Advice Goddess Radio: Amy Alkon

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. Quitting isn’t just for losers. Sure, there are those people who quit because they’re lazy or lack the courage to take on their goal.  But my guest tonight, Peg Streep, is the co-author of an excellent book about judicious quitting -- quitting to get ahead in your job, your social world, and your relationships. The book is the science-based “Mastering the Art of Quitting: Why It Matters in Life, Love, and Work,” co-authored with therapist Alan Bernstein.  Join us tonight as she explains how to know when it’s over in love, work, and beyond, and how to engage in mindful and intelligent “disengagement” from goals that have outlived their usefulness so you can live to the fullest in every sphere of your life.  Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. My show's sponsor is now Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/amya (It's $14.95 after 30 days, but you can cancel before then and have it cost you nothing.)

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. Adorably, we humans see ourselves as rational animals. Research shows us to be anything but. We are swayed in ways we wouldn’t expect in both our decision-making and how well we stick to our plans.  The good news is, the research also shows that our going off track happens in predictable ways. My guest tonight, Harvard Business School professor, Dr. Francesca Gino, will both lay out the forces that sidetrack us as we’re trying to accomplish our goals and offer guidelines that we can use to keep ourselves on track.  Dr. Gino will be discussing her recently-published book, Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan. Join us tonight and have your eyes opened about the psychological, social, and environmental stumbling blocks that keep us from getting where we want to go. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already. 

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. NOTE: Superbowl Sunday "Best Of" replay. Back with live shows again next Sunday, on Feb 9!  Assertiveness isn't about "building a good disguise," Dr. Randy Paterson explains. "It's about the courage to take the disguise off." It's "about being THERE." Paterson, a clinical psychologist, is the author of the excellent book I've recommended in my column, "The Assertiveness Workbook: How To Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships," and that's exactly what he and I will be laying out on tonight's show. Paterson takes a very rational, behavioral approach and gives extremely practical tips for how to change, and this show should help even already-assertive people notice and shore up areas where they could do better. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already!

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. Join me for a thought-provoking, mind-opening show on the underpinnings of our sexuality. Dr. Jesse Bering’s book, “Perv,” is subtitled “The Sexual Deviant in All of Us.” This is a book about weird sex but it’s also a book about all of the ways that even “normal” people fall along the spectrum of “perversions.”   Tonight’s show, like Bering’s book, will be a fascinating inside look into how our specific sexual desires seem to be shaped in childhood, how sexually not “normal” some of the most seemingly normal people are, and how human psychology leads us to find others’ sex practices upsetting and creepy instead of just different from our own. As Bering writes, “Humans aren’t the only sex deviants in the animal kingdom. But we are the only ones to stigmatize each other as disgusting perverts.” Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already. 

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  Tonight’s guest is not a behavioral scientist like most of my guests, but I couldn’t resist having him on, because the subject he studied in depth -- the asshole -- is one most of us are forced to deal with on a daily basis, and sometimes repeatedly. UC Irvine philosophy professor Aaron James is the author of the wonderfully titled “Assholes: A Theory.”  Join us tonight as we dig deep into asshole-ishness, as Aaron James answers questions including: What is an asshole? What makes an asshole tick? Is it possible to engage in successful asshole management -- and if so, how? Is it possible for an asshole to reform? And why does worrying that you are an asshole mean you probably have nothing to worry about? Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already! 

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  ***("Best Of" Replay this week, because I am completing the final polish on my upcoming book. New LIVE show Jan. 19 and onward!) Psychology professor Dr. Gabrielle Principe notes that the panic-stricken parental race to raise tiny geniuses is actually bad parenting -- leading to overcontrolled childhoods that have negative effects on kids' development. This way of raising children is marketing-driven, not science-driven (though marketers typically claim their toys and learning tools are based in science). Take Baby Einstein videos. In 2007, UCLA's Department of Health Services chairman Frederick Zimmerman and his colleagues found that kids watching these had a 17 percent decrease in vocabulary acquisition for each hour they spent watching them per day. Through looking at solid science on the human brain, Dr. Principe has figured out ways for parents to naturalize childhood again, so a child's environment gels with how the brain was designed to grow. Her clearly written and dryly witty book: "Your Brain on Childhood: The Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms, and the Minivan." Join us tonight as she busts countless myths about how to raise children and lays out simple, clear advice for how kids can thrive. And join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday from 7-8 pm Pacific and 10-11 pm Eastern, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes.  Buy my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, at Amazon, and look for my award-winning, nationally syndicated, science-based advice column in a paper near you.

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. Dr. Matthew Lieberman's new book is "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect," and it's filled with fascinating findings on how surprisingly driven we are by our nature as social beings.  For example, there's a finding by his wife and research partner, Naomi Eisenberger and her colleagues that taking acetaminophen (think Tylenol) actually diminished the pain of being socially excluded. Lieberman explains, "Our sensitivity to social rejection is so central to our well-being that our brains" react to social wounds (and ways to heal from them) much like they do physical ones.  An important underlying point in his book is that self-esteem is not just "from within." It's deeply affected by whether we're liked or esteemed -- or bullied -- by others (which research finds even affects our IQ). We'll be discussing many such interesting and unexpected findings on tonight's show, and discussing ways we can each capitalize on what Lieberman has learned from the research. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  I have a rerun for you this week -- but a very good one as well as a very topical one, because a lot of people use January 1st as their start date for getting healthy (and slimmer).  On this show, exercise trainer and rehab expert Fred Hahn explains why slow-speed strength training, for just a few minutes a week, will make you healthier than that fitness fanatic who spends hours and hours in the gym. (He lays out fascinating and solid evidence throughout the show.) Fred is co-author, with Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, whom I greatly respect, of The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution: The Slow-Motion Exercise That Will Change Your Body In 30 Minutes A Week. He will debunk all the myths most of us hold about exercise and fitness, and leave you with a plan for exercise that will make you fitter and healthier, and will only eat 12-15 minutes of your week.  This is a not-to-be-missed show. This method of exercise has improved my health and my life and I'm hoping you'll follow my lead. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, from 7-8 pm Pacific and 10-11 pm Eastern, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon And please buy a copy of my own science-based (and funny) book on why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society.

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, obviously, is not a scientist. But he thinks and views his experiences like a scientist and his wisdom is well-supported and worth hearing.  For example, Adams found that it isn't goals that are the key to success, but what he calls "systems."  And Adams advises, based on his own steady stream of failures in business, that "Everything you want in life is in that bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out." As a cartoonist, he thinks of himself as a "professional simplifier." That's what he does in his just-published book, How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, and simplifying for all of us what it takes to succeed in business and be happy in life is what he'll be doing on tonight's not-to-be-missed show. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already.   

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  Changing our behavior starts with changing our thinking and doing that successfully takes both insight and practice. Science writer and bestselling author David DiSalvo returns to the show tonight to talk about how the brain operates via a series of "feedback loops," and to explain how we can actually redirect our thinking and influence our brain's response -- in turn influencing how we feel and act. These insights come straight out of DiSalvo's just-published book, Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain's Power to Adapt Can Change Your Life. Drawing on the latest research in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral econ, DiSalvo replaces "self-help" with "science-help," giving us practical steps to change our thinking and our lives.  Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific, 10-11 p.m. Eastern, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society.  And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already. 

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  Wharton organizational psychologist Dr. Adam Grant will be on this week talking about his terrific book, "Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success," which draws from research to explain what makes giving both powerful and dangerous to people's achieving their goals. Paradoxically, it's often those who give without looking for anything in return -- who just want to do good, open the playing field to good people -- who ultimately get the most in return. But, Grant warns, there are caveats to this -- and he lays them out in the book and we'll discuss them as well as giving's many nuances and benefits on the show.  Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already.   

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. *Thanksgiving weekend "Best-Of" replay on a topic we can all use some help and insight on -- blame: How ineffective it is, how damaging it is, and how to stop blaming and be constructive in getting ourselves and others to change. Back with a live show next week! My guest tonight is psychotherapist Carl Alasko, Ph.D., talking about blame -- one of the most toxic and destructive components of relationships and so many human interactions. We'll be talking about how to stop blaming and how to take healthier -- and far more productive -- steps to problem-solving, in relationships and beyond. Alasko has written a very comprehensive book on blame -- Beyond Blame: Freeing Yourself from the Most Toxic Form of Emotional Bullsh*t Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward. Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday from 7-8 pm Pacific and 10-11 pm Eastern, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.  Buy my science-based but funny book on why we're so rude and how to change things, I See Rude People. And please look for my award-winning, nationally syndicated, science-based advice column in a paper near you or ask the editor to carry it. Getting paid for writing it keeps me writing it!

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  Many people seem to think that the most effective motivation comes from outside of us, that motivating is something one person does to or for another. The studies done by my guest tonight, psychologist Dr. Edward L. Deci, find that self-motivation, not external motivation, is at the heart of creativity, responsibility, healthy behavior, and lasting change. This is essential to understand whether we are trying to motivate ourselves or looking to encourage others to successfully motivate themselves. On tonight's show, Dr. Deci will tell us what research shows about we go wrong in our thinking on motivation and how we can become more self-motivated -- and thus happier and more successful in every aspect of our lives. Dr. Deci's book we'll be discussing tonight is "Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation."  Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already!

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  Tonight’s show draws on scientific research to reveal some surprising ways we use tiny bits of behavior and mannerisms to correctly predict others' intentions and actions. It will also lay out areas that the research finds we are not so good in making predictions, like in discerning whether others are lying. You'll learn the few signs that actually do suggest that somebody is lying as well as finding out other ways we are prone to err in our assessments of people's skills and intentions.  My guest tonight, psychologist Dr. Matthew Hertenstein has taken a research-driven look at all of this in “The Tell: The Little Clues That Reveal Big Truths About Who We Are.” Join us to become a more sophisticated reader of others’ nonverbal skills -- and maybe even learn how to rejigger your own to send a more desirable message the next time you have a date or a job interview.  Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already!

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  A "Best Of" replay for you tonight. It's one of my favorite recent shows, filled with science news everyone can use -- the science of how to spend our way to happiness. My guest tonight is psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Dunn, co-author with Dr. Michael Norton, of a terrific, highly readable little book filled with research-driven wisdom: "Happy Money: The Science Of Smarter Spending."  On tonight’s show, she lays out the myths we hold about how spending in certain ways will improve our lives and will explain all the ways we can rejigger our spending and thinking, often in small ways, to spend smarter and happier. Dunn, at age 26, was featured as one of the "rising stars" in academia by the Chronicle of Higher Education, and this should be a very interesting and practical show, so don’t miss it!  Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please buy my science-based but funny book about why people are rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. And please ask a newspaper near you to carry my award-winning syndicated, science-based advice column...if they don't already!