The Psychology Podcast

→ WHAT IT COVERS Chloé Valdary explains her Theory of Enchantment program, a social emotional learning framework that teaches character development and anti-racism through pop culture, ancient wisdom, and texts from James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Martin Luther King Jr. She addresses contemporary approaches to race relations and advocates for love-centered anti-racism.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Stanford professor Robert Sutton shares his "15 Things I Believe" framework for organizational leadership, covering when managers should intervene versus step back, the wisdom paradox of confidence with humility, optimal team sizes based on cognitive load research, the George Carlin rule about organizational complexity, and why work itself may be overrated compared to life fulfillment.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Chip Conley shares his journey from boutique hotel CEO to Airbnb intern at age 52, explaining how he applied Maslow's hierarchy of needs to business through his Peak framework. He discusses the Modern Elder Academy he founded in Baja, Mexico, addressing midlife transitions, wisdom cultivation, and the concept of being "as curious as you are wise" across employee, customer, and investor relationships.

→ WHAT IT COVERS High performance psychologist Michael Gervais discusses his framework for thriving under pressure, developed over twenty years working with NFL Seattle Seahawks, Olympic medalists, and corporate leaders. He explains the Compete to Create philosophy with coach Pete Carroll, emphasizing being over doing, managing fear of people's opinions, and building mental skills for consequential environments through their Audible original book.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal discuss launching their podcast Blocked and Reported, which reached $5,800 monthly on Patreon within weeks. They examine workplace conformity pressures in journalism and academia, the contact hypothesis for bridging political divides, and how victimhood status functions in contemporary discourse across ideological lines.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Writer and fashion stylist Ayishat Akanbi discusses her journey from learning disabilities to creative work, examining how identity politics, group membership, and buzzwords limit authentic self-expression. She challenges intersectionality theory, explores productive approaches to discussing race and discrimination, and advocates for treating individuals as complex humans rather than representatives of identity categories.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Richard Haier, professor emeritus at UC Irvine and editor of Intelligence journal, discusses his pioneering brain imaging research on intelligence. The conversation covers the neural efficiency hypothesis, sex differences in brain structure, the genetics and neurobiology of intelligence, controversies around group differences, and future possibilities for enhancing cognitive abilities through neuroscience interventions.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Lilliana Mason explains how American political parties have become socially homogeneous identity groups rather than policy coalitions. She examines the distinction between social polarization and policy polarization, revealing that Americans share more policy agreement than their partisan hatred suggests, and explores psychological mechanisms driving partisan animosity including social identity theory, emotion-driven action, and the historical roots of racial division in...

→ WHAT IT COVERS Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller explores signaling theory across human behavior, from sexual selection and creativity to political ideology and virtue signaling. The conversation examines polyamory, neurodiversity, effective altruism, existential risks, and how evolutionary psychology explains modern courtship, morality, and social dynamics through the lens of game theory and mate selection.

→ WHAT IT COVERS Martin Seligman discusses his evolution from learned helplessness research to founding positive psychology, explaining how optimism differs from positive emotion, the role of agency throughout human history, and practical applications during crises. He addresses critiques, compares positive psychology to humanistic psychology, and presents a five-type creativity framework for scientific innovation.