Maya Shankar

speaker

1,518 appearances 8 recordings 7 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 5 Jul

Maya Shankar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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The Genius Life · 542: The Science of Navigating Change, Grief, and Uncertainty | Maya Shankar, PhD · 14 Jan 2026 podcast

And so this book was actually my aim for this book

was to respond to that mantra, but to actually give people a companion when they're in the throes of change to actually think and feel differently about what they're going through based on science-based strategies, because that mantra registered as a platitude for me anyway, when I was in the thick of it.

Such a beautiful question.

I've never been asked that, so thank you.

I think what I've realized over time is that despite my academic training, despite the fact that I have a PhD and a postdoc and I was trained in empirical methods and the community kind of pooh-poohs anecdotal evidence or stories or whatnot,

For me, the sweet spot of really facilitating internal growth sits at the intersection of science and storytelling.

And that was a very powerful realization, because I think initially my instinct, just based on my background, is to just search for what the science says.

I just want to know, like, what are the prescriptions?

But it's only through people's stories that, one, we see ourselves.

Two, we see the profound impact that some of these insights have had on them.

And three, even as scientists, we know how and where to apply insights from our field because these real humans are teaching us what the problem statement even is for them in the throes of change, right?

And so when I was conceiving of this book and just trying to figure out, well, what is this?

I know there's a book to be written, right?

I know after...

At the time, I'd hosted my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, for many years.

I conducted hundreds of hours of interviews.

I knew there was a book to be written, but I wanted to figure out, well, what does it look like?

And that was when I realized, even though I'm a cognitive scientist, I want the heart of this book to be stories.

I want to give people...

the joy of having a page turner where you get so engrossed in what's happening to these humans who I searched the world for, right?

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