Emily Kwong
speaker
4,795 appearances
100 recordings
11 series
first heard Jul 2025
last heard 16 Sep
Emily Kwong’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 98 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 26.
Appearances
As a kid on the 4th of July, Ken Carter's family would always get together, have a picnic and light fireworks.
His brother loved that part.
Ken, not so much.
Ken is a clinical psychologist at Oxford College of Emory University, where he studies sensation seekers, people who may enjoy risk, thrill, or a new sensation.
Ken, by comparison, is a self-described chill seeker.
Most people, Ken says, are probably in the middle.
And this spectrum of personality on display as fireworks burst overhead has always intrigued him.
As a psychologist, Ken uses a 40-point scale to measure someone's sensation-seeking behavior.
And he has met people who score 38, even 40.
Oh, that's quite low.
So today on the show, the psychology and brain chemistry of why some people like to light illegal Roman candles on the 4th of July, while others watch from a distance with a fire extinguisher in hand.
Plus, how I score on Ken's sensation-seeking survey.
I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
I've been very dissociative, so that's a problem for my future therapist.
All right, Ken, let us dig deeper into the brain chemistry of what makes some people want to seek out bottle rockets and others keep a far distance from fireworks.
What decides this?
What decides that, the difference among people?
Oh, that's really interesting.
What about experiences that happen in adulthood?
I'm thinking about people for whom maybe they didn't have an issue with fireworks before, but then perhaps they were deployed or survived a war and fireworks for them are now a trauma reminder.
Showing 621–640 of 4,795 · page 32 of 240
← Previous
Next →