Advice Goddess Radio: Amy Alkon

Nationally syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science. We like to believe our decisions are rationally driven and make sense. But constantly, our perception and decision-making are clouded by illusions we aren't even aware we have. Some of these include illusions of accuracy in our attention, memory, confidence, and knowledge. These illusions can lead us to make costly - and even deadly - errors. The good news is, by understanding what these illusions are and how we fall prey to them, we can avoid doing it (or do it far less), make more rationally-based decisions, and live smarter overall.   To help us do that, my guest tonight, psychologist and researcher Dr. Christopher Chabris is half of the team (with psychologist and researcher Dan Simons) who did the famous and hilarious "invisible gorilla experiment." It's also the title of their fascinating book, "The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us."   Tonight, we'll be discussing this experiment and others, why we're so convinced we're perceiving situations correctly when we're doing anything but, and how we can stop and live like the rational animals we believe we are.   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.

Nationally syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research. There have been two major schools on negotiating -- Ury, Fisher and Patton's "win-win"/"relationships are everything" approach and Roger Cohen's "nail 'em to the wall" hardball approach.  Harvard Business School professor Michael Wheeler finds that these rigid, one-size-fits-all strategies often clash with the real-world realities of negotiating. Drawing on his and his colleagues' research, he finds that the most successful negotiating techniques are born of an ability to adapt while negotiating, and use agility, creativity, and wise preparation.  He'll advise us all on how to adapt (and do all the rest) in order to win in negotiation, the subject of his book we'll be discussing on the show, "The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World."  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.   My guest on this week's show argues for a less confident world and a more realistically confident one.   Confidence is not all it's cracked up to be, especially because what we laud as confidence is too often actually overconfidence, lack of self-knowledge, and unreasonable expectations about ourselves, others, and the way the world works. This kind of "confidence" also doesn't play as well as we often think it does in impressing and persuading others.   My guest, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, wants to help you achieve realistic confidence -- confidence based on competence. He is a professor of business psychology at University College of London, the author of seven books and numerous studies, and an authority in personality assessment, consumer analytics, and talent management. His book we'll be discussing on the show is "Conf!dence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt."   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 therapy and research.   Unlike the guests on almost all of my shows, my guest tonight is actually not a scientist -- he's business consultant, public speaker, and best-selling author Mark Sanborn.   But this is the second time I've made an exception and had him on the show, because his thinking is so extraordinary, inspiring, and helpful.   To bring up that word again -- "extraordinary" -- being extraordinary means being a stand-out person in your work, friendships, and relationships. We tend to think being that is either something you're born with or you're not. But Sanborn will show you tonight that this isn't the case.   He'll explain why "extraordinary" is something you can choose to be, and explain how to recalibrate your thinking so you can achieve and maintain that. As for why to do this, his book we'll be discussing — "Fred 2.0: New ideas on how to keep delivering extraordinary results"  — and this show should make very clear that living "extraordinary" is living and working fulfilled in a way that living ordinary just can't meet.   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 therapy and research.   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!  

Nationally syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research. *"Best-of" replay this week because my corrections on my next book are due shortly and I'm working day and night on them.  This week’s show will offer you numerous substantive, practical tips for keeping anxiety from taking over your thoughts and your life, emphasizing the use of reason. My guest is psychologist Tamar Chansky, Ph.D, a leading expert on anxiety disorders, who has written a very helpful and down-to-earth book on understanding and conquering anxiety, Freeing Yourself from Anxiety: 4 Simple Steps to Overcome Worry and Create the Life You Want.    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 book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, at Amazon, and look for my award-winning, science-based advice column in a paper near you or ask editors to carry it.  

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.  *"Best-of" replay this week -- a show I loved -- because my corrections on my next book are due shortly and I'm working day and night on them. On tonight's show, noted sociologist Dr. Eric Klinenberg will discuss why remaining unmarried and living alone have increasing appeal and what the problems of living solo tend to be -- and how we might solve them. We'll touch both on living solo as a younger person (whether romantically single or "living apart together" with a partner), and how we can live alone as we age.   Dr. Klineberg's book is Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.   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 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, or ask the editor to carry it!

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  There's something major missing in our understanding of how we succeed, and that's the biological side of things.  That’s what my guest tonight, John Coates, is going to provide -- fascinating biological nuances that explain how to approach risk, manage stress, use our gut feelings, and optimize ourselves to achieve even the loftiest goals. Coates is now senior research fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge, but he came to that after a very successful career on Wall Street where he ran the trading desk at Deutsche Bank. His terrific book is “The Hour Between Dog And Wolf: How risk-taking transforms us, body and mind.” Stick with us and find out about how you can train yourself to manage stress rather than being crushed by it and actually toughen yourself both mentally and physically so you can be at your fittest to reach your goals.  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 societ

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.    Decisions that we make that seem stupid can actually make a lot of evolutionary sense, meaning that they would have made sense in the ancestral world; they just don’t make sense in the world in which we now live.   Unfortunately, we can’t just tell our genes, “Hey, it’s 2013! There are no hungry tigers roaming the streets of Baltimore and, by the way, my girlfriend’s on The Pill.”    But, my guest tonight, evolutionary psychologist, psychologist and marketing professor Dr. Vladas Griskevicius, is going to give us the background to make wiser choices by helping us understand the ways we can be primed to act against our modern interests.    His fascinating book, co-authored with Dr. Douglas Kenrick, is “The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think.”    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.    It turns out some of the ways parents think they’ll get their kids to behave -- by berating, threatening, and punishing them -- are actually the least effective.    My guest tonight, Yale University psychology professor, Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, who is also director of the Yale Parenting Center, has a parenting template that is not only effective at changing behavior in children, it does it by cutting out the screaming, yelling, and threatening.   Dr. Kazdin has written a fantastic and highly practical book, “The Everyday Parenting Toolkit: The Kazdin Method for easy, step-by-step, lasting change for you and your child.” Join us for an incredibly effective, science-based rethink on how to parent kids into behaving the way you want -- with a minimum of stress and unhappiness for both you and your kids.   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.  Twins research unlocks the answers to numerous questions we all have about human nature:    •How much do our genes determine who we are?  •Can we shift our environment to make the best of the genes we have?  •Where do our personalities come from?  •Why are some sisters so different from one another?  •How much does having rotten parents affect your chances for success?  •Why do some abused children grow up to be criminals and why do some become productive individuals?    Tonight, a very special guest, twins researcher Dr. Nancy Segal, who uses her studies of twins to figure out the rest of us -- such as how much we, on average, are shaped by our environment and how much by our genes.    She’s the author of four books on twins, which can be found on her website, drnancysegaltwins.org. Join us tonight as she tells fascinating stories about twins and what her research on twins has to tell us about how we come to be the people we are.    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  

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  **"Best Of" Replay tonight - but only because I had to go get my new puppy this week, so I didn't have time to prep for a new show. LIve show again next week!  TONIGHT! Developmental psychologist Dr. Peter Gray will explain why our current educational system is actually counterproductive to educating kids. Our way of schooling kids ignores our evolved psychology and how children actually learn, and removes children’s natural joy of learning from them in the process.  It turns out that schooling based on the principles of a democracy -- applied to children -- is highly effective schooling for keeping kids engaged, helping them develop self-control, and helping them develop to their fullest and become highly productive adults living meaningful lives.   Peter’s fascinating book: Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.    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 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, or ask the editor to carry it!  

Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.    Setting and achieving goals is one of those things in life that we think we know how to do but often really don’t.    Unfortunately, conventional wisdom like “just think positive” and picturing yourself having achieved your goals actually isn’t wise. In fact, there’s a good deal of evidence that this sort of thinking can set you up for failure, says my guest on tonight’s show, social psychologist Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson.   Join us tonight as Halvorson helps us tap into the power of scientifically based thinking on how to succeed. Halvorson will lay out the nuances from the science that will help you set realistic goals, maintain your willpower, and deal with the bumps along the way, whatever your goal is: whether it’s losing weight, improving your relationship, getting a better job, or succeeding with a new business.   Her book: Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals.   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.   How much free will do we have and how much of our behavior is predetermined by our genes?    Evidence about how people recover from addiction, for example, shows that we CAN control our behavior, contrary to those who make addiction out to be a “disease.”   On tonight’s show, psychiatrist Dr. Sally Satel will explain ways people recover from addiction and change other behaviors and why the the notion that we are passive victims of our genes and environment simply does not hold up.    Unfortunately, there’s a whole lot of what Satel (with her co-author, clinical psychologist Dr. Scott O. Lilienfeld) calls “mindless neuroscience” -- colorful, alluring pictures of brain scans that are used in the media, by irresponsible and sensationalist researchers, and in court to excuse bad behavior and give rise to the notion that we shouldn’t be expected to exercise personal responsibility.    On tonight’s show, Satel will explain why this thinking is wrong-headed -- one of the subjects of the very smart book she co-authored with Lilienfeld, BRAINWASHED: The Seductive Appeal Of Mindless Neuroscience.    Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sun, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, 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.  

  Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.  My live radio shows start again tonight with a show 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’ll lay 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!