Two Psychologists Four Beers
Two psychologists endeavor to drink four beers while discussing news and controversies in science, academia, and beyond.
Episodes
April 28, 2021 • 78 min
Journalist and podcaster Jesse Singal joins the show to talk about the enduring popularity of social-psychological quick fixes and how they go wrong. Plus: what is wrong with how the media covers science? Special Guest: Jesse Singal.
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March 24, 2021 • 82 min
Neuroscientist and addiction researcher Carl Hart joins the show to talk drug legalization. Why does he think all drugs should be legal? What are some common myths about drug use and addiction? And how has his personal experience as a regular drug user influenced his views?
Bonus: What drugs should we try next? Special Guest: Carl Hart.
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February 24, 2021 • 80 min
Lee Jussim joins the show to argue that we have been too soft on academia. We discuss problems in psychology and the social sciences including ideological bias, politically-motivated retractions, and more. Have things gotten better or worse over the past 10 years?
Plus: is Lee bad at Twitter? Special Guest: Lee Jussim.
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January 27, 2021 • 82 min
Psychologist Gordon Pennycook joins the show to talk bullshit and misinformation. What is bullshit, and why do some people fall for it more than others? Why does misinformation spread so readily, and what can be done to stop it?
Plus: Yoel asks some perfectly reasonable questions about COVID's origins, and Mickey indulges in some Canadian content. Special Guest: Gordon Pennycook.
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December 30, 2020 • 78 min
Mickey and Yoel follow up on two recent episodes ("Against Academia?" and "Racism and Sexism on Campus"). Then they review some of the less-bad aspects of 2020 and recommend some things that got them through a challenging year. Plus: what 80s band was Mickey the #1 fan of?
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December 16, 2020 • 70 min
Psychologist Katie Kinzler joins the show to talk language. How do children and adults make judgments about people based on how they talk? Is there a "bilingual advantage"? And does Mickey sound Canadian?
Bonus: When deciding whether to go to grad school, should you not do what Katie did?
Special Guest: Katherine (Katie) Kinzler.
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December 2, 2020 • 101 min
Repeat guest Anne Wilson joins the show to talk about two recent papers about bias in psychology and on campus. Is gender and racial bias pervasive? Or are things better than many of us might think? We also discuss the recent "female mentorship" paper that's been causing quite the hubbub. Special Guest: Anne Wilson.
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November 11, 2020 • 79 min
Mickey and Yoel tackle the pros and cons of academia. As an academic, is it taboo to say you love your job? How hard do we work anyway? If we ran the world, how would we change academic hiring?
Also: why do reporters call us and ask us for our opinion?
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October 21, 2020 • 99 min
Psychologist Michael McCullough joins the show to talk forgiveness, punishment, and how we came to care about the welfare of people we don't know. Also: a listener calls out our dubious math. Special Guest: Michael McCullough.
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October 7, 2020 • 67 min
Psychologist and author Maria Konnikova joins the show to talk poker, life, and what one teaches you about the other. She talks with us about working with Walter Mischel as a graduate student, her decision to leave the academic track to become an author, and her latest book, The Biggest Bluff, in which she describes how she became a tournament-winning professional poker player.
Bonus: who will win our round of Lodden Thinks? Specia...
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September 23, 2020 • 88 min
Yoel and Mickey interview one of the most influential social scientists of our generation, Harvard University's Joe Henrich. Why are people from the West so peculiar, so different from other people the world over? What led the West to be particularly prosperous? If not intelligence, what marks humans as so special? What are the various approaches to the evolutionary study of human behaviour? Does psychology suffer from a theory...
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September 9, 2020 • 96 min
Robb Willer and Simine Vazire join the podcast to debate whether social science, in its current form, can usefully contribute to our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Is psychology ready to give trustworthy advice to policy-makers?
Plus: Yoel shirks his beer-drinking, yet again. Special Guests: Robb Willer and Simine Vazire.
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August 26, 2020 • 71 min
Yoel and Mickey welcome Neil Lewis, Jr. of Cornell University to the podcast. Is psychology ready to be applied to help the response to the COVID-19 pandemic? What are the opportunity costs of applying a psychological intervention? How does Neil navigate Twitter so effectively? What will Neil be doing over at FiveThirtyEight? What can meta-analyses and registered reports tell us about stereotype threat?
Bonus: How is Mickey like Je...
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August 12, 2020 • 74 min
After over a year of (mostly) avoiding controversial topics, Yoel and Mickey dive in to talk about orthodoxy, dissent, and "cancel culture." Does the narrowing of acceptable views make us dumber or does it represent a drawing of new moral boundaries that make us more kind? How does the silencing of dissent lead to self-censoring? Why does it appear like some people are given more permission to dissent than others? Is cancel...
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July 29, 2020 • 83 min
For their 50th episode, Yoel and Mickey welcome Northwestern University psychologist Claudia Haase to the podcast to discuss relationships and mistakes. What was life like in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall? How can Yoel and Mickey iron out their relationship problems? How is life as a working academic and mother during a global pandemic? Why are people so scared to admit to their mistakes? How can we learn from fai...
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July 15, 2020 • 79 min
Yoel and Mickey have a far ranging conversation with University of British Columbia professor of philosophy, Evan Thompson. Despite growing up with a daily meditation practice and contributing to the cognitive science of mindfulness, why does Evan not consider himself a Buddhist? Is Buddhism a religion that is truly different from other religions? Is the self an illusion, as is popularily portrayed by Buddhist modernists such as Sa...
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July 1, 2020 • 80 min
Yoel and Mickey host Rachel Ruttan, who is an assisant professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the Rotman School of Management. What is organizational behavior and how is it different from psychology? What makes for a good research idea? How is figure skating like academia? When big corporations espouse social values, does it cheapen people's commitment to these values?
Bonus: What is the best way to suss ou...
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June 17, 2020 • 89 min
Yoel and Mickey welcome back returning guest Keith Maddox from Tufts University to talk about his research on racism. What is shadeism? Can anything be done to make it easier to talk about race and racism? What happens to poeple who confront racism? Has social psychology overplayed the impact of implicit prejudice? Has psychology overplayed the role of the individual racist, and not focused enough on structural racism? Special Gues...
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June 3, 2020 • 97 min
Yoel and Mickey try to settle their feud with the boys from Very Bad Wizards, Tamler Sommers and David Pizarro. They discuss what psychology, philosophy, and art can and can't do. Does psychology get more respect than it deserves? How has philosophy contributed to supporting the COVID-19 pandemic response? In principle, is it possible to measure authoritarianism or love or neuroticism? How has VBW not become an icon of the IDW?...
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May 13, 2020 • 65 min
Yoel and Mickey welcome humanistic psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman to the show. Scott talks about his academic path from intelligence researcher to positive psychologist. What is humanistic psychology? Can one study humananistic concepts like self-actualization, flourishing, and meaning scientifically? What does evolutionary psychology get wrong about basic human needs?
Bonus: SBK sings! Special Guest: Scott Barry Kaufman.
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