Why We Do What We Do

Reframe: A Framework to Developing a Compassionate Care Instructional Model (With Special Guests)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Special guests Jennifer Farris, Meg Solomon, and Dr. Mari Cerda join us to talk about their new book about developing a compassionate care model. They...

Mini: Skeptical All Day

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can you walk around being skeptical all day long? At what point do you need to let your guard down? We suggest that not only can you go about your day...

Head Go Bonk: Bad

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There is a unique type of brain trauma that destroys lives and cuts them short and we can't even tell that it has happened until after your death. Chr...

Mini: Why We Twitch

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes we have some random twitches that develop out of nowhere. What is going on with these? Why do they happen? And, what can we do about it? We ...

Replacement Theory

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Replacement theory is essentially a propaganda campaign engineered to scare gullible people into giving power to autocrats. Versions of this have been...

Mini: Placebo Controls for Vaccines

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most common strategies of current right-wing propaganda is to say something that sounds like reasonable words, but when you break it down i...

Golden Goose Awards

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Science is not perfect, because it is human. But it is strives for correction, unlike almost any other human institution or endeavor. Much of what sci...

Mini: Scoville Scale

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Scoville scale is a method for measuring the heat of capsaicin-laden food. This is the amount of sugar water needed to entirely dilute the spice. ...

Makeup

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Lots of people smear colored dyes into the skin of their face almost every day. It's so commonplace, we hardly give it a second thought. We explore th...

Mini: Science Cheat-Prevention

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A trending strategy to bolster the interpretation of scientific results is to "pre-register" a study. This is publicly declaring your methods and data...

The End is Nigh!

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We are all gonna die! Some day :) Top 10, or 12 or something times that humans incorrectly predicted the end of the world! People have been doing this...

Mini: Stuck in a Music Rut

26 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Music is an important part of many people's childhood. Early, we start soaking up everything we hear and give equal opportunity to select the things w...

Nostalgia: Masturbation (The Original DIY)

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Years ago we talked about the science of masturbation (yes, ther's a science). Amazingly, there are some updates in the research on masturbation, so w...

Mini: SIDS

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) used to be escalating toward crisis. However, a public health campaign was able to effectively influence behaviors...

Autism Rising

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There have been some wildly inaccurate claims in the news lately about autism and autistic people. There is a specific political agenda making the cas...

Mini: Catch 'em Being Good

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Facilitating prosocial behavior is something humans have struggled with for a long time. We unfortunately discovered that coercion was effective at di...

Privatize This!

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A lot of engenuity has come out of various human endeavors over time. One system by which invention is motivated is the competition of capitalism. Thu...

Mini: Airplane Boarding

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Airlines have tried various methods to herd people onto a plane efficiently. Governing a lot of moving people is tricky. Which methods work to get peo...

Teaching Literacy pt 2

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last episode we spent a lot of time discussing some history about text-based communication in general, so we barely touched on the concepts you would ...

Mini: Middle Names

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How many names do you have? In America, it is very common to have three names, with the second name, called the "middle name," being a way to honor fa...

Teaching Literacy pt 1

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We are giving away the secret sauce. This is how to teach reading in Enlighs and how to do it efficiently. It's the rare trifecta of quick, cheap, and...

Mini: Release the Hostage

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The idea of holding someone hostage had to start somewhere. Actually, it started much more peacefully than what it evolved into. This episode is an ex...

Journalism vs. the World

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Special guest, journalist Ben Miller, joins us to talk about journalism compared to other forms of "news" and the importance of journalism to a functi...

Mini: Stress Balls

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows these squishly, novelty door prizes. Stress balls are touted as being able to help reduce your stress via the mechanical action of sque...

The Benefits of Massage

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A lot is made of the potential benefits of massage. Unfortunately, the camp has established firm roots to a lot of other pseudoscience. There seems to...

Mini: Author Book-Signings

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A signed copy of a first edition book might fetch you a high price down the road. But why? How does a signature increase the resale value of a book wh...

Unhoused pt. 2

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our second discussion regarding houselessness we finish our review of some of the myths of houselessness as well as some potential solutions. It is a ...

Mini: Fake News

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fake news is a triple threat for manipulating an audience. Boiled down, it is essentially a propaganda technique. We quickly expoore fake news, how it...

Unhoused pt. 1

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are a lot of ideas, hypothesis, opinions, and judgements about the issue of houselessness (formerly known as homelessness, sorry RV dwellers). H...

Mini: Predictor of Future Behavior

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Conventional wisdom is often wrong One maxim in particular asserts that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Given that every oppor...

Daylight Saving Time

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We all just endured slogging through yet another ritual of the mysterious tradition of "daylight saving time." This unloved, uniquely bitartisan pract...

Mini: Brain Freeze

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Do you impulsively consume smoothies, slushies, or ice cream at a speed that gives you a cold headache? We do. We were wondering what is going on with...

Nostalgia: Imposter Syndrome

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We originally published this episode February 26, 2020. Today we revisit with some updated research. Listen in to brush up on your imposter syndrome k...

Mini: Amuse-Bouche

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A mini episode seems like th perfect venue for this mini food. This is a very elite/priviliged way to think about food as it is supposed to relate to ...

The Paradox of Tolerance

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The paradox of tolerance is a philosphical thought experiment inspired in part by a curiosity about what gave rise to Hitler. The inquiry extrapolates...

Mini: Variables That Influence Behavior

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Do thoughts cause behavior? A common question about behavior is how we understand the variables of behavior to be external if we can observe our own i...

DEI

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The current trend to discontinue and dismantle DEI motivated us to look into this suddently controversial issue. DEI will be another corpse on the pil...

Mini: Musings and Prognostications 3: Goodbye Farms

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Yet another check-in with the nightmare fuel that is the news. We consider the ramifications of cutting programs that prevent disease from spreading a...

Nostalgia: Do Babies Recognize Good & Evil?

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This classic episode revisits some old "research" attempting to assess the inherent morality of humans found in the gaze of babies looking at puppets....

Mini: Frisson: Musical Shivers

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Do you get goosebumps and shivers when you hear certain songs? There is a name for this experience: frisson. We discuss frisson and what psychological...

True-ish Crime: Bloodstain Pattern Analysis

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Not the BPA that is commonly advertised as being not in our water bottles (at least I don't think so...), bloodstain pattern analysis is an investiga...

Mini: High Dive Into a Tiny Pool

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We plunge into the perilous yet enthralling world of stunt diving into shallow pools—a practice in which the stakes are as high as the platforms. Fr...

Adrenaline Junkies

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Think adrenaline junkies are just chasing the thrill? Think again. From BASE jumping to bull riding, the real high might not be what you think. Join u...

Mini: Why Are Wedding Veils a Thing?

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ever stop to think about how strange it is that women wear fabric over their entire faces during wedding ceremonies? We did, and so we looked into the...

Bullying

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bullies are all around us. What drives these proto-criminals to be the jerks that they are? It's complicated. A tragedy of errors the drives people to...

Mini: Watching Zits Pop

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Some of us have a nearly irresistable fascination with watching sores, boils, pustules, and zits be drained of their viscous contents. Some of us are ...

Why We Love Competition

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we love to compete? From Olympic games to trivia nights, competition is everywhere—but what drives us to strive, push, and sometimes obsess o...

Mini: Stop Looking at Me, Swan!

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Being stared at can be disconcerting the piont of sparking violent conflict. But why? Do other animals similarlty react to staring? We explore what it...

Stendhal Syndrome

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is Stendhal Syndrome? Also known as an “Art Attack,” this is a psychosomatic experience triggered by overwhelming encounters with art. Learn ...

Mini: How Science Names Things

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why is that every animals as a latin "sciency" name? How are these names created? This is the area of the esoterically named binomial nomenclature. Th...

Welcome to the Big Ivy League

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The ivy league school club is enduringly exclusive. We trace the origins of the term "ivy league," the history of those schols, and the factors that p...

Mini: Student to Teacher Ratio

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Start with: What is the purpose of education? If the answer is to produce intelligent, competent individuals, that means we care about how effective e...

The Good Old Days

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We got to 400 episodes! Let's take a look back into the past... not really, but we'll stalk about nostalgia—what it is, how it works, and why it’s...

Mini: The Tongue Map

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The tongue map neatly divides taste into salty, sweet, sour, and bitter zones on which we can taste only those specific flavors. Turns out, it’s wro...

Goodbye 2024

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's Christmas! Let's finish out the year with a chill retrospective on the year we are leaving behind. We recap our year as podcast, movies and TV we...

Mini: Musings and Prognostications Continued (Immigration)

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Another continuation of our discussion about the fall-out of the recent US election. In this discussion, we consider the implications for immigration ...

What the Economy Is (and Isn't)

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the economy, really? In this episode, we discuss the intricate maneuvering of goods, services, and decisions that shape our world. We'll unrav...

Mini: Musings and Prognostications Continued (Censorship)

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This discussion is a brief follow up to our episode reacting to the recent, 2024 US election (likely a series of minis we will continue as things unfo...

Vasectomies: Snip Snip, Hooray!

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cutting to the chase... we discuss vasectomies: what they are, why they work, and why some folks say they’re the best thing since sliced… tubes. W...

Mini: I'm Sorry, But...

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Some people have a real problem with buts. Many of the popular airmchair psychologists love to delivery quick, simple heuristics as panacea and life-c...

Musings and Prognostications

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the new dictatorship! In this discussion, we reflect on the recent US election and the factors that contributed to the surprising shift in ...

Mini: (Not) The Definition of Insanity

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A lot of people like to share what they believe is the definition of insanity. What the definition of insanity is NOT is doing the same thing over and...

The Kuleshov Effect

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do filmmakers manipulate our emotions and perceptions with just a few cuts? This episode unpacks the Kuleshov Effect, a groundbreaking discovery t...

Mini: How Many Books Can You Read in Your Life?

26 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's these silly little questions that we don't think about, but are curious to hear the answer. We can estimate how many books someone reads by figur...

Bad Arguments

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Some arguments are so bad that if even they were right, they'd be wrong. In this discussion, we unpack a specific example of criminally poor arguments...

Mini: Revolving Doors

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the deal with revolving doors? How are they trying to control us? Who's behind the cabal of big revolving doors? Just kidding :) There are som...

Public Speaking

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Public speaking is some people's number one fear. For most people, it is not preferred and can be difficult to master. There is a lot research about p...

Mini: Sensory Friendly Vaccine Kits

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Special guest, Dr. Lauren Brown, BCBA-D, LBA joins us in our first-ever guest-hosted mini to discuss a collaborative effort between behavior analysts ...

Why We Lead the Cheer

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Humans have not universally hired performers to entertain the crowd during professional sports throughout all of human history... which means that it ...

Mini: PIC-NIC

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A useful, informal template for beginning to understand human behavior is consider a couple of features of the consequences for behavior: the longterm...

Ghosts

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What are ghosts? Why are ghosts? How are ghosts? Pretend, for fun, and they aren't, in that order. Ghosts exist in the space of low resolution and lit...

Mini: Microphobia

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Our last and least mini of the Halloween season: The fear of small things! We'll cap off our series of minis with our smallest episode. We'll talk abo...

The Plausibility of Cryptids

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What makes people prone to believing in cryptids and why do some cryptids seem more plausible than others? We explore the various culture, language, a...

Mini: Hippo... phobia

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The fear of long words has 36 letters, making it one of the longest words in the English language: Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Also called s...

Scared to Death

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is it possible to die of fright? Turns out, yes, sort of. How this works is interesting in its own right, but the "why" invites a fascinating inquiry....

Mini: Phobophobia

14 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Phobophobia is fear of fear. This is so esoteric, it has to be an episode that we'd cover! This is not unlike generalized anxiety disorder. Also, we m...

Skinwalkers

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Halloween-month 2024 continues! Sort of a misinterpretation of Navajo traditions, Skinwalkers are similar to the cocept of werewolves or other animal-...

Mini: Coulrophobia

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For Halloween month this year we are focusing on specific phobias for our minis. This week's selection is on the fear of clowns. What is it? Why is it...

Fear

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Happy Halloween month! It's October, the time we spend celebrating the spookier side of psychological topics. What we haven't done thorughly, yet, is ...

Mini: That's Just How My Brain Works

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A common refrain in acknowledging, justifying, or explaining behavior is "that's just how my brain works." For some people, this is the case. For othe...

Imitation Imitation

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is easy to dismiss some behaviors as "just" imitation. However, this is a crucial developmental skill that we rely on throughout our lifetimes. We ...

Mini: Neoliberalism

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Neoliberalism is a a name that might be misleading. It is not "liberal" as in left-wing politics. We will describe what neoliberalism is and offer our...

Why Did We Ever Have Royalty?

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why did humans to raise some people or allow them to raise themselves above even the highest "classes" of society? We trace the history of royalty, th...

Mini: Porn

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is less of a "why" or the inner workings of the industry and more of a definition unpacking. This is largely in response to the "I can't define i...

Nostalgia: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

11 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We revisit this classic episode in a discussion about how lack of experience leads to a false-sense of competence, or maybe there is something else go...

Mini: Duh

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Another exploration of the weird things we say. The word "duh" is an interesting one with more recent roots than you might think. Enjoy our quick dive...

Critical Thinking

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Critical thinking is the vaccine against misinformation. If you learn nothing else, learn to question your own beliefs. We discuss the importance of c...

Mini: Temporary Insanity

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One defense that lawyers have successfuly used is the supposition that people can become temporarily unable to tell the difference between right and w...

The Electoral College pt. 2

28 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This discussion expands on the first episode, which covered the history of the electoral college, by explaining the arguments for and against this sys...

Mini: How's My Driving?

26 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Did you ever notice those stickers on commercial vehicles that ask "How is my driving?" with a corresponding phone number? We were curious, what is th...

The Electoral College pt. 1

21 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The electoral college is a strange system in the United States by which the president is "chosen" by a slate of people who represent the will of the v...

Mini: Weird Blue Chart

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the small field of Behavior Analysis, there is a smaller subset of practitioners who champion the use of a particular data graphing display called ...

Empathy pt. 2

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This discussion concludes by exploring how empathy develops. This can result in people with extremely high empathy and extremely low empathy. Where do...

Mini: Expressions That Died

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

These are the things we cut our teeth on... Did you know what a "trick cyclist" was? We didn't. Some sayings stick around in the lexicon, some seem to...

Empathy pt. 1

07 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Empathy is a common term that has an elusive definition and nebulous parameters. In this first episode, we set out to walk through definitions of empa...

Mini: Toilet Paper

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, wiping our anuses after defectating seems so natural as to be just a part of being human. But, most animals do not wipe their anuses. And, toil...

Universal Basic Income pt. 2

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The second part of this discussion explores that actual attempts at implementing some version of UBI in various parts of the world. It sounds good, bu...

Mini: The Value of Human Life

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How much money is your life worth? In the transactional scheme of our modern world, some people have taken on the somewhat macabre task of assigning a...

Universal Basic Income pt. 1

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Universal Basic Income is a policy proposal to provide everyone in a closed system with a no-strings-attached cash infusion on a regular schedule such...

Mini: Middle of the Road

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Another quick review of a a logical fallacy. This time, we dive into the Middle of the Road logical fallacy, which many people inadvertently fall prey...