The Connection with Marty Moss-Coane

Charles Darwin was the first to define the psychology of disgust, writing in the 19th century that it was a feeling of revulsion related to the senses most notably the sense of taste. Today, psychologist Paul Rozin is one of the world’s leading authorities on disgust describing it as “the fear of incorporating an offending substance into one’s body.” He has devised some ingenious experiments to tap into the feelings and expressions of disgust like, the dead-cockroach-in-drink test, and has developed a 32 item disgust scale. While we tend to associate disgust with the smell of decay or the taste of spoiled food, disgust has cultural, political and social implications. This week, Paul Rozin takes us into the inner workings of disgust: why we grimace when we feel disgust, the role of disgust in evolution, why we find some things nauseating, and the moral implications of disgust. Rozin has spent 50 years exploring this stomach-turning emotion and is a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sarah Bergenfield, an autism educator and author, shares her journey of navigating life with autism after a diagnosis in her 50s. She discusses the confusion and challenges of sensory overload and societal expectations. Maureen Dunne, a cognitive scientist and neurodiversity expert, highlights the necessity of including neurodivergent thinkers in the workplace to inspire innovation. Together, they emphasize the importance of understanding and embracing neurodiversity as a valuable strength, promoting acceptance and supportive environments for all.

Memory is not a file cabinet or computer where information is neatly stored and easily retrieved. We are constructing and reconstructing our memories all the time. Psychologist Ciara Greene says we should think of memory as the bricks in a LEGO tower that we are constantly reassembling. She is co-author of a new book, Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember. While our memories can be unreliable and malleable, they are also a key to our identity, including the decisions we make, the social bonds we form and how we make sense of the world. We’ll talk about how memory has evolved to help us solve problems, why eye witness testimony is often wrong, how emotions influence memory, why we forget and why fake news and false memories can feel so real. Ciara Greene leads the Attention and Memory Lab at University College Dublin.

We are living in a time of sexual upheaval as evidenced by the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, attempts to ban books with LGBTQ themes, the fight over trans rights, the election of the first transgender member of Congress, the easy access to pornography and rising popularity of polyamory. Historian Rebecca L. Davis says we have been here before, because the tension between erotic liberation and prudery has been with us for 400 years. She says there has never been a golden age of sexual stability in America. Her new book, Fierce Desires, traces the evolution of sexuality from a reflection of one’s social and religious status to one of individual identity. She joins us to discuss what history can tell us about today’s political conflicts over gender and sex.

For 30 years, Deborah Derrickson Kossmann was not allowed by her mother to come inside her Cherry Hill, New Jersey home. When Kossmann finally got inside, she made a horrifying discovery: the house was filthy, filled with mountains of moldering trash. There was no running water, no functioning toilet – nothing had been thrown away in years. The smell was overpowering. How had this happened? Who was her mother? Kossmann, who is now a clinical psychologist, mines her family’s history and her own to answer those questions. Her frank new memoir is titled Lost, Found, Kept. It’s about how she came to terms with her difficult mother and her traumatic childhood. She also explores the power of holding on and letting go of objects, fantasies, memories and relationships.

Ask most third graders if they like school and there’s a good chance they will give you an enthusiastic “yes!” Fast forward to high school and most students will tell you that school “sucks!” Children are built for learning, yet the more time they spend in a classroom, the more likely they will check out, feeling bored or overwhelmed — or both.

Psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman on what’s behind the country’s malaise and why we’re not helpless…or alone.

Eamon Dolan severed his relationship with his abusive mother when he was in his 40s. He had endured her physical and psychological violence as a child and later her emotional cruelty as an adult. He had tried to lay down some ground rules to prevent her from hurting him, but she broke them all so he broke off all contact. On this week’s episode, Eamon Dolan tells us what it took to cut ties with his mother. His new book, The Power of Parting, is about how child abuse undermined him well into his adulthood and how estrangement, while difficult, set him free. He says that society is overly protective of the family as the ideal unit, putting too many abused children at risk for a life of psychological pain and physical ailments. He argues that the mental health community over-values connection when disconnection is the right thing to do.

A new book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, reveals the hidden architecture of good conversation and how we can become better communicators.

There are songs that can transport us to memorable moments from our past, especially from our adolescence. Those memories are often vivid, conjuring up intense feelings about a first love, a broken heart, a shared experience with friends. Music, even just a few notes, has a way of unlocking forgotten events and relationships, creating a soundtrack for our lives. Our guest this week is Elizabeth Margulis, director of The Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University. She joins us to discuss why music can transport us and connect us to others, how different cultures shape our taste in music, and how melodies affect our mood. We’ll also talk about why some tunes can get stuck in our head, why repetition is central to music, where music is stored in the brain, and how music can unlock language for people with aphasia.