrest for a while and I had preeclampsia,” confides Erin. “And I wasn’t good at being pregnant.” Weight gain didn’t help matters either. But Erin had…
The United States of Narcissism?
The United States of Narcissism? Author Tom Nichols on the risk Americans present to our own democracy “If we believe democracy has failed us,” writes author and scholar Tom Nichols in his latest book, Our Own Worst Enemy, “we should first ask ourselves whether we have failed the test of democracy.” In this Purple Principle…
Speaking Truth in Polarized Times
Top Guest Insights From 2021 Speaking Truth In Polarized Times The year 2021 would certainly be worth forgetting if its worst elements weren’t so clearly continuing on into the New Year 2022 and very likely beyond: the Omicron surge, the worst U.S. inflation in decades, and the maelstrom of misinformation swirling around the clear benefits…
Holiday Survival Kit (Part 3)
Identity With All The Trimmings Celebration & Polarization: Part 3 Can a German town be socially divided by sneakers? Or the Canadian landmass united by a beer commercial? And is US individualism more a group identity than its ardently individualistic citizens would ever admit? Read More Tune in to the third and final episode in…
Holiday Survival Kit (Part 2)
When Anti-Science Makes The Menu Celebration & Polarization: Part 2 It’s tempting to think of anti-science sentiments, such as the current pushback against COVID vaccination, as the disparate sum of misinformed individuals. But Lee McIntyre, author of the recent book How to Talk To A Science Denier has found otherwise. “All science denial is really…
Holiday Survival Kit (Part 1)
Deflating Political Football Celebration & Polarization: Part 1 Are we Americans trapped in our end zones of polarized bubbles ever more motivated to reason away conflicting information or viewpoints? Our featured guest, psychologist Tania Israel, thinks not and she should know. Dr. Israel has been holding workshops over the past two-plus decades to help participants…
Nicest Troll in Town
Nicest Troll in Town On- and Offline identity, Extremism, and Polarization Social media is not fundamentally a source of information or a competition of ideas, but a competition of identities. With that and other provocative findings, Dr. Chris Bail, Director of the Duke University Polarization Lab and author of Breaking the Social Media Prism (Princeton…
Embrace Complexity To Overcome Polarization
Embrace Complexity To Overcome Polarization Discussing a Way Out with Dr. Peter Coleman of The Difficult Conversations Lab Police reform, gun violence, global warming… When did you last have a civil, informative, productive conversation with someone of differing opinions on any of these hugely important but instantly polarizing topics? In the current U.S. political climate,…
Online Conspiracies & Virtual Cults
Online Conspiracies & Virtual Cults Part 2: Celebrity Makes The World Go Flat Do we live in an age where online conspiracies and cults proliferate ever more frequently and powerfully? We continue to explore this question, focusing this episode on the tremendous growth of the flat earth movement in “Online Conspiracies & Virtual Cults, Part…
Online Conspiracies and Virtual Cults
Online Conspiracies and Virtual Cults Social Extremes In Our Hyperpartisan Age Our digital universe is full of information, and misinformation, swirling about constantly, sampled in bits and bytes, most of it rarely gaining more than passing attention. How then does misinformation swirl up into a popular conspiracy theory? How do some conspiracy theories, such as…
What combats Vax Skepticism?
What combats Vax Skepticism? An Interview with Dr. Jeanine Guidry, Director of VCU’s Health & Media Lab Battling the COVID pandemic has been a war on many fronts – disease management, the race to develop safe, effective vaccines, and now the equally trickly public relations battle against vaccine misinformation and committed skeptics of all kinds….
2020 Election Polling
2020 Election Polling The Science & Psychology Of Polls In A Partisan Age During this 2020 election season, not a day goes by without another new Presidential poll result blaring from the cable networks and rebounding across the Web. But how accurate are these polls? What has been learned from the 2016 polling fiasco where many…
The Brain on Partisan Politics
The Brain on Partisan Politics Why Not So Great Minds Polarize Alike with NYU Scientist, Dr. Jay Van Bavel Let’s say, for the sake of Episode 9 (The Brain on Partisan Politics), that identical twins are separated at birth and raised in very different families, politically speaking: one deep blue, the other deep red. They’re…
Heard from the Herd
Heard from the herd Psychology and Partisanship, featuring Dr. Abigail Marsh, author of The Fear Factor; Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Georgetown University Are we all getting a little too musk ox these days? In this interview-based episode, Dr. Abigail Marsh explains the centrality of fear in human behavior, motivating any social species (whether musk…