What are internal family systems in terms of therapy? How are shame and guilt different and meant to be worked on? What does it take to bring about tangible change in a person’s well-being? Guest therapist Dr. Martha Sweezy joins myself and co-host Rebecca Faith Lawson on episode 415 to discuss these topics and her breadth of experience in the therapy field.
Having worked in community mental health at the outpatient department of the Cambridge Health Alliance for 18 years as a therapist, supervisor and the associate director of the DBT program, Dr. Martha Sweezy has experience with a wide variety of mental health challenges, many related to the sequelae of trauma.
She is currently an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and a clinical and program development consultant at Cambridge Health Alliance.
Until January, 2015, she was the Associate Director and Director of Training of DBT at Cambridge Health Alliance.
In addition to being the author of several articles, she is a co-editor or co-author of eight books related to IFS.
On episode 414, my guest University of Delaware Professor Dannagal Young, author of “Wrong”, joins myself and co-host Rebecca Faith Lawson. “In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and—ultimately—mobilize us. Through a process of identity distillation encouraged by public officials, journalists, political and social media, Americans’ political identities—how we think of ourselves as members of our political team—drive our belief in and demand for misinformation. It turns out that if being wrong allows us to comprehend the world, have control over it, or connect with our community, all in ways that serve our political team, then we don’t want to be right.
Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America’s two major political parties have become more extreme in their positions on ideological issues. Voters from the two parties have become increasingly distinct and hostile to one another along the lines of race, religion, geography, and culture. In the process, these political identities have transformed into a useful but reductive label tied to what we look like, who we worship, where we live, and what we believe.
Young offers a road map out of this chaotic morass, including demand-side solutions that reduce the bifurcation of American society and increase our information ecosystem’s accountability to empirical facts. By understanding the dynamics that encourage identity distillation, Wrong explains how to reverse this dangerous trend and strengthen American democracy in the process.”
Dannagal G. Young (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, 2007) is a Professor of Communication and Political Science at the University of Delaware where she studies the content, audience, and effects of nontraditional political information. She has published over sixty academic articles and book chapters on the content, psychology, and effects of political information, satire, and misinformation.
Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsize cultural shape? And what is lost when efficiency is gained?
Optimal Illusions traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America’s founding principles to its modern manifestations, found in colorful stories of oil tycoons, wildlife ecologists, Silicon Valley technologists, lifestyle gurus, sugar beet farmers, and poker players. Optimization is now deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality but what we make of it.
Coco Krumme’s work in mathematical modeling has made her acutely aware of optimization’s overreach. Streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. The malaise of living in an optimized society can feel profoundly inhumane. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.
Coco Krumme is an applied mathematician and writer. After completing a doctorate at MIT and working in academia and tech, Krumme founded Leeward Co, a consultancy that helps research teams with computational science and strategy (aka data science) in agriculture, climate science, logistics, materials and biosciences.
The long history of China’s relationship between stability, diversity, and prosperity, and how its current leadership threatens this delicate balance
Chinese society has been shaped by the interplay of the EAST—exams, autocracy, stability, and technology—from ancient times through the present. Beginning with the Sui dynasty’s introduction of the civil service exam, known as Keju, in 587 CE—and continuing through the personnel management system used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—Chinese autocracies have developed exceptional tools for homogenizing ideas, norms, and practices. But this uniformity came with a huge downside: stifled creativity.
Yasheng Huang shows how China transitioned from dynamism to extreme stagnation after the Keju was instituted. China’s most prosperous periods, such as during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and under the reformist CCP, occurred when its emphasis on scale (the size of bureaucracy) was balanced with scope (diversity of ideas).
Considering China’s remarkable success over the past half-century, Huang sees signs of danger in the political and economic reversals under Xi Jinping. The CCP has again vaulted conformity above new ideas, reverting to the Keju model that eventually led to technological decline. It is a lesson from China’s own history, Huang argues, that Chinese leaders would be wise to take seriously.
Jessica Carew Kraft, journalist and author of “Why We Need To Be Wild: One Woman’s Quest For Ancient Human Answers To 21st Century Problems”, joins myself, Armen Shirvanian, and co-host Rebecca Faith Lawson on episode 410 of the show, where we discuss her book, rewilding, reconnecting with nature, how we survived in the past, and more.
“Jessica Carew Kraft, an urban wife and mom of two, was firmly rooted in the modern world, complete with a high-powered career in tech and the sneaking suspicion that her lifestyle was preventing her and her family from truly thriving. Determined to find a better way, Jessica quit her job and set out to learn about “rewilding” from people who reject the comforts and convenience of civilization by using ancient tools and skills to survive. Along the way, she learned how to turn sticks into fire, stones into axes, and bones into tools for harvesting wild food―and found an entire community walking the path back from our technology-focused, anxiety-ridden way of life to a simpler, more human experience.
Weaving deep research and reportage with her own personal journey, Jessica tells the remarkable story of the potential benefits rewilding has for us and our planet, and questions what it truly means to be a human in today’s world. For readers of A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century and Hunt, Gather, Parent, Why We Need to Be Wild is a thought-provoking, unforgettable narrative that illuminates how we survived in the past, how we live now, and how each of us can choose to thrive in the years ahead.”
Jessica Carew Kraft is an independent journalist trained in cultural anthropology, with degrees from the University of London, Yale University and Swarthmore College.
“The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society.
Drawing on his twenty years of experience as a scholar of science denial, McIntyre explains how autocrats wield disinformation to manipulate a populace and deny obvious realities, why the best way to combat disinformation is to disrupt its spread, and most importantly, how we can win the war on truth.”
Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. He is the author of Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior, Post-Truth, and The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience, all published by the MIT Press.
A “problem of twelve” arises when a small number of institutions acquire the means to exert outsized influence over the politics and economy of a nation.
The Big Four index funds of Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and BlackRock control more than twenty percent of the votes of S&P 500 companies—a concentration of power that’s unprecedented in America. Then there’s the rise of private equity funds such as the Big Four of Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle and KKR, which has amassed $2.7 trillion of assets, and are eroding the legitimacy and accountability of American capitalism, not by controlling public companies, but by taking them over entirely, and removing them from public discourse and public scrutiny.
This quiet accumulation in the last few decades represents a dramatic transformation in how the American economy operates—a sea change that few of us have noticed and all of us need to consider. Harvard law professor John Coates forcefully calls our attention to what is sure to be one of the major political and economic issues of our time.
John Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, where he also serves as Deputy Dean and Research Director of the Center on the Legal Profession. Professor Coates served as General Counsel and as Acting Director for the Division of Corporation Finance for the SEC. Before joining Harvard, he was a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, specializing in financial institutions and M&A. At HLS and at HBS, he teaches corporate governance, M&A, finance, and related topics. He has testified before Congress, advised the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the New York Stock Exchange, and served as the Chair of the Investor-as-Owner Subcommittee of the Investor Advisory Committee of the SEC.
When it comes to the dating landscape, you want to know what is happening and why it is happening. What causes attraction, and what makes for great relationships? What do internet shows on these topics say, and what messages are worth listening to? We cover this on episode 407 with returning guest Macken Murphy and co-host Rebecca Faith Lawson.
“In the scientific literature, I found confirmation of what I was hearing. In recent years, about one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness. And that was before the national lockdown cut off so many of us from friends, loved ones, and support systems, exacerbating loneliness and isolation
Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity. And the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.” – Surgeon General in 2023
In episode 406, past guest Professor and psychologist Todd Kashdan joins me with my co-host on this discussion, Rebecca Faith Lawson, to cover the loneliness epidemic that was showcased this year by the Surgeon General, along with how it affects well-being, what can be done to not be isolated in the first place, and more.
You can check out my prior episode with Todd here, and some recent episodes with Rebecca here, here, and here.
The social internet landscape continues to change rapidly, and a lot of people’s time is involved in the various applications in use. Recently, Threads came out from Meta, while TikTok continues to grab lots of attention and Instagram is one of the most default applications for people meeting each other.
Within these applications, there are dynamics between creators and viewers, things that viewers are looking to see regardless of creator, and strategies creators are using to have their content showcased repeatedly. Understanding these dynamics is key to navigating the social landscape, as well as getting to the next apps or services that people will use, because the next are always based on the previous.
On this informative episode, Rebecca Faith Lawson joins in discussion on these topics, along with what stands out from creators, the ability to make content that is true to you and unfiltered, and how to avoid getting into your own head when making creative content.
There’s an unspoken assumption when you go to see a doctor: the doctor knows your medical story and is making decisions based on that story. But the reality frequently falls short. Medical records vanish when we switch doctors. Critical details of life-saving treatment plans get lost in muddled electronic charts. The doctors we see change according to specialty, hospital shifts, or an insurer’s whims.
Stanford physician Ilana Yurkiewicz calls this fragmentation, and, she reveals, it’s the central failure of health care today. In this gripping narrative from medicine’s front lines, she shows how a system that doesn’t talk to itself forces doctors, patients, and their loved ones to go to heroic lengths to bridge the gaps. With lives at stake and little other choice, we all do so―but the system is hanging by a thread, and we need better solutions. Radiantly humane, empowering, and ultimately hopeful, Fragmented is a prescription for what really needs fixing in modern medicine.
In this episode, we cover the topic of the big change in social media of the past decade, from a socially-based graph of our connections that is about familiarity, to an interest-based graph of our connections that is meant for discovery of novel creators and individuals.
With guest cohost Rebecca Faith Lawson, we go into what the change in algorithms has done to the feeling of using various apps like Facebook, Myspace, Instagram, and TikTok over time. We look into what was good about then versus now, and what the current landscape might be missing.
As well, we look into the comparison of content that is very polished or curated, as opposed to that which is straight from the mind or mostly unfiltered and real, and what types of feelings authentic content evokes.
In closing, we look at how interest-based apps like TikTok may connect with the loneliness that is pervasive and increasing in society, and if the current algorithms contribute to that loneliness.
As we had more to cover on these topics, this is a part 1 of the discussion. It’s always a delight having Rebecca on the program, and may you enjoy and learn from the material.
Hello and welcome to episode 401 with Jeff Lawson, theologian and elder at Faith Sarasota. This talk covered a range of life messages, and was an in-person one that went into a few topics of understanding and growth.
Jeff’s passion is to utilize his gifts that facilitate an atmosphere that seeks to promote the goal of looking more and more like Acts 2:42. In this talk, various life happenings were described, along with scriptures that match up with them or represent ways of being.
We hope you enjoy this one, and will see you on the next.
We have made it into the 400s here on the show. On this one here, I do a brief recap of the past 100 episodes, picking out a few that were notable along the way, and give a little preview of things I would like to include in the 400s.
This episode has a new intro and outro, and look to be adding in pre-episode intros about the guests before their part, as well as a closing portion about the show before the final outro.
Some of the items I look to be adding in are potentially more solo episodes as livestreams, and/or with guests, and then more panel type episodes possibly mixed in as livestreams. Here is to more good things, and thank you all for your continued support.
What does it take to do creative experimentation, and what can you get out of it? How does one build and work on their focus and motivation? What is required to build a newsletter, and what is in the Stretch Letter newsletter. Charlotte Grysolle joins on the show from Belgium in episode 399 to cover these topics and more.
Charlotte has 10 years of advertising/production agency experience in Brussels, New York, Singapore, and London. She started writing online and re-discovered a long-lost curiosity and drive for learning and self-development. It was about 18 months between sharing her first words online and quitting her job.
She made the jump to a fully remote, async role as Student Success Lead at Write of Passage – an online writing school with huge ambitions to change how people write online in the 21st century.
As creator of the Stretch Letter newsletter, Charlotte shares tools and resources to experiment with your mental and physical performance. The content comes out weekly, is highly practical, and is guaranteed to teach you something new about your mind and body.
Embrace the future of creativity with “The Artificially Intelligent Creative,” a groundbreaking guide that will redefine the way you approach your creative projects. This comprehensive book will introduce you to the incredible potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and reveal how you can harness its power to revolutionize your artistic endeavors. It was written by Srinivas Rao, who joins us on episode 398 of the show.
Discover how AI can elevate your creative process by:
Automating tedious tasks, freeing up more time for imagination and exploration
Enhancing your writing, art, music, and entrepreneurial projects with AI-driven tools and techniques
Building an AI-powered “second brain” to help you synthesize knowledge and create at the speed of thought
Developing an AI-assisted team to streamline your workflow and increase productivity
Learning from real-world case studies that showcase the astonishing possibilities of AI in creative projects
“The Artificially Intelligent Creative” is your essential guide to navigating the world of AI-driven creativity. Whether you’re an artist, writer, musician, or entrepreneur, this book will provide you with the knowledge and tools to harness the power of AI and take your creative pursuits to new heights.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to be at the forefront of the AI revolution in creativity. Embark on an extraordinary journey that will forever change the way you create.
Welcome to episode 397 of the show with Faith LeMasters, representing for sustainable fashion, and who has recently released a first issue of L’Avenir De La Mode Magazine.
From the magazine description:
“After interviewing with multiple designers and creatives, I realized there was a great need for designers, artists, and industry professionals to have a platform where they could truly (and openly) share their perspectives, ideas, experiences, and hopes for the future. This is that platform.
Focusing on emerging talents in the fashion, visual art, and interior design industries (with an emphasis on that which is luxurious), LADLM spotlights these talents and gives them a platform where they can work with the media to generate content that is meaningful (for them and us). We work with established creatives as well who have a strong vision and strive to be innovative in all that they do.
“L’Avenir de la Mode” directly translates to “The Future of Fashion,” and while we are expanding our reach beyond the fashion industry, it will always be at the heart of our publication and is the foundation for the content we create. The name is taken from a past interview I conducted where the designer noted that, at Los Angeles Fashion Week, everyone in the room was the future of fashion. While this content will differ from other projects and publications I collaborate with and work on, at LADLM, we will still be choosing to work with those who maintain a strong code of ethics and values (sweatshop labor is deplorable and we refuse to showcase brands that exploit people for monetary gain or any other reason).
It is my greatest hope that this publication will add value to your life, inspire you along your own journey (whatever that may look like), and give you the encouragement you need to embrace all the beautiful things that make you, you. Because after all, it is this uniqueness that creates a kaleidoscope of incredible culture, community, and individuality (however juxtaposed that may seem).”
Welcome to episode number 396 of the show, with the return of guest John De Froscia, originally of episode 6 early on in the program. In the past, we had spoken of history and travel, and while that comes into this episode, we discuss more about relationships, how society is at this time, and a variety of controversial topics make their way into the discussion.
It is only through looking at relationship structures in the United States and other regions that we can better understand the social world we are in today. There is a lot of online discussion about relationships people are having, because as people, we are very much about our groups and connections.
You must be logged in to post a comment.