Two Psychologists Four Beers

Researcher, professor, and former Division III football player Nick Epley joins the show to talk about why we underestimate the benefits of social connections—and how we can change our behavior to connect more with others.

Yoel and Mickey welcome many-time guest Paul Bloom to the podcast to dispense terrible advice. We first talk about parenting—its impact on happiness and meaning, its transformation of the person; and then discuss perversity, including the enjoyment of doing transgressive things for no good reason.

Many academics care about diversity in faculty hiring, but why? Azim Shariff joins the show to talk about a new paper where he outlines different rationales for diversity in hiring, and an as-yet unpublished study where he asked department chairs how much they actually value each of them.

Mickey and Yoel talk about Canada's controversial euthanasia law (called MAID: medical assistance in dying). We also discuss a new paper that finds (or does it?) that ego depletion is not as dead as people think.

Paul Litvak joins the show to talk about how AI tools can help us measure research quality and assess evidence in the scientific literature. His first project is a way to extract test statistics and p-values from papers automatically, with no manual coding needed. We also talk about legendary researcher Robin Dawes (for whom Paul's non-profit is named) and Paul's exit from academia. Plus, Yoel reveals a shameful secret about his use of AI.