For my People Who Read People podcast, I sometimes focus on topics related to mental health and mental illness. I try, as much as I’m able, to glean some practically useful points from my interviews. I also sometimes talk about my own mental health struggles, with the thought that might be helpful to some people: I suffered from very bad anxiety and depression as a young man, which led to me dropping out of college.
Here are episodes related to mental health and psychology:
- A talk with Richard Bentall about the nature of “madness”; Bentall is the author of the book Madness Explained.
- A talk with Nathan Filer about madness and schizophrenia, and environmental factors. Filer is the author of the book The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia.
- A talk with Scott Stossel about anxiety; Stossel is the author of the book My Age of Anxiety, a memoir and a history of anxiety as a condition.
- A talk with Craig Malkin about narcissism: the spectrum of healthy/unhealthy narcissism, and psychological factors underlying pathological narcissism.
- A talk with Barry Prizant about autism: we focus on understanding the behavior of autistic people.
- A talk with Kirk Schneider about the awe and horror of existence, and about existential psychology (which has been a big help to me personally).
- A talk with Mikey Biddlestone about psychological factors behind conspiracy theory beliefs and conspiracy-minded thinking.
- A talk with Nadja Heym about psychopaths.
- A talk with Rob Tarzwell about his work as a psychiatrist in emergency room settings.
- A talk with Timothy Jay about offensive speech: what are some of the psych factors involved in cases of people saying horrible, offensive things?
- A talk with Neguine Rezai about her research into finding language patterns that were predictive of later schizophrenia diagnosis.
- A talk about my own mental struggles as a young man, which led to me dropping out of college
- A talk with Steven Heine about how we react when our sense of meaning is threatened. Threats to meaning can be anxiety-producing and destabilizing.
- A talk with Kevin Arceneaux about his research into anti-social “need for chaos” views.