Amy Alkon's Humanlab: The Science Between Us

Welcome to "Science News You Can Use" from Amy Alkon and Dr. Jennifer Verdolin.Science-based advice columnist and author Amy Alkon and animal behaviorist and author Dr. Jennifer Verdolin lay out science news you can use to solve your relationship problems or just improve your relationships and have a better life. Join us tonight for an enlightening show laying out the science on why Mean Girls are so mean, why "Lean In" is advice that can backfire on a woman, and how women can succeed in love, friendships, and careers.And don’t forget to buy our science-based and amusing books -- support our show while entertaining yourself and learning a thing or two to improve your life. Amy’s new book is "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" and Jennifer’s is "Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us about Human Relationships."Listen to this show every Sun, 7-7:30 pm PT, 10-10:30 pm ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, interviewing the luminaries of behavioral science.Low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades are my guests this week. Since the 1980s, they have been behind evidence-based ways to eat, and have helped thousands and thousands of people drop pounds without starving themselves. They have long understood that it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.  On the show, we'll talk about how to maintain a way of eating, and debunk a lot of widely held myths about diet -- myths many doctors still cling to. Buy their books at Amazon at this link.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Please support this show by buying my science-based and funny book about why people are rude and how we all can behave less counterproductively, "Good M

Welcome to HumanLab -- The Science Between Us -- with Amy Alkon and Dr. Jennifer Verdolin.Science-based advice columnist and author Amy Alkon and animal behaviorist and author Dr. Jennifer Verdolin lay out science you can use to solve your relationship problems or just improve your relationships and have a better life. Join us tonight for an enlightening show detailing th science on casual sex and multiple partners, and how to manage in this sexual Wild West.And don’t forget to buy our science-based and amusing books -- support our show while entertaining yourself and learning a thing or two to improve your life. Amy’s new book is "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" and Jennifer’s is "Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us about Human Relationships."Listen to this show every Sun, 7-7:30 pm PT, 10-10:30 pm ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, interviewing the luminaries of behavioral science.Adorably, we humans see ourselves as rational animals. Research shows us to be anything but.We are swayed in ways we wouldn’t expect in both our decision-making and how well we stick to our plans. The good news is, the research also shows that our going off track happens in predictable ways. My guest tonight, Harvard Business School professor, Dr. Francesca Gino, will both lay out the forces that sidetrack us as we’re trying to accomplish our goals and offer guidelines that we can use to keep ourselves on track. Dr. Gino will be discussing her recently-published book, Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan. Join us tonight and have your eyes opened about the psychological, social, and environmental stumbling blocks that keep us from getting where we want to go. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blo

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, interviewing the luminaries of behavioral science.There have been two major schools on negotiating -- Ury, Fisher and Patton's "win-win"/"relationships are everything" approach and Roger Cohen's "nail 'em to the wall" hardball approach. Harvard Business School professor Michael Wheeler finds that these rigid, one-size-fits-all strategies often clash with the real-world realities of negotiating. Drawing on his and his colleagues' research, he finds that the most successful negotiating techniques are born of an ability to adapt while negotiating, and use agility, creativity, and wise preparation. He'll advise us all on how to adapt (and do all the rest) in order to win in negotiation, the subject of his book we'll be discussing on the show, "The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World."Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, interviewing the luminaries of behavioral science.Assertiveness isn't about "building a good disguise," Dr. Randy Paterson explains. "It's about the courage to take the disguise off." It's "about being THERE."Paterson, a clinical psychologist, is the author of the excellent book I've recommended in my column, "The Assertiveness Workbook: How To Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships," and that's exactly what he and I will be laying out on tonight's show.Paterson takes a very rational, behavioral approach and gives extremely practical tips for how to change, and this show should help even already-assertive people notice and shore up areas where they could do better.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Please support this show by buying my science-based but funny book about why people are rude a

Welcome to "HumanLab: The Science Between Us," with Amy Alkon and Dr. Jennifer Verdolin.Welcome to a very special show with science-based advice columnist and author Amy Alkon and animal behaviorist and author Dr. Jennifer Verdolin laying out science news you can use to solve your relationship problems or just improve your relationships and have a better life. Join us tonight for an enlightening show on heartbreak -- why it's actually adaptive and how to recover from it -- with science from both the human and animal world.And don’t forget to buy our science-based and amusing books -- support our show while entertaining yourself and learning a thing or two to improve your life. Amy’s new book is "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" and Jennifer’s is "Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us about Human Relationships."Listen to this show every Sun, 7-7:30 pm PT, 10-10:30 pm ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, interviewing the luminaries of behavioral science.This week's very exciting show is on a subject that has a great deal of influence over us -- our environment -- that we tend to give very little thought.Luckily, cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard has done the work and thinking for us, and, on this show, will lay out the science of how the places we inhabit change our minds and bodies, and how we can use this knowledge to our benefit.His book we'll be discussing tonight, Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life, was a Library of Science Book Club selection.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sun from 7-7:30 pm PT and 10-10:30 pm ET, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.And please support the show by buying my science-based, funny book, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" 

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. My guest on this week's show, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, wants to help you achieve realistic confidence -- confidence based on competence. He is a professor of business psychology at University College of London and an authority in personality assessment, consumer analytics, and talent management. His book we'll be discussing on the show is "Conf!dence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt."Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sun from 7-7:30 pm PT and 10-10:30 pm ET, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Please support the show by buying my science-based and funny book on how we call all behave less counterproductively, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." 

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. On this show, Dr. Jonathan Gottschall talks about his foray from bummed out adjunct English professor to the Mixed Marshall Arts world and his big cage fight -- along with the psychology driving violence and the fight rituals that actually contain it. His fascinating book we'll be discussing on the show: The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sun from 7-7:30 pm PT and 10-10:30 pm ET, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Please support the show by buying my science-based and funny book on how we call all behave less counterproductively, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." 

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. A "Best Of" replay for you tonight. It's one of my favorite recent shows, filled with science news everyone can use -- the science of how to spend our way to happiness.My guest tonight is psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Dunn, co-author with Dr. Michael Norton, of a terrific, highly readable little book filled with research-driven wisdom: "Happy Money: The Science Of Smarter Spending." On tonight’s show, she lays out the myths we hold about how spending in certain ways will improve our lives and will explain all the ways we can rejigger our spending and thinking, often in small ways, to spend smarter and happier.Dunn, at age 26, was featured as one of the "rising stars" in academia by the Chronicle of Higher Education, and this should be a very interesting and practical show, so don’t miss it! Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7 p.m. Pacific Time, 10 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. What do men want? In bed and out? What do women want? How does this all tie together? (And who’s getting tied up?)These are just a few of the questions I’ll be asking and sex therapist Dr. Brandy Engler will be answering on tonight’s show. Dr. Engler is unique in that she opened a sex therapy practice for women -- expecting to slowly get some clients -- and quickly amassed a full list of clients: all men. Engler and New York Times best-selling biographer David Rensin have just published a fascinating book about her sessions and her insights, The Men On My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love, and Psychotherapy. This is your chance to go inside her sessions -- to see into the erotic minds of men. And not pervos or deviants, but regular guys. Men we all know.  Beyond the men, we will also see into the minds of the women having sex with these men -- or refusing to -- and find out why, and what it takes t

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. A very helpful "Best Of" replay tonight. Dr. Barbara Oakley has written an incredibly helpful book on learning how to learn math and science. But, yoohoo, math-loathers, this book -- and this show -- are about much more than that. Both the book and tonight’s show are about techniques you can start employing immediately that will show you how to do your work and your creative work more efficiently and ultimately more successfully and satisfyingly. The proof that these techniques work? Dr. Oakley herself used these techniques to transform from a girl who flunked every math and science course in high school into a tenured professor of engineering. And she currently uses them to curb procrastination, to learn and retain difficult material better and faster, and to increase her creativity in problem-solving and writing. Dr. Oakley’s excellent book we’ll be discussing is A Mind For Numbers: How to excel

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. On this show, University of Chicago psychologist and researcher Dr. Sian Beilock explains why we choke under pressure and how we can avoid doing it. Her book is Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.Join us tonight to find out how you can exhibit the sort of grace under pressure that makes for winning performances -- in  life, business, sports, public speaking, and the arts. And join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday at 7pm Pacific and 10pm Eastern, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes. Buy my science-based and funny book, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," and look for my award-winning, nationally syndicated, science-based advice column in a paper near you -- or ask the editor to carry it!

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. *This show won Third Place for best documentary radio in the June 26, 2015, Southern California Journalism awards, beating finalists from NPR powerhouse KCRW.Saturated fat is your friend. Really. It turns out everything we've been told about eating fat is wrong. On tonight's show, meticulous journalist Nina Teichholz will lay out the scientific errors, bias, and dangerous misrepresentations that have underpinned the dietary dogma of the past 60 years.She'll also lay out the findings of solid science -- why eating more dietary fat will lead us to better health and fitness. Join us as she discusses all of this and more from her terrific book, "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet." Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Please buy my book, the science-base

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science.Joshua Wolf Shenk uses science, fascinating true stories of creative partnerships, and historical evidence to dispel the myth of the lone genius and show that creativity is not the work of an individual mind. It is, in fact, a social activity, and two people, working together, are truly "greater than the sum of their parts." Join us tonight to find out what it takes to be a creative partner -- and in turn, how to be far more than you can be alone.Shenk's book we'll be discussing is Powers Of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Please buy my book, the science-based and funny "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck"(St. Martin's Griffin, 2014.) Library Journal's starred review: "Verdict: Solid psychology and a wealth of hel

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science. Relationships with family -- and the pets that are part of our families -- are important to our emotional health and can play a significant role in our social success.Tonight, evolutionary psychologist Dr. Catherine Salmon will lay out some fascinating information about our evolved psychology within our families, including -- among other things -- how rivalry isn’t just a sibling thing but a parent-child thing and how and why we create family relationships with people we aren’t related to -- as well as with our pets. The book we'll be discussing is one Salmon co-edited with fellow evolutionary psychologist Todd Shackelford, "The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology." (Salmon and Shackelford also wrote a number of chapters, along with others they commissioned from some of the other top researchers in evolutionary psychology and anthropology.)Join me and all my fascinating guests every

Welcome to "Science News You Can Use" from Amy Alkon and Dr. Jennifer Verdolin."Best Of" replay with science-based advice columnist and author Amy Alkon and animal behaviorist and author Dr. Jennifer Verdolin laying out science you can use to solve your relationship problems or just improve your relationships and have a better life. Join us tonight for an enlightening show laying out the science on casual sex and multiple partners, and how to manage in this sexual Wild West.And don’t forget to buy our science-based and amusing books -- support our show while entertaining yourself and learning a thing or two to improve your life. Amy’s new book is "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" and Jennifer’s is "Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us about Human Relationships."Listen to this show every Sun, 7-7:30 pm PT, 10-10:30 pm ET, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science.On this show, neuroscientist David Linden takes us on a journey from our fingertips to our funparts and explains how huge an influence touch is in every aspect of our lives. He'll lay out, for example, how touch can improve your success in business and how vital touch is to a child's development and well being and about how much touch a child needs.We'll be discussing his book, just out in paperback, Touch: The Science of Heart, Hand, and Mind.Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday (at our new half-hour time), 7-7:30 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Please support this show by ordering my book, the well-reviewed, science-based, and funny "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."

Welcome to Amy Alkon's HumanLab: The Science Between Us, a weekly show with the luminaries of behavioral science.We like to believe our decisions are rationally driven and make sense. But constantly, our perception and decision-making are clouded by illusions we aren't even aware we have. Some of these include illusions of accuracy in our attention, memory, confidence, and knowledge. These illusions can lead us to make costly - and even deadly - errors.The good news is, by understanding what these illusions are and how we fall prey to them, we can avoid doing it (or do it far less), make more rationally-based decisions, and live smarter overall.To help us do that, my guest tonight, psychologist and researcher Dr. Christopher Chabris is half of the team (with psychologist and researcher Dan Simons) who did the famous and hilarious "invisible gorilla experiment." It's also the title of their fascinating book, "The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us."Tonight, we'll be discussing this experiment and