The Psychology of...

Episode three of my amateur podcast features Grade One teacher Erin Beekman who recommended to me the "Kwik Brain" podcast. We discuss speed reading and memory expert Jim Kwick's morning routine. You can find his podcast at the link here https://kwikbrain.com/podcast To listen to our podcast go to the google drive link here  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i1LEVIXqdLy6Qkgv9ozD0k5gs-vnTHQR/view?usp=sharing We discuss the suggestions that we have adopted and some that just seem like a gimmick. We touch on literacy and learning and how Kwik's suggestions could help anyone learn more efficiently. Please share, comment, and subscribe to this blog so you can be up to speed on every new podcast episode and blog post. Thanks for listening.

I have a bias. Well, I have many but I have one that may not be very popular. As a worldview I am skeptical and wary of Islam. I see a correlation between that ideology and heinous violence. This concerns me but there's something that keeps me from holding strongly to this belief and from converting this bias into adversarial action against Islam... and that is my personal interaction with Muslim people. Every single Muslim person I have ever met has been kind and humble. The Muslim students at my schools are bright and considerate and well, average. Sure they have problems, but they have them at the same rates as any other racial or religious demographic. My connections, albeit minimal, to the Islamic faith keep me from having a deep, unhealthy and unproductive bias, or at least it keeps that bias in check. It makes it difficult to paint the near 2 billion Muslims in the world with the stroke of "terrorist" or "misogynist" when virtually every real world ex...

I'm still amateuring the hell out of this podcast but have a listen as I sit down with my cousin Stephen and discuss an episode of "What Really Happened" by Andrew Jenks. This podcast is produced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and dives into the lesser known aspects of huge stories in recent history such as the murder of Michael Jordan's father and whether it was related to Michael's gambling issues. He revisits the death of Princess Diana, the time Muhammad Ali talked a man down from jumping off a building, and how Winston Churchill may or may not have had a serious mental illness. In this episode we discuss how Jenks uncovers some aspects of Britney Spears' 2008 meltdown that might make you see her in a new light. I know I came away from the episode feeling like I had been harsh on her. And we start to discuss how critical we can often be of celebrities, especially females ones. Here is a link to our episode. https://drive.google.com/open?id=...

This is my attempt at podcasting and hosting it through google products. I hope it's user friendly for you. You can find this episode below. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dpeomGoP-QF1svFXqSFSc8UmYh_jQw9V This is the first episode of the Podcast Show Podcast. In today's episode I sit down with my nephew Seth and discuss topics from the live episode "Hidden Motives" of Sam Harris' podcast "Waking Up". In the episode Sam has a discussion with economist and author Robin Hansen about the hidden motives as to why we do what we do. In my discussion with Seth we reflect on the behaviour of Junior High students and how Hansen's theories are evident with teenagers. A few quick notes to those that listen. I am a provisional psychologist but any discussion heard on this episode or any other should not be seen as a replacement for counselling or psychological consultation. There is particularly a moment at the beginning of the discussion in which we tou...

We are not meant to minimize risk, but to optimize it. - Dr. Jordan Peterson There are so many threats to our children in the world today. We are well aware of the opioid problem, or increased violence that is racially, sexually, or religiously motivated. There are wars and child molesters, there are liberals and conservatives looking to persuade your children to their ideological side. And the video games! Have mercy on us all, the video games! Our dangerous human run world is full of proverbially hot irons for our children to burn their curious little hands on. And what should we do as parents? Well if our children are young enough we make stern warnings and we control the situation so that no hot iron will be readily available for play time. It's good to take precautions. But at what age should we be allowing our children to finally use the iron, lest their childhood dread of all things hot prevent them from ironing a shirt?  Isn't that what we are experiencing today? ...

Have you ever learned something that was so basic you were embarrassed to admit that you just learned it? I just had one of those experiences in my study of ideologies and I have to admit I feel sort of dumb admitting it. You see, I always thought that the word ideology came from 'idea' and that ideologies were just a belief system to make sense of a basic idea, a lens through which we can see and interpret the otherwise extremely complicated world. I thought that the name of the game was finding an ideology that best fit you and then working towards making it reality. Image from The Blog of the APA That is until I made a rather obvious observation that the route word for ideology is not 'idea' it's 'ideal'. This makes a big difference. Ideologies are systems to promote and achieve a certain ideal . It's saying, I know what heaven is and I am going to try and make everyone else go there. Still, might not sound that bad. But there are some inher...

I recently listened to an episode of Sam Harris' Waking Up podcast in which he had a discussion with ex-white nationalist Christian Picciolini. They discuss Christian's drastic 180 from leading a neo-nazi skin head group to his extremely important anti-hate activism. The interview is a must listen so I will post a link here. https://samharris.org/podcasts/121-white-power/ Christian warns us that much of the left's counterattacks on white nationalists is backfiring. He argues that in the same way that the "War on Terror" lead to the development of ISIS and further cases of terrorism, the violence and marginalization of young, fairly moderate white males is making them more vulnerable to white nationalist ideologies. Screaming from the extremes isn't working. He advocates that we need to start in the middle (we all want better jobs, better health, kids to be happy) in order to humanize each other. Jon Haidt teaches us that through more interpersonal, cross-...