Two Psychologists Four Beers

About the show

Two psychologists endeavor to drink four beers while discussing news and controversies in science, academia, and beyond.

Two Psychologists Four Beers on social media

Episodes

  • Episode 105: Patchwork Politics

    May 17th, 2023  |  58 mins 42 secs
    alliances, politics, propaganda, rich movie stars, rooibos

    Alexa and Yoel discuss a recent article that rejects the idea that political beliefs stem from people’s core values. Instead, the authors argue that these beliefs arise primarily from attempts to forge and maintain affiliations.

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    Episode 104: Quantifying the Narrative of Replicable Science

    March 29th, 2023  |  1 hr 9 mins
    $50, 000 conversations, artificial intelligence, experiments, nfts, replicability

    Yoel and Alexa discuss a recent paper that aims to estimate the replicability of psychology as a discipline by analyzing the words used to describe studies. After a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the methodology they discuss the factors that make for the most (and least) replicable science.

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    Episode 103: Psych (with Paul Bloom)

    March 8th, 2023  |  1 hr 9 mins
    hucksters, penis hat, pop psychology, psych 101, writing tips

    Paul Bloom joins Alexa and Yoel to talk about his new book. Their conversation touches on teaching, writing, the chutzpah required to think one can take on the task of summarizing a field, and the meaning of penis-shaped dream hats.

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    Episode 102: Destigmatizing Mental Health (with Andrew Devendorf)

    February 8th, 2023  |  1 hr 19 mins
    mental illness, personal statements, self-relevant research, space dust

    Yoel and Alexa are joined by Andrew Devendorf, who shares his work on the stigmatization of "me-search" (or self-relevant research) within the field of clinical psychology. They discuss ways that this stigma impacts clinical graduate students, and consider the strengths of doing research that is rooted in personal experience.

  • Episode 101: An Outside Perspective on Implicit Bias

    January 18th, 2023  |  1 hr 15 mins
    absolution, comments section, confession, corona (the beer), iat, implicit bias

    Alexa and Yoel explore how non-psychologists understand implicit bias and its most common measurement tool, the implicit association test (IAT). As their starting point, they discuss a paper, authored by Jeffrey Yen and colleagues, that tackles this question via the New York Times comments section.

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    Episode 100: What Happened at Perspectives on Psychological Science?

    December 23rd, 2022  |  1 hr 24 mins
    moral values, online outrage, peer review, perspectives

    Yoel and special guest Rachel Hartman discuss the recent ouster of Klaus Fiedler, the former Editor in Chief of the journal "Perspectives on Psychological Science," over allegations of racism and abuse of power.

  • Episode 99: Is MTurk Too Good To Be True?

    December 7th, 2022  |  1 hr 3 mins
    mturk; online data; mouse relocation; morality scores; attention span

    Alexa and Yoel weigh in on recent debates about whether psychological researchers can get good data online. They consider criticisms and defenses of online participant-recruitment platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk and throw a bit of their own experience into the mix.

  • Episode 98: Inspired Science (with Spencer Greenberg)

    November 23rd, 2022  |  1 hr 10 mins
    habit formation, importance hacking, inspired science, replication, trace alcohol content

    Spencer Greenberg - founder of the behavioral science startup incubator Spark Wave and host of the Clearer Thinking podcast - joins Yoel and Alexa to provide an alternative perspective on open science and to reveal an exciting new project.

  • Episode 97: Getting Into Grad School

    November 9th, 2022  |  57 mins 49 secs
    cake beer, grad school admissions, gre, mastodon migration, top hats

    Who gets into grad school? Alexa and Yoel discuss the mechanics of the graduate admissions process, consider what they would change, and revisit the merits of the GRE.

  • Episode 96: So, What Do You Do?

    October 26th, 2022  |  1 hr 12 mins
    aerial silks, exclusive societies, hot toddies, occupational prestige, socioeconomic status

    In a recent paper, authors Hughes, Srivastava, Leszko, and Condon asked participants rank over 1,000 jobs on their level of "prestige." We discuss this work, its implications, and what it reveals about the human traits we value.

  • Episode 95: What are Teachers Good For? (with Paul Bloom)

    September 28th, 2022  |  1 hr 7 mins
    critical thinking, half-gorilla-half-dolphin, recycled jokes, student emails, teaching

    Paul Bloom joins Yoel and Alexa to talk about what they've learned about teaching. They swap stories, discuss goals, and speculate about whether they've gotten better or worse over time.

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    Episode 94: Individualism, Interdependence, and Student Loans

    September 14th, 2022  |  59 mins 4 secs
    beerfail, communes, household repairs, rugged individualism, student debt forgiveness, sweden

    Alexa and Yoel consider what it means to live in an individualistic society, and the various possible ways of depending on others. They also reflect on their own degree of individualism, and consider whether they'd prefer to depend on others (and be depended on) more. But first, Yoel explains his beef with student loan forgiveness.