Amy Alkon's Humanlab: The Science Between Us

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.Tonight’s show explores what drives word-of-mouth -- that sometimes free but always highly valuable person-to-person advertising and recommending of products, ideas, and behaviors.My guest tonight, Wharton marketing professor Dr. Jonah Berger, will debunk the myths and lay out what the research says about how we can design products, ideas, and behaviors so people will talk about them. In other words, so they'll catch on.Berger’s book we’ll be discussing is Contagious: Why Things Catch On.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/amya (It's $14.95 after 30 days, but you can cancel before then and have it cost you nothing.)Please order my ne

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. (*"Best Of" Replay.) It turns out some of the ways parents think they’ll get their kids to behave -- by berating, threatening, and punishing them -- are actually the least effective. My guest tonight, Yale University psychology professor, Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, who is also director of the Yale Parenting Center, has a parenting template that is not only effective at changing behavior in children, it does it by cutting out the screaming, yelling, and threatening.Dr. Kazdin has written a fantastic and highly practical book, “The Everyday Parenting Toolkit: The Kazdin Method for easy, step-by-step, lasting change for you and your child.” Join us for an incredibly effective, science-based rethink on how to parent kids into behaving the way you want -- with a minimum of stress and unhappiness for both you and your kids.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, at blogtalkradio.com/

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.Stanton Peele points out that most people recover from addictions on their own -- without AA or rehab, and what makes the difference is values, not biology.On tonight’s show, he’ll debunk many of the myths in addiction treatment -- especially the notion that addiction is a “disease” people are powerless to overcome. That defeatest message is especially counterproductive to overcoming addiction, and it’s been supported with bad science and hearsay. Join us tonight to hear what solid science says about how addiction or bad habits can be overcome -- to the point where people are not just going cold-turkey off some substance or behavior till their next relapse, but where they develop meaningful ways of coping that no longer have them turning to their old crutch.Peele’s book we’ll be discussing is Recover! Stop Thinking Like an Addict and Reclaim Your Life with The PERFECT Program. Join me and all my fascinating gue

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.Whether you're an anger venter or an anger withholder (or something in between), this is a show for you. My guest tonight, therapist Dr. Andrea Brandt, writes that “our culture has a built-in phobia of negative emotions,” which isolates us from each other and has myriad unhealthy and counterproductive effects on us personally.Her goal -- in her book, Mindful Anger: a pathway to emotional freedom, and on this show -- is not to help you get rid of your anger but to help you understand and handle it in healthy and constructive ways. You should, in turn, find that this leads to cascading positive effects in every arena of your life. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 3

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. ("Best Of" replay.) Decisions that we make that seem stupid can actually make a lot of evolutionary sense, meaning that they would have made sense in the ancestral world; they just don’t make sense in the world in which we now live.Unfortunately, we can’t just tell our genes, “Hey, it’s 2013! There are no hungry tigers roaming the streets of Baltimore and, by the way, my girlfriend’s on The Pill.” But, my guest tonight, evolutionary psychologist, psychologist and marketing professor Dr. Vladas Griskevicius, is going to give us the background to make wiser choices by helping us understand the ways we can be primed to act against our modern interests. His fascinating book, co-authored with Dr. Douglas Kenrick, is “The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think.” Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or s

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.We tend to believe that we just have to reason others into doing what we want -- or even doing what we see is best for them. The reality is, we influence people by connecting with them and feeling where they're coming from, not trying to push them into doing things our way, notes psychiatrist, business coach, and hostage negotiator trainer Dr. Mark Goulston. Even if the shoving approach might sometimes lead to short-term change, it tends to breeds lasting resentment, not successful business and other relationships.On tonight's show, Goulston will lay out the fine points of the connected influence that moves people to go along with our goals and how to avoid the disconnected style that moves people away from us and leads to resentment and other bad feelings and outcomes. Goulston's book, co-authored with executive coach John Ullmen, that we'll be discussing on this show is "Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushi

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.*"Best Of" replay tonight (because my new book just came out). Live show again next week! We have a depression epidemic in this country, now affecting more than 15% of the population, and it’s striking people at younger and younger ages. It seems clear that our current modes of understanding and treating depression just aren’t working.My guest tonight, psychologist Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg, draws on research to show why we are failing to help depression sufferers and turns to our evolutionary roots to offer a nuanced understanding of why we get depressed, explaining why our modern environment’s mismatch with our evolved psychology can drag us depression. All of this leads to insights on how we might help depression sufferers get better, or, at the very least, not lead them to feel defective and broken because they are depressed. His inspiring and scientifically rigorous book we’ll be discussing tonight is The De

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.This is a "Best Of" replay because my new book just came out. This is a fascinating show on the difference between seeing and actually observing, and many of the other habits and practices of Sherlock Holmes. Science writer and psychologist Dr. Maria Konnikova draws on 21st century neuroscience and psychology to show how we can employ Holmes’ thought processes to unlock our own capacities for ever-present mindfulness, astute observation, and logical deduction in order to see more, live more rationally, and, in turn live smarter. Her book we discuss: Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock HolmesJoin me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.My show's sponsor is now Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.Great aspirations…sucky follow-through.This describes life for a lot of us -- sometimes, despite our best intentions. Best-selling author and psychologist Art Markman is going to help us out of this rut. His book we’ll be discussing on this show is Smart Change: Five Tools to Create Sustainable Habits in Yourself and Others.As in the book, on tonight’s show, he’ll turn to behavioral science to help us understand our brain’s motivational systems so we can short-circuit negative behaviors and create positive ones with staying power.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/amya (It's $14.95 after 30 days, but you can cancel before then and h

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.Join me for a "Best Of" replay -- a thought-provoking, mind-opening show on the underpinnings of our sexuality.Dr. Jesse Bering’s book, “Perv,” is subtitled “The Sexual Deviant in All of Us.” This is a book about weird sex but it’s also a book about all of the ways that even “normal” people fall along the spectrum of “perversions.”  Tonight’s show, like Bering’s book, will be a fascinating inside look into how our specific sexual desires seem to be shaped in childhood, how sexually not “normal” some of the most seemingly normal people are, and how human psychology leads us to find others’ sex practices upsetting and creepy instead of just different from our own.As Bering writes, “Humans aren’t the only sex deviants in the animal kingdom. But we are the only ones to stigmatize each other as disgusting perverts.”Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.Saturated fat is your friend. Really. It turns out everything we've been told about eating fat is wrong. On tonight's show, meticulous journalist Nina Teichholz will lay out the scientific errors, bias, and dangerous misrepresentations that have underpinned the dietary dogma of the past 60 years.She'll also lay out the findings of solid science -- why eating more dietary fat will lead us to better health and fitness. Join us as she discusses all of this and more from her brand new book, "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet." Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/amya (It's $14.95 after 30 days,

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.I’ve written that family are people who treat you like family. Sometimes, sadly, one's mother -- the closest familial relation a person can have -- isn’t included in that group.Mother’s Day is a tough holiday for some people -- for those whose mothers have died and for those whose mothers were far from the loving, nurturing protectors that others’ mothers seem to be.Peg Streep, herself the daughter of mean mother, is my guest tonight -- here to talk about her book, Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt.She'll explain why it’s been taboo to even let on that you have a cold, unloving mother as well as how such a mother shapes children, and especially daughters, in negative ways.However, she’ll also show us the ways out: How she and other daughters of mean mothers have managed to find, believe it or not, the positives in their experience; and how they can go forward, both as more psychologically healthy huma

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.How did so many of us get so fat and unhealthy? Well, it started when our government advised us to eat a high-carb, low-fat diet -- a diet that actually makes us fat and unhealthy. News reports distorting scientific findings and reporters unable to tell solid science from the shoddy kind are another problem — leaving most of us pretty confused about what we should be eating.Tonight, Denise Minger (of “The China Study” debunking fame) changes that. She will lay out the disturbing history of the ruining of America’s health. She’ll explain simple ways the ordinary person can identify scientific distortions in the media. And she’ll detail the nuances of science-based healthy eating (whether you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore or something in between).Minger’s meticulous (and very readable) book we’ll be discussing is Death By Food Pyramid: How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. *Easter Sunday “Best Of” Replay. Many people seem to think that the most effective motivation comes from outside of us, that motivating is something one person does to or for another. The studies done by my guest tonight, psychologist Dr. Edward L. Deci, find that self-motivation, not external motivation, is at the heart of creativity, responsibility, healthy behavior, and lasting change.This is essential to understand whether we are trying to motivate ourselves or looking to encourage others to successfully motivate themselves.On tonight's show, Dr. Deci will tell us what research shows about we go wrong in our thinking on motivation and how we can become more self-motivated -- and thus happier and more successful in every aspect of our lives.Dr. Deci's book we'll be discussing tonight is "Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation." My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, obviously, is not a scientist. But he thinks and views his experiences like a scientist and his wisdom is well-supported. For example, Adams found that it isn't goals that are the key to success, but what he calls "systems."  And Adams advises, based on his own steady stream of failures in business, that "Everything you want in life is in that bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out." As a cartoonist, he thinks of himself as a "professional simplifier." That's what he does in his just-published book, How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, and simplifying for all of us what it takes to succeed in business and be happy in life is what he does on tonight's not-to-be-missed show. My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletria

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.We aren’t the independent thinkers we like to believe ourselves to be.Psychologist and researcher Dr. Adam Alter shows in his fascinating book, Drunk Tank Pink, that a host of forces -- internal, social, and environmental -- drive our thinking and beliefs, and in turn, our actions.On tonight’s show, he’ll lay out the ways we are influenced, sometimes causing substantial changes in our behavior that make the difference between success and failure in our endeavors. Knowing these influences is the best way to avoid being swept away by them, so don’t miss this show.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/amya (It's $14.95

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. "Best Of" Replay today: Wharton organizational psychologist Dr. Adam Grant talks about his terrific book, "Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success," (just out in paperback this week!) which draws from research to explain what makes giving both powerful and dangerous to people's achieving their goals.Paradoxically, it's often those who give without looking for anything in return -- who just want to do good, open the playing field to good people -- who ultimately get the most in return. But, Grant warns, there are caveats to this -- and he lays them out in the book and we'll discuss them as well as giving's many nuances and benefits on the show. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.My show's sponsor is Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financial

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.My guest, Fortune 500 executive coach Olivia Fox Cabane, has written the single most helpful how-to book I have every read. Cabane shows, based in solid science, why charisma isn’t something people are just born with but something we can all acquire and perfect with knowledge and practice. Even people who aren’t extraverts.I was so impressed by her book that I stopped reading it to go order a friend a copy.On tonight’s show, Cabane will lay out how anyone can master the art and science of personal magnetism and attain success in their career, love life, and friendships, and lead a more socially fulfilling life. Her book we’ll be discussing is The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism. This promises to be a life-changing show -- don’t miss it! Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sun, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Sti

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.On tonight’s show, science gets together with ancient Chinese philosophy and it likes what it finds. Dr. Edward Slingerland, an internationally renowned expert in Chinese philosophy, draws on both cutting-edge science and ancient Chinese strategies to show how our modern Western approach of striving our guts out doesn’t seem to be the way to success or happiness.In fact, to give one example from his book, it seems that getting practiced enough in something that it comes naturally is the way to avoid forcing things in the moment -- which is actually counterproductive to succeeding. Dr. Slingerland will talk about this, how achieving that sort of effortlessness is the way to personal charisma, and much more on tonight’s show. His book he’ll be discussing is “Trying Not To Try: The Art And Science of Spontaneity.” Join us and see how we can better our work, relationships, and lives – – if we can just get out of ou

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.We have a depression epidemic in this country, now affecting more than 15% of the population, and it’s striking people at younger and younger ages. It seems clear that our current modes of understanding and treating depression just aren’t working.My guest tonight, psychologist Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg, draws on research to show why we are failing to help depression sufferers and turns to our evolutionary roots to offer a nuanced understanding of why we get depressed, explaining why our modern environment’s mismatch with our evolved psychology can drag us depression. All of this leads to insights on how we might help depression sufferers get better, or, at the very least, not lead them to feel defective and broken because they are depressed. His inspiring and scientifically rigorous book we’ll be discussing tonight is The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic. Join me and all my fascinating