Bounce! Conversations with Larry Weeks

My guest is Mary-Frances O'Connor. Mary-Francis is a professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Arizona and is the Director of the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress Lab, where she and her colleagues are creating new frameworks for understanding grief and the grieving process; and her book The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss is the topic of this episode. On the show, we discuss... Her work at the lab and what she is learning about grief What happens to the brain when someone is experiencing grief Defining complicated grief An update on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief model How grief is prolonged We discuss the mortality rates for those who fail to adapt to loss General loss, death isn't the only loss type we grieve; it can be a job, an identity, or anything we are attached to How lost loved ones really stay with us, outside of any mystical experience For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com 

My guest is AJ jacobs  A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig. His strategy as a writer is to dive into something he’s curious about and actually live it.  He has written ten books, four of which are New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor, and a dash of self-help. His most recent book is The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.  AJ is also editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, a commentator on NPR, and a columnist for Mental Floss magazine. He has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The Dr. Oz Show, Conan, and The Colbert Report. He has given several TED talks, including ones about living biblically, creating a one-world family, and living healthily. The viewership count of the two I saw was over 6M combined.  On the podcast, I probe into his life experiments so we cover… How I came across his work in Esquire We cover some of his more notable experiments  What he took away from reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in his quest to learn everything in the world.  The hilarious problems with being radically honest  What he learned from living the rules of the old testament for a year - in Manhattan  He discusses which of his experiments was the most profound and life-changing  We talk about why being grateful is hard and what he learned about gratitude from thanking over 1,000 people  How we have the happiness equation backward,  We talk about his latest book and the benefits of puzzles  What mazes have to do with psychological flexibility  I always strive for the meaningful on the show, but sometimes that can lean toward a bit of the somber - which is fine - but it is wonderful when you can get a guest like AJ who is breezy, funny, AND profound; hard to pull that off but he does it.  I instantly liked him - I think you will too. Enjoy!

This podcast is about your relationship to time.  My guest is Oliver Burkeman. Oliver is a journalist and author. He writes and publishes a twice-monthly email newsletter called "The Imperfectionist." You can find The Guardian column he wrote from 2006 to 2020 online. It's titled "This Column Will Change Your Life." He's also the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, and his most recent book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. It is also the topic of the podcast.  Four Thousand Weeks explores concepts of time and time management, arguing that our modern attempts to optimize our time leave us stressed and unhappy. The book's first sentence is: "The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." (About 4,000 weeks, on average; thus the title.). It is not your classic time-management book and in it, he explores the most profound questions we have in life.  In the book and on this podcast, Oliver prompts us to question the very idea that time is something you use in the first place."  Some of our talking points.  On what he's learned about happiness What we should seek besides happiness  Defining personal growth  The importance of frustration tolerance  How we relate to time  The problems with time management Optimizing the wrong things  To-do list and apps and the trap of planning The challenges of prioritizing  Practical tips on project management  And Oliver certainly helped me sort through my struggles with allocating my time, so I found the conversation very useful. I think you will, too.  For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com   

“Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved.”― Neil Gaiman My guest on this episode is Professor Robin Dunbar, the well-known anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist famous for his "Dunbar Number."  Robin is an Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology and head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of 22 books including his most recent Friends — Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships. For the few of you who have never heard of Dunbar's number, it is the discovery that there exists a cognitive limit on human groups of about 150. Generally, we can only maintain stable social relationships within a limited number in which each individual knows who the other is and how that person relates to each other.  On the show, Robin breaks down that upper number into concentric circles of much smaller groups that make up our close friends and best friends, explaining how they got there - and how we can maintain and grow them.  We discuss these topics… The importance of friends and the huge effect they have on our health A summary of his famous number - and its implications for friendships   How friendships change across a lifespan  How best friends are created  How and why friendships end  The pandemics impact on friendships, a bit about proximity  The effect of the internet, Zoom, and Social Media  Differences in friendship between the online and real-world The impact of individual differences in introversion and extraversion Friendships between men and women, the "When Harry Met Sally" question For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com 

"I would say what would be responsible when asking yourself should I stay or should I go is, am I actively growing a core skillset that I want to harness and carry with me throughout my career?" - Ashley Stahl  The great resignation is all over the media of late; it's an economic trend born of the COVID pandemic in which employees (In the U.S. for our purposes) are voluntarily leaving jobs in huge numbers—starting around the end of 2020, ramping in 2021 and increasing now in 2022. Although many service sectors are hardest hit, it does bleed beyond those impacting many different industries.   My guest is Ashley Stahl. Ashley is a former counter-terrorism professional turned career coach and bestselling author of "You Turn: Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, and Design Your Dream Career." Ashley's helped clients in over 30 countries discover their career path and land more job offers. Her writings appear in a monthly career column in Forbes magazine, and her articles have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Self, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and more.  When you listen, I think you can tell that Ashley is on a mission to help people step into a career they're aligned with and even excited about.  I wanted Ashley on because she is an expert in career transitions and disruptive workplace phenomena. I wanted her opinion on what is happening and, more importantly, what opportunities this opens up for people. She did not disappoint.  Topics we covered on the show  insights into what is happening at the moment across industries.  Work and the burden of meaning, purpose and passion.  Values first, roles second.  Better questions to ask yourself.  When to stay, when to leave.  The importance of mindset.  Assessments and determining work that is right for you.  Hard skills and how networking works today.  How to find unadvertised roles.  For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com 

“Acceptance is the full embrace of our personal experience…it’s choosing to feel with openness and curiosity, so that you can live the kind of life you want to live while inviting your feelings to come along for the ride” - Stephen Hayes  This podcast is about the power of dealing with negative thoughts and emotions more obliquely. It's about a central shift from focusing on what you think and feel to how you relate to what you think and feel. Its effectiveness is somewhat paradoxical because struggling to stop or change a thought or emotion can have the opposite effect - and compound the problem.  My guest is Dr. Steven Hayes. Dr. Hayes is a Nevada foundation professor of psychology in the behavior analysis program at the University of Nevada. He's an author of 46 books in nearly 675 scientific articles. His TEDx talks and blogs have been viewed or read by over 3 million people he has ranked among the most cited psychologists in the world. He's especially known for his work on acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT, which is one of the most widely used and researched new methods of psychological intervention over the last 20 years. Steven has received the lifetime achievement award from the association for behavioral and cognitive therapy and his popular book, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: was #1 bestseller, and his new book, which is also discussed on the podcast. A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters has been recently released to white acclaim. Some of the topics we cover. Current depression rates and the impact of the pandemic   What he thinks is exasperating depression and anxiety in the U.S.  The differences between sadness and depression How our brains and emotions can often work against us How automatic and complicated our thinking processes are ACT and process-based therapy, and the challenge of a purely cognitive model What is relational thinking The problem with treating negative thoughts as problems  How we can relate to our thoughts to create space from being caught up in them  What is diffusion and techniques to apply it  For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com 

On this episode we cover a bit of the biography of vaccines, dovetailing into the current state of vaccination around the globe. My guest on this podcast is Dr. Paul Offit, a world renowned expert and medical pioneer in the field of immunology and virology. He is a professor in the division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of Vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC, credited with saving hundreds of children's lives every day. Dr. Offit is also currently a member of the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee and is a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation and the Foundation for Vaccine Research. His awards and citations are too numerous to list here (See more of his bio at www.chop.edu/doctors/offit-paul-a) Paul is not only an expert of great renown, he is also very generous and extremely passionate about public health - and it comes through. Vaccination is widely considered one of the greatest medical achievements of modern civilization. Please listen as Paul explains why that is so. We covered a range of topics including: The Ming dynasty, ‘variolation’ and smallpox Powdered pustules and other Chinese precursors 18th Century and the founding of vaccinology in the West Jonas Salk and the first successful polio vaccines Rotavirus and the RotaTeq vaccine Recombinant DNA flu vaccines The new mRNA era of vaccines Vaccine risks then and now; we do the math Vaccine controversy and hesitancy throughout history Overview of the current COVID-19 vaccines, Delta and what’s next Who should, and should not, get the vaccine FDA timelines, approvals, and licensure For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com 

“A person can make himself happy or miserable regardless of what is actually happening outside just by changing the contents of consciousness” -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi How you feel about life and living, and your happiness in general - ultimately depends on interpreting everyday experience. Your mind shapes every experience you have and there is a minimal return on happiness effort, trying to exert more control over external forces. Time should be spent on ordering your inner world. This podcast is about doing just that.  My guest is Loch Kelly. Loch is an author, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the  Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn, and NYU to study how awareness training can enhance compassion and well-being. As a licensed psychotherapist, Loch has been teaching seminars, supervising clinicians and practicing awareness psychotherapy in NYC for 30 years.  He has authored two books on meditation, Shift into Freedom The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness and The Way of Effortless Mindfulness A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life, which is the touchstone for our discussion Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, and ancient wisdom traditions, the book is a practical guide to what he calls the next stage in the ongoing mindfulness movement: effortless mindfulness.  On the show we discuss these topics and more  Defining meditation Defining awareness Suffering and managing emotions Why meditation can be hard  Who meditation is for Terminology Explaining Flow states and how it can be elicited in meditation Differences between mindfulness meditation and effortless mindfulness On effort and effortlessness  Types / Methods Multiple "selves" and the mini-me Glimpse practices How to start - "here now" meditation There is a lot more here, so give it a listen.  For show notes, resources, and more, visit www.larryweeks.com  Larry

Nicholas Christakis on the impact of Coronavirus, what went wrong, what's going right, and our possible future. More below. Nicholas is a physician and social scientist at Yale University who conducts research in network science, biosocial science, and behavior genetics. Named by Time magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, Nicholas's current work focuses on how human biology and health affect social interactions and social networks. He directs the Human Nature Lab and is the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.  He is also the author of several books, including Connected: The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, and his latest, Apollo's Arrow, The Profound and Enduring impact of Coronavirus On the Way We Live - which is the topic of our conversation. Nicholas was a font of information; it was a challenge to fit everything into an hour. He was a conversational tour de force crisscrossing history, medicine, social behavior, and disease math. On the show we covered... How earlier pandemics were similar in how they played out  The frequency of pandemics How COVID-19 compares to other pathogens Disease math and mortality curves Updates on lethality Effective contagion rates What went wrong Trust in government and scientific institutions What's going right  Development of vaccines Vaccination rates (percentage of the populace) we need to open the economy The swiss cheese model of personal risk mitigation  Post pandemic behavior and the future boom There is a lot more here, so give it a listen.  For show notes, resources, and more, visit www.larryweeks.com  Larry   

Chatter refers to this negative cycle of thinking and feeling that leads us to get stuck in ways that can be really toxic for our health, for our relationships, and for our ability to think and perform  - Ethan Kross “Hecaton asks, "Do you ask what progress I have made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." Valuable progress indeed: he will never be alone." —Seneca On this podcast, I delve into what cognitive science is learning about the conversations we have with ourselves - and even better, how to manage them.  My guest is Ethan Kross, Ph.D. An award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he studies how the conversations people have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions and relationships. And his research has been published in academic journals and featured in the New York Times, the Economist and the New Yorker, to name just a few. He is also the author of the just-published book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, the topic of this episode. Why do you say what you say, when you talk to yourself?  Ethan explained to me that our brains have an affinity for disconnecting from what's happening around us. This then offers an opportunity for the conversations in our minds.  Ethan says that our inner voice is crucial and helps us evaluate what we do, calibrating our gap-to-goal actions. We have a monitoring default state.   But it can turn on us. Anxious or negative chatter can tank athletic performance and sabotage your career. Chatter is often triggered when we interpret a situation as a threat—something we can’t manage. Hello, pandemic. Ethan tells me uncertain times and uncertainty and a lack of control are agents that fuel (internal) chatter. if you had asked me when I started this project, for a formula for a mass chatter event, we are living through that right now. And all the ingredients are there; a once in a century uncontrollable and uncertain pandemic - Ethan Kross These internal conversations also determine our experiences. Your mood is most often defined not by what you did but by what you thought about what you did at the time you were doing it. On the show, we cover a lot of his research on "chatter" laid out in his new book Why do we do it? Origins of the voices How chatter can backfire on us Tips (and tools) on improving or quelling negative chatter How to properly coach yourself and the use of pronouns Affirmations and how to talk to yourself And much more It's arguable that some of the most important conversations you will have in your life will are the ones you have with yourself. So tell yourself to give it a listen.  For show notes, resources, and more, visit www.larryweeks.com  Larry