Bob Cafaro on the Psychology of Beating an Incurable Illness
Plant Yourself Podcast guest Bob Cafaro (PYP 153) has just come out with his TEDx talk, “The Psychology of Beating an Incurable Illness.” Enjoy and be inspired:
Read MorePsychology
The Old Fart Booth Effect: A Weird Mind Hack that Makes Exercise Easier
Look in the mirror. Say your name.
You’ve just activated a section of your brain devoted to YOU.
Now think of some random celebrity. Say their name.
You’ve just activated a totally different section of your brain, this one dedicated to OTHERS.
Now – and here’s where this gets freaky – think of yourself in 20 years.
Which part of your brain just got turned on? The YOU circuit, or the OTHER circuit?
If you’re like most people – pretty much everyone, in fact – you think about your future self as if she or he is a total stranger.
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Hal Hershfield on Befriending Our Future Selves: PYP 191
Hal Herschfield is a UCLA psychology professor, and author of some really interesting studies on the connection between what we do now and how we think about the future.
Specifically, he’s shown through brain scans that the more we think of our future selves as a person different from ourselves (and most of us do), the less we’re willing to sacrifice today to help that future self.
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The Simple Practices that Healed His Depression with Dave Wiskowski: PYP 189
In 1987, fresh out of college, I took a job as a teaching intern at a fancy prep school in central New Jersey. One of the students who never made it across my radar was a quiet, blonde fifth grade boy named Dave Wiskowski.
In his class photo, he’s not smiling, unlike many of his classmates. He told me that he was struggling with depression at that time, any for many years later. Like many people who find themselves overwhelmed by life and negative emotions, he became adept at self-medicating through food, alcohol, and self-pity.
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Abandon Hope, All Who Desire Big Change
The great 13th-century Italian writer Dante Alighieri fell in love at the age of nine with a girl in a crimson dress.
Beatrice Portinaro was just eight when Dante first laid eyes upon her at a gathering in her father’s palazzo. He wrote, “From that time forward love fully ruled my soul.”
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Make 2046 Your Best Year Ever
In 1514, Nicolaus Copernicus shared a 40-page manuscript with a few friends. In it, he described his radical theory that the earth orbited the sun, rather than the other way around. Copernicus knew that this hypothesis was dangerous, as it challenged the universal assumption that the earth was the center of the universe. Still, he…
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The Healing Power of EFT with Robyn Chuter: PYP 186
Robyn Chuter is a plant-based “recovering naturopath” and wellness researcher from New South Wales, Australia. She’s particularly interested in how groups of people support each other’s health journeys, and is currently running an ethnographic study on a whole food, plant-based Facebook support group to identify effective strategies and barriers to behavior change.
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Peak Performance for the Rest of Us with Bradley Stulberg: PYP 180
Bradley Stulberg writes about the connections between exercise and human physiology and psychology. He’s interviewed many of the world’s elite athletes, and has synthesized their insights into valuable lessons for the rest of us.
Read MoreObesity, Disease, and Fat Shaming: a Conversation on the Curiously Veg Podcast
Josh LaJaunie and I had a spirited conversation with Hope Hughes and David Powell, hosts of the Curiously Veg Podcast, about a recent BBC documentary which featured the autopsy of an obese woman. Hope and David were taken aback by critics who accused the film of fat shaming. They reached to to me, and I…
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