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When I was growing up, the background noise to my life was always TV. Whether that was Bob Barker’s gregarious call to “Come on down,” to Price is Right contestants or the tick, tick, tick of the stop watch as we entered each new segment of 60 Minutes, the drone of one television show or another was constantly buzzing as we went about our daily lives.
Today, I can honestly say that I haven’t watched broadcast television in years. And the only time that I’ve even turned on cable TV has been when momentous events have happened, like tuning into CNN during the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Now, that background noise for me has changed to podcasts. When I’m going on my daily walk or engaging in household chores, I have a roster of podcasts that I listen to. I’ve written in the past about my favorite nonfiction and scary fiction podcasts. Today, I’m going to go a bit more in depth into one of my recent favorites: Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain, according to its website, “explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world.” It is hosted by journalist Shankar Vedantam, who in my opinion, has one of the best podcast voices and pacing out of all of the podcasts that I currently listen to.
In these episodes, Shankar will take one of those “unconscious” patterns, let’s take those times when we feel stuck in our lives, and then conduct in-depth interviews with scientists and researchers who have investigated what leads to those patterns and what science or experience says we can do to address those patterns (if they’re bad) or encourage those patterns (if they’re good).
What I especially love is that Shankar clearly does deep research into each topic and brings enthusiastic and insightful questions to each interview. These questions gently probe his subjects to share scientific learnings in a way that is engaging and not at all dry. In fact, he will often weave how these patterns can also be reflected in the popular culture around us, sometimes playing clips from an episode of Friends or a lyric from a popular song.
The episode I listened to today was part of the show’s “You 2.0” series, called “How to Break Out of a Rut.” We’ve all had those times where we’re deep in the middle of a project or experience; we are so far from the beginning, but not yet anywhere close to the end, and we just feel stuck. The invited expert delved into the psychology of goals and milestones and how we can use that psychology to help us advance out of even the deepest of ruts.
The answers to this query were practical and clear. In one instance, studies showed that people perform with energy when they are at the start of a project, when the concepts are new and exciting, and when they are close to the end, when they can see that accomplishment is within their grasp. So how could you attack those doldrums you encounter in the middle of the project? One suggestion is to break down your goals into smaller and smaller pieces. If you can’t get yourself to write for 30 minutes, how about for five minutes, or even for a single minute? Now that single minute is obviously not an ideal milestone for a large writing project, but when you’re stuck and can’t think of how you could possibly move forward, you can handle moving for just a single minute. And that single minute of movement is enough to lubricate the writing gears, getting them clanking again out of their previous rut.
I’ve found so many helpful life lessons in his podcast episodes that I have to give this one of my highest recommendations. What I especially love is how he ends every episode with his unsung hero. This is a segment where he calls out someone working on the show in the background and expresses his sincere gratitude for the invisible work they do to help produce the show. It’s so rare to see this type of credit and gratitude given that I instantly fell in love with the segment. In fact, it was such a hit that he even spun it out into its own podcast, My Unsung Hero. If you’re feeling brought down by all the negativity in the news and on social media, this is definitely a podcast that you’ll want to check out.
How about you? What’s been your current favorite podcast? Share it in the comments!
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