Psychologists Off the Clock

Modern life has become a gauntlet of "dangerous weather" that frequently strips away our most basic human needs.
In this episode, Emily speaks with author and strategist Stephanie Malia Kraus about her book, How We Thrive, and the essential practice of "rehumaning."
Stephanie breaks down the four systemic forces, from hustle culture to addictive tech, that undermine our well-being and offers a roadmap for reclaiming play, wonder, and rest.
The discussion bridges the gap between ancient Hawaiian wayfinding and modern neuroscience, highlighting the critical importance of restorative "downstates" and simple regulation tools for navigating an increasingly overstimulated world.

Listen and Learn:
How the Hawaiian tradition of Wayfinding teaches us to navigate a world that has "shifted on its axis" by anchoring into timeless human essentials, and influenced Stephanie's book
Why the friction you feel in parenting isn't a personal failure, but a biological mismatch between our human nature and modern society
Recognizing the four universal forces: Overtapped, Overworked, Overstimulated, and Overwrought, and understanding why feeling depleted isn't a personal failure, but a natural response to the "stormy" conditions of modern living
Why our modern "social jet lag", the mismatch between our hectic schedules and our biological needs, is fueling a youth mental health crisis, and how reclaiming "human essentials" like sleep, play, and internal attunement can act as a biological superpower for both parents and teens
How the practices of celebrating small wins, contributing to others, and nurturing an inborn sense of belief act as biological shields that restore our dignity and spark a protective sense of hope even in the most difficult seasons of life
How "lemon squeezes", a simple technique of tensing and releasing your muscles for 20 seconds, uses the science of progressive muscle relaxation to signal safety to your nervous system and bring your body back into balance in less than a minute

Resources:
How We Thrive: Caring for Kids and Ourselves in a Changing World https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9781071957561
https://rehumaningourlives.substack.com/
https://www.rehumaning.com/
Connect with Stephanie on Social Media:
https://www.youtube.com/@StephanieMaliaKrauss
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniemaliakrauss/
https://www.instagram.com/stephaniemaliakrauss/

About Stephanie Malia Krauss
Stephanie Malia Krauss is an author, speaker, and strategist focused on rehumaning childhood and our lives. Her newest book, How We Thrive, explores the urgent need to protect human essentials—like sleep, play, and connection—that modern life diminishes or denies. An educator and social worker who has worked from the classroom to Congress, Stephanie now advises states, districts, and national organizations on holistic approaches to preparing and caring for kids. Stephanie is the bestselling author of Whole Child, Whole Life: 10 Ways to Help Kids Live, Learn, and Thrive and Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World. Her work has been featured by Newsweek, PBS NewsHour, Parents, and more.

Related Episodes:
455. The New Blueprint for Success with Ana Homayoun
444. Mattering with Jennifer Wallace
433. Rethinking Screens and Video Games with Ash Brandin
424. Modern Anxiety with Noelle McWard Aquino
414. The Disengaged Teen with Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop
409. Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times with Melinda Wenner Moyer
324. Toxic Achievement Culture with Jennifer Wallace

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We’ve been taught that pain always means something is broken, but it’s often just a "stuck" danger signal in the brain.
To show us how to turn that signal off, Jill Stoddard talks with Alan Gordon, the founder of the Pain Psychology Center and author of The Way Out. Drawing on his own recovery from chronic pain, Alan explains how fear and conditioning keep us hurting even after we've healed.
Through fascinating stories like the "construction worker" case and MRI surprise, they dive into the science of neuroplastic pain and the tools you can use to retrain your nervous system, build stress tolerance, and finally feel safe in your own body again.

Listen and Learn:
Alan’s personal frustration with navigating a broken medical system and how that led to the discovery of a groundbreaking mind-body approach that offers lasting relief for chronic pain
How your brain can misinterpret emotional stress or past memories as physical danger to create real, persistent pain even after an injury has fully healed
The specific clues that can reveal whether your chronic physical pain is actually coming from your brain, and how to break the cycle of fear that keeps symptoms alive
The reason why traditional recovery methods can fail when we ignore our internal state, and how "backward engineering" your physical tension can signal to your brain that the danger has passed
Why the clinical evolution of Pain Reprocessing Therapy shifted from exploring unconscious emotions to targeting the brain's internal danger signals, and how modern neuroscience identifies the hidden driver keeping your physical symptoms alive
Why somatic tracking outperforms traditional mindfulness

Resources:
The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780593086858
Pain Psychology Center Website: https://painpsychologycenter.com/
Follow the Pain Psychology Center on Social Media:
https://instagram.com/thepainpsychologycenter
https://www.facebook.com/painpsychologycenter
Tell Me About Your Pain - Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tell-me-about-your-pain/id1503847664
The Pain Reprocessing Therapy Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pain-reprocessing-therapy-podcast/id1785564399
TEDxAdelaide - Lorimer Moseley - Why Things Hurt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs

About Alan Gordon
Alan Gordon is the creator of Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and founder of the Pain Psychology Center. He developed PRT through years of clinical practice and research, and its efficacy has been validated in randomized controlled trials published in JAMA Psychiatry. He is the author of The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain.

Related Episodes:
39. Chronic Pain with Adrianne Sloan
75. Mindful Self-Compassion with Christopher Germer
114. Way of Effortless Mindfulness with Loch Kelly
155. Mindfulness and Recovery with Rebecca Williams
177. Mind-Body Practices for Stress and Overwhelm with Rebekkah LaDyne
201. Fierce Compassion with Kristin Neff
336. Mindfulness and Living Expansively with Sharon Salzberg
364. The Brain-Gut Connection with Megan Riehl

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if success isn’t about grinding toward big goals but about following curiosity through small, imperfect experiments that lead somewhere better?

On Psychologist Off the Clock, award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Nest Labs and author of Tiny Experiments, shares how a health scare while working at Google helped her shift from rigid, linear goals to an experimental mindset rooted in curiosity.

You’ll hear about common “cognitive scripts” (the sequel, crowd pleaser, and epic scripts), how to design tiny experiments to test beliefs without framing outcomes as failure, and how to reframe success as learning.

The conversation also covers “surface area for luck,” the difference between legacy and generativity, and ends with reflections on goals, values, and meaningful community support.

Listen and Learn:
How Anne-Laure’s career was fueled by imposter syndrome, and led to a life-threatening wake-up call that pushed her to rethink priorities and embrace a more experimental, balanced path
Why rigid, linear goals only work when everything is certain, and why it’s more effective to replace them with curiosity and experimentation
Why many of your goals come from hidden “cognitive scripts,” and by questioning them, you can move from autopilot to intentional choices
Doing “tiny experiments” and observing results without judgment before deciding what to adjust or repeat
Why instead of treating outcomes as success or failure, you should approach situations like small experiments, where everything that happens, especially mistakes, is just useful data for learning and adjusting
The “Surface area for luck” and why the more you try new things, meet people, and put yourself in different situations, the more you increase the chances of unexpected good opportunities happening in your life
Focusing on making a real-time, meaningful impact on people and communities around us through everyday acts of care and mutual support

Resources:
Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780593715130
Anne-Laure’s Website: https://anne-laure.net/
Tiny Experiments: https://tinyexperiments.org/
Connect with Anne-Laure on Instagram https://instagram.com/neuranne
Ness Labs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ness_labs/?hl=en
Ness Labs X: https://x.com/ness_labs
Ness Labs Website: https://nesslabs.com/
Michael’s Confidence Course: Remain Calm. Confidence Ahead http://herold.coach/course

About Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an award-winning neuroscientist and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Ness Labs, where her weekly newsletter is read by more than 100,000 curious minds. Her research at King’s College London focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide for living a more experimental life, turning uncertainty into curiosity, and carving a path of self-discovery. Previously, she worked at Google as an executive on digital health projects. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Forbes, Financial Times, WIRED, and more.

Related Episodes:
349. The Hunger Habit with Judson Brewer
351. You Only Die Once with Jodi Wellman
454. Remain Calm. Confidence Ahead with Michael Herold

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Being absolutely sure you’re right should settle an argument, but somehow, it often does the opposite. Instead, things escalate, tensions rise, and before you know it, the conflict has taken on a life of its own.
For this episode, Yael welcomes New York Times bestselling author, trained mediator, and Good Conflict co-founder Amanda Ripley to unpack her book  High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped, and How We Get Out, and the difference between “good conflict” that strengthens us and “high conflict” that feeds on contempt, disgust, and rigid us-versus-them thinking.
You’ll hear why high conflict makes us more error-prone while feeling more righteous, how group belonging and media incentives can keep the cycle going, and practical ways to interrupt the pattern like Gary Freeman’s three-question pause before speaking.
Listen to learn how to stay in the fight without losing nuance, curiosity, or yourself.

Listen and Learn:
The distinction between healthy conflict that helps you grow and the kind that quietly turns destructive in ways you may not notice
Why conflicts can quietly take over our thinking, shifting us into an us-versus-them mindset
Why do we get pulled into conflicts that drain us even when we know the cost, and what keeps us hooked?
How can even people deeply engaged with information find themselves pulling away from conflict, and what does that reveal about the hidden dynamics of high conflict
How you can recognize the early signs of high conflict and shift toward more productive, healthier conversations before things escalate

Resources:
High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped, and How We Get Out: https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9781982128579
Amanda’s Website: https://www.amandaripley.com/
Good Conflict Website: https://www.thegoodconflict.com
Connect with Amanda on Social Media:
https://www.facebook.com/amanda.ripley.35/
https://www.instagram.com/ripleywriter/
Amada’s Substack: https://amandaripley.substack.com/
Amanda’s article about high-conflict journalism, I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me–or the product?
Yael’s Substack post about how journalists quickly build connection
Builders Movement: an Instagram feed and website that offers “inspiration, tools, and ways to take action to rise above us vs. them and solve our toughest problems together.”

About Amanda Ripley:
Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author, magazine journalist, and co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company helping people reimagine how we fight. She has written three award-winning nonfiction books — The Unthinkable, The Smartest Kids in the World, and High Conflict — each following people through transformations to uncover what the rest of us can learn. Her most recent book, High Conflict, chronicles how good conflict metastasizes into something that consumes everything in its path — and, crucially, how people find their way out. A trained mediator herself, Amanda's work reveals that escape from high conflict isn't about being nicer; it's about learning to genuinely comprehend what you still disagree with. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Politico Magazine, among others.

Related Episodes:
234. The Power of Us with Dominic Packer
371. Uniting Toward a Better Future with Diana McLain Smith
392. Outraged with Kurt Gray
408. Connecting Like a Hostage Negotiator with Gary Noesner
452. How to Disagree Better with Julia Minson

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If your teen is getting caught in cycles of comparison, burnout, or avoidance while trying to “do enough” for college, this conversation offers a different perspective.

Emily talks with Ana Homayoun about her book Erasing the Finish Line and what really matters beyond grades, test scores, and prestige.

They walk you through unhealthy patterns in college admissions culture, how technology amplifies anxiety, and why most institutions actually accept the majority of applicants. Their conversation also reveals how long-term success depends far more on relationships and meaningful engagement than on brand-name schools.

Join Emily and Ana for practical strategies to help your teens build executive functioning systems, shift from time management to energy management, strengthen social capital through supporters and clarifiers, and rethink grind culture, including the role of youth sports.

Listen and Learn:
Focusing less on comparison and more on building your own strengths and systems for shaping both college outcomes and the kind of work you end up loving later
How parents’ own fears and need for control shape the college process can undermine a student’s fit and well-being, and what it takes to step back so they can truly thrive
How technology has reshaped college admissions in ways that make independent research, real-world exploration, and staying open-minded more important than ever for finding the right fit
Why the most “competitive” colleges may feel that way by design, and how choosing the right environment and relationships over prestige can shape your future more than you expect
Focusing on executive functioning skills to shape your teen’s long-term success in ways grades alone never reveal
Making small shifts in structure, mindset, and environment to unlock a child’s ability to plan, adapt, and thrive without pressure or perfection
How having friendships across different age groups quietly builds confidence, perspective, and real connection in ways most students do not expect
Sharing and building social capital in small, everyday ways to quietly shape opportunities for teens and create unexpected outcomes
Giving kids real choices, a safe space to fail, and multiple places to belong to builds the confidence, motivation, and life skills they carry into adulthood
How shifting from managing time to managing your energy transforms focus, behavior, and motivation

Resources:
Erasing the Finish Line: The New Blueprint for Success Beyond Grades and College Admission https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780306830693
That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week: https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780399535598
Ana’s Website: https://anahomayoun.com/
Connect with Ana on Social Media:
https://instagram.com/anahomayoun
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-homayoun-4783863/)

About Ana Homayoun:
ANA HOMAYOUN is the founder of Silicon Valley–based Green Ivy Educational Consulting and executive director of Luminaria Learning Solutions, which develops student programs focused on executive functioning and well-being. She is also the author of That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week, The Myth of the Perfect Girl, and Social Media Wellness. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Fast Company, and NPR and on Good Morning America and NBC News. Learn more about her work at www.anahomayoun.com. Her most recent book, Erasing the Finish Line, comes out in paperback on June 9th with the updated title, Getting in Is Not Enough: The New Blueprint for Success Beyond Grades, Test Scores, and College Admission.

Related Episodes:
324. Toxic Achievement Culture with Jennifer Wallace
414. The Disengaged Teen with Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson
369. The Good News About Adolescence with Ellen Galinsky
332. Middle School Superpowers with Phyllis Fagell
272. Middle School Matters with Phyllis Fagell

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.