What Are Our Limits? with Alex Hutchinson

EPISODE #17

There is something magical about the way some people can push their physical limits. Think about Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile in 1954, or Diana Nyad’s 103 mile swim from Cuba to Florida, or the countless people who have climbed Mt. Everest. Their physical limits impress us but we also know it’s not all about the body. So much is influenced by the mind, their motivation, and their shear ability to put themselves on the line. Today we talk about the role the brain plays when it comes to pushing the limits of endurance. Alex Hutchinson is an award-winning journalist and the author of Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. 

What We Can Learn with Barbara Oakley

EPISODE #12

You’ve probably heard businessmen or women touting what has become an adage: invest in your strengths. They mean well, and in some cases they're right, but when you’re dealing with who you want to become, it’s hard to find universal truths.  

Barbara Oakley, the author of Mindshift, offers a fresh perspective. She shares stories about people who buckled down and pursued what for them seemed like long shots, if their pasts were any indication of what they could be good at. We talk with Barbara about learning, grit, and the challenges people face when changing careers.  And, in case you’re wondering, Barbara knows a lot about learning. She is the co-creator of the wildly popular Coursera Course Learning How to Learn. The course is the largest MOOC (which stands for “Massive Open Online Course”). It has totaled over two million enrollments. 

A Different Way to Meet Goals with David Desteno

EPISODE #10

Reaching our goals is partly what makes us feel good about life—we want to contribute, we want to feel competent at what we do, and we want to feel like we are learning and growing. But so often we face a problem: what we need to accomplish feels like the last thing we want to do, so we procrastinate or create all kinds of tricks to try to get ourselves to work harder that often don't work. Today we talk with someone who says our overemphasis on a topdown approach to self-control is faulty. In fact, too much of it will harm us in the long run.

David DeSteno, a professor and researcher at Northeastern University, talks about a different approach in his new book, Emotional Success. There are three emotions we can cultivate that not only enrich our lives, but they help us be more gritty without the longterm consequences. 

How Power Changes Us

EPISODE #3

Dacher Keltner is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkley and the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has authored several books on human emotion and he is here today to talk with us about his most recent book: The Power Paradox.
 

Keltner has been featured in:

SLate
The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
The London Times
Time Magazine
BBC
CNN
NPR