The Cabrera Lab Podcast

What does “that’s just the way it is” really mean? This conversation explores the difference between genuine constraints and outdated mental models, how successful legacy practices can trap organizations, and why changing culture starts with uncovering shared assumptions. Learn how naming vague ideas and questioning defeatist language can reveal new possibilities for teams, families, and individuals.

What does it really mean to be smart? This conversation challenges IQ, credentials, and expertise as measures of intelligence, exploring structured thinking, adaptability, feedback, and the blind spots expertise can create. It also examines how shared mental models help teams work together, why practice beats passive training, and how DSRP reveals the structures beneath better thinking.

How does your brain turn information into meaning, and how do those mental models shape your choices, emotions, and behavior? Explore practical systems-thinking tools such as Is/Is Not, Zoom In, Part Party, Relationship Zoom, and Perspective Circle. Familiar examples make complex ideas approachable while revealing hidden assumptions, connections, viewpoints, and the mental baggage influencing everyday life.

Stress can sharpen performance, but burnout is a slower pattern of depletion when recovery keeps getting pushed aside. This conversation explores burnout as a systems problem shaped by workload, sleep, motivation, monotony, expectations, and environment. It also examines agency without blame, ways to make repetitive work more engaging, and how boundaries, hobbies, and deliberate recovery can restore balance.

What do cooking, basketball, medicine, and business have in common? The same fundamental patterns shape them all. Derek and Laura explore universality, elementalism, and DSRP, revealing how a few simple thinking structures can organize complex reality, sharpen mental models, and replace endless memorization. They also examine why more information does not always lead to more meaning.

Get 20% off any STSI course with code LRL20 — become a systems thinker today!In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera of Cornell University answer a practical question from a listener: how do we help kids run the Love Reality Loop for themselves?They explore how adults can move from solving conflict for kids to coaching kids through the process of testing their own mental models against reality. The conversation breaks down how children can learn to pause, regulate emotions, separate thoughts from feelings, ask better questions, observe what is actually happening, and become more curious about whether their story matches reality.Derek and Laura also connect the Love Reality Loop to science, feedback, emotional regulation, adaptive thinking, and everyday life. They explain why kids do not just need adults to adjudicate reality for them—they need repeated practice learning how to notice when their thinking is out of sync and how to bring it back into alignment.If you work with kids, parent kids, teach kids, or simply want to become better at testing your own assumptions, this episode offers a systems thinking framework for developing self-awareness, emotional regulation, and reality-based thinking from the earliest stages of life.

They explore rebuilding a moral compass when inherited rules no longer fit. Systems thinking and DSRP are used to map identity, part–whole relations, and consequences. Topics include balancing self and others, testing moral models against reality, avoiding rigid rules and rationalization, and using the aggregate test to see societal effects. Morality is framed as an ongoing, testable practice.

Get 20% off any STSI course with code IDENTITY20 — become a systems thinker today!In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera explore why everyday disagreements can escalate so quickly.They explain how identity works as a boundary—and why people often feel threatened when their beliefs, opinions, roles, politics, or preferences are challenged. The problem is not disagreement itself, but identity conflation: mistaking what you think, believe, or do for who you are. When that happens, even a simple difference of opinion can feel like an attack on the self.The conversation explores DSRP, identity-other dynamics, emotional reactions, echo chambers, agency, self-awareness, and the difference between reacting automatically and choosing your actions intentionally. They also offer a practical way to notice when your “buttons” are being pushed, separate your reaction from reality, and metabolize conflict into a more thoughtful response.If you want to stop taking things so personally, handle disagreement with more clarity, and protect your sense of self without becoming defensive, this episode offers a systems thinking framework for understanding identity, conflict, and emotional regulation.

Get 20% off any STSI course with code GOOP20 — become a systems thinker today!In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera expand the idea of “goop” beyond food and into the systems all around us.They explore how heavily processed food, social media, education, news, consumer products, and even AI can become forms of goop: things that appear useful, nutritious, or informative, but are often stripped of real value and repackaged in ways that manipulate us. From chicken nuggets and plug-in air fresheners to social media echo chambers and memorization-based schooling, they show how goop replaces real nourishment with convenience, consumption, and passive acceptance.The conversation also explores how parents, teachers, and individuals can build “goop radar” through thinking, metacognition, media literacy, and systems awareness. Instead of simply consuming more information, Derek and Laura argue that we need to help people—especially kids—learn how to organize information, question what they are being fed, and develop character, agency, and adaptive thinking.If you’ve ever wondered why modern life feels overloaded, artificial, or manipulative, this episode gives you a systems thinking lens for seeing the goop—and choosing something better.

Get 25% off any STSI course with code FIGHT25 — become a systems thinker today!In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera answer a personal question from Training Camp: how do they handle conflict as a couple?They explain how understanding mental models changes the way people disagree. Instead of seeing conflict as “you versus me,” they show how many disagreements are really differences between two mental models—two ways of organizing information and interpreting reality. That shift makes conflict less personal, less emotionally charged, and much easier to work through.The conversation explores emotional regulation, the Love Reality Loop, assumptions, intention, action-reaction dynamics, perspective taking, and the importance of slowing down before reacting. They also show how tools like Is/Is Not Lists, Perspective Circles, and mental model checking can help couples, families, teams, and leaders communicate more clearly.If you want to fight less, understand more, and stop turning assumptions into emotional reactions, this episode offers a practical systems thinking framework for handling conflict with more clarity, honesty, and agency.