End of an Era — Reflections on 11 Years of The Psychology Podcast w/ Annie Murphy Paul

Hi everyone, welcome to episode 478 of the Psychology Podcast. This is a very special episode. Well, since it's my last one in this form. I have been podcasting for 11 years now, practically every single week. And truth is, while I love everything I've learned along the way, I want to take this time to recenter, to continue bringing additive value to my audience and to recharge myself. When I started this podcast November 16th, 2014, there weren't many psychology podcasts in existence, if any. I was driven by my intrinsic passion for the field of psychology and wanted to put a microphone on the amazing psychological scientists I knew and shine a spotlight on their important work and how it applies to the lives of everyone. Far too often, good scientific research hides in the shadows in peer-reviewed publications, and I wanted to get the word out there about all the incredible work going on. Now it's 2025 and everyone and their mother has a podcast. And there are so many wonderful psychology-related podcasts in existence now, which is great. So I've decided to take a step back. In this episode, I am interviewed by the acclaimed science writer and author Annie Murphy-Paul about the major lessons I've learned over the years doing this podcast. I think the seven major themes we discuss really do a great job capturing the essence of this podcast, which has always been more about being than doing, creativity over efficiency, self-actualization over achievement, deep fulfillment over fleeting feelings of happiness, and self-transcendence over self-enhancement. Thanks from the bottom of my heart to all of you for making this podcast possible and for your support over the years. If you feel called, please write a review on iTunes or wherever to let me know what this show has meant to you. I wish you all the very best in your own sacred journey of self-actualization and self-transcendence. And look forward to sharing with you all the next steps in my own journey when it's time. As Michaela Cole so eloquently put it, do not be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence. So without further ado, I bring you Annie Murphy-Paul and the seven biggest insights I've gleaned from doing this podcast, The Psychology Podcast. Scott, the man of the hour. How are you doing? Annie Murphy Paul. This is episode 477 of the Psychology Podcast. You were on episode one of the Psychology Podcast in November 16 of 2014. Wow. So how much has changed since then, right? yeah yeah um a lot a lot has changed a lot has not changed i re-listened to our episode and i was like well it still holds it's still uh it's great you did you did great the science of growing smarter and uh and uh maintaining you know high expectations um it was really good that's Yeah. Huh. Well, you've certainly grown and grown smarter probably in the 11 years since then, right? Certainly more knowledgeable. Maybe my fluid intelligence has decreased my processing speed, but my crystallized intelligence has increased for sure. My wisdom. Yeah. Well, before we get into the seven insights that you've sort of pulled together from your 11 years of hosting the psychology podcast. I just want to ask you, like, how are you feeling about this project, this long, long running project coming to an end? I feel really proud of the rich content that I was able to record that will last forever. You know, as long as we have digital capabilities and humanity. um yeah i really this was a really meaningful personal uh project of mine that started by me just wanting to put the microphone on my colleagues at penn uh and then you know one of some of my first guests was it was you we had angela duckworth uh as one of my first guests and you know i just sort of one of my went to my friends at penn and i was like hey i would love to feature your research i would really love to get the word out there about what you what you're doing it's so awesome it really come from you know came from this place of um a real intrinsic passion for the field of psychology and i didn't really see anything like that at the time in the podcast area yeah you were early you were early in the podcasting game now every now everyone has a podcast and you're like it's so it's too it's too common it's too popular i'm getting out it's true i'd like to know what you're doing next because you're obviously you know on the cutting edge. Thanks. Well, whatever I do next will be something next level. And it'll be something even better than the psychology podcast. Okay, well, let's start or look back at what you feel like you've learned by talking to all these incredible researchers across 11 years. And one of them, one of the points that you pulled out is certainly not something that you learned on the psychology podcast, because I know you were working in this area well before that. One of the seven insights that you pulled out of your 11 years of doing this podcast, Scott, is that human potential is far broader than standard metrics of IQ or achievement. And, you know, I know that's a theme of your work and your thinking for many years. How did that play out in the conversations you had on the podcast? I think that's definitely a major theme. Human potential is something that I view as not tied up with your intelligence necessarily as a sole factor. And I certainly don't think that the extent to which we're achieving human potential is the extent to which we're achieving based on standard metrics of success. You know, like achievement being you have to get accolades or likes on Instagram, you know, in order to really feel like you're achieving your human potential. I think a lot of people feel these days like they're not they're not maximizing their potential if they're not getting enough as attention as the next person on social media. And, you know, my whole career has really been trying to expand our notions of what intelligence means as well, what it means to be smart. and include a lot of things in the neurodiversity spectrum. Can you remember a particular conversation with a researcher that brought that point out for you? Oh, boy, you know, I'm going through my head over almost 500 episodes. Yeah, yeah. You were the first one in talking about how to be smarter and your ideas of SMART weren't necessarily tied to IQ. But I'm also just thinking about my own research and I did the Human Potential Lab was a little series within the psychology podcast I did. And I talked about, I did a little lecture on IQ and intelligence and how we need to kind of go beyond the standard metrics. So it's been a common theme and that I've tried to interject into almost all my interviews. Yes, yes, yes. Well, this next point is one that's dear to my heart because, you know, I wrote a book about personality testing, the cult of personality. That was a cultural history and scientific critique of personality testing. And your point here is that personality traits are not fixed at transformation is possible and meaningful. And you've done work. Some of your own work is in the area of personality. am i right yeah absolutely so um i really like the newer way we're kind of thinking about personality traits and variation like as density distributions so all of us uh really go throughout the day being all sorts of different levels of a personality trait um so to say you're an introvert doesn't mean that you're an introvert 24 7 right you know um you have your extroverted moments um These are personality really is just your habitual patterns of states. You know, traits are just habitual patterns of states. But you can change your personality by changing your habitual pattern of states. And that's something I want to make very clear to people. And there's some really exciting personality intervention research. I'm doing it right now with my students at Barnard College personality lecture where I have them choose a particular big five personality traits. they want to change and i have them uh use some of these scientifically validated interventions to do a whole bunch of actions to to try to change them interestingly enough um uh the one that the trait that's easiest to change is uh neuroticism but there's yes uh oh i'm surprised i might have thought it would be introversion that you could you could sort of um just change your way of interacting with people and push yourself to get out there a little bit more and end up being more extroverted but maybe a different way of phrasing it in terms of the easiest to change is that you see the largest effects over time interesting people can there are a lot of things people can do to reduce their anxiety in life and to be more emotionally stable and have emotional regulation techniques so things like meditation um reframe cognitive reframing cognitive reappraisal um just cognitive distancing, imagining to yourself in a moment, well, you know, 50 years, will this matter? You know, how upset I'm getting right now? So there's a bunch of things there, but the hardest trait, I think is interesting. The hardest trait that we've found to really change in the long run and that don't really have such large effects with these interventions is the trait openness to experience, which I think is the trait that's most related to creativity and human flourishing what do you have any ideas scott about why that might be so difficult to change well i don't think uh part of that is that psychologists really haven't really done a great job coming up with the right uh activities and actions to really move the needle on that we are much clearer on what you need to do if you want to be more extroverted or um be more emotionally stable more conscientiousness more conscientious right i should say yes and uh uh And then, you know, if you want to be more agreeable or more. So a lot of my students, a lot of people want to be less agreeable. That's another thing that a lot of people might want because they're too much of a people pleaser. I see. So it depends on whatever direction you want to go there on that trait. But openness to experience is such a broad trait that it's one that I've studied a long time in my career and includes not only intellectual curiosity, but deep appreciation of the arts and music and being able to get deeply absorbed. in what you're doing and it's associated with creativity it's the number one best predictor of creativity so it'd be it'd be important if we could figure out ways of teaching it but I don think that anyone really nailed it yet yeah interesting well let me ask you Scott do you think your pattern of personality traits has changed at all across 11 years of oh absolutely yeah how i definitely become less agreeable um really oh yeah totally or how is that why and how um i mean i listened to some of my earlier at even i'm re-listening my episode with you you know i was like a little lap dog you you know you're amazing you know it's like you know i don't know it's just like i don't know i don't feel the need to like appease people so much anymore i really uh i'm very uh connected to who i am and i feel like i i know who myself i know myself a lot better than i did 11 years ago and i don't really need other people to tell me who i am Hi, all. 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Foundations of Self-Actualization Coaching is a course offered to enhance your coaching practice by offering you evidence-based tools and insights to equip you to more effectively help your clients unlock their unique creative potential. You can learn more about the course and register by going to centerforhumanpotential.com slash S-A-C. That's centerforhumanpotential.com slash S-A-C. Okay, now back to the show. So in your case, becoming a little less agreeable has been a good thing, it sounds like. It's been a very good thing. It's been a very good thing. um and uh you know but not so much that you know one becomes an asshole and it's important not to not to reduce it too much some people uh when they have this like no we're mr nice guy attitude and then they kind of go the extreme and that's everyone can tell that they've overcompensated you know just there's you know there's just a good carl rogers put it so well in one of his quotes he said it's not about being more than you are it's not about being less than you are you know being self-effacing it's not about being more than you are and puffing yourself up you know it's about really getting in touch with who you truly are and uh really uh being comfortable with it so yeah i think i've become more comfortable in my own skin probably yes we love carl rogers don't we i i was grasping for one of his famous phrases at one time talking to you and you knew it by heart the one about the curious paradox yeah yeah yeah can you say the paradox is that once we accept who we are, then we can change. Right, right. Yes, I love that. I find that to be very true. Well, what you said about how personality traits are really a pattern of states that we often occupy leads us into another point that you've drawn out of your 11 years of hosting the psychology podcast which is long lasting meaningful change often depends on habits systems and repeated behaviors yes what's your what's your what's your thinking about that um and and we have had some uh really world-class people on the show who've talked about that over the years like art markman um talked about very early on and how to change your habits um yeah i've had james queer on my podcast you know it was definitely uh blown up a lot of people after appearing on my podcast have blown up yeah it's funny isn't it yeah curious curious yeah um uh i had tim ferris on in the early days and he was really uh he really talked about how he creates very systematic habits and so there's something i've learned from a lot of my guests um who are maybe a different kind of personality than me but there's something i still learn from them yeah i'm more i fall more on kind of the dreamy you know openness to experience camp daydreamer um but there's something to be said and a lot to be learned from the kind of personality of the very like um you know uh rigid uh consistency you know they're obsessed with consistency they're obsessed with results and quantifying themselves and yeah um and um and i think that if you do want to make long lasting changes it's good to have a plan um i think that is very good i i've i've discovered that to be very beneficial in my own personal life it's good to know when you're when you're making progress and have these kind of smart goals yeah as they're called yeah yeah can you think of a habit that you work to change you know over the past 11 years oh what a great question um well um exercise um uh has been something i've gone into especially living in la yeah yeah that's the only way to date in la is to look good whereas in new york it's they care about my brain uh it's there's a very very clear difference between dating in new york and la but anyway you didn't come on the psychology podcast to talk about my dating life but i'm wondering what worked for you in terms of making exercise a regular habit it's fun it's it you know it feels good to intrinsic motivation yeah i mean it feels it feels like you're conquering something even if you don't conquer anything else that day you know if you get up i get up i usually work up in the out in the morning and then i'm like you know what i don't need to do anything else today like i did something today i mean of course i there's other things i need to do but i'm saying you know at least I conquered one small thing today. It feels good to be healthy and to feel vital and alive. In terms of habits and personality, it's a really interesting question. Like 11 years is kind of flashing before my eyes. I think I've just really chilled out a lot. It might have been a lot of the old marijuana I did in Santa Monica on the beach. So you're less anxious, you would say, or less? I'm so, I think I've lowered my neuroticism levels maybe 50% since 2014. Yeah, since we started. Absolutely. I mean, when I moved in Philadelphia at the time at Penn, and I would just walk around in a state of constant anxiety and panic attacks. and um you know i it's very the idea of a panic attack is so foreign to me now and it feels so far away it doesn't feel like i let me put this way it feels like i really can nip things in the bud more emotionally uh things don't spiral downward automatically anymore um like they used to and i think that's it that was a big change yeah i feel that i've seen that change in knowing you scott that you're is that right way more chill now yeah yeah less less worried about things more kind of going with the flow yeah well it's true i mean i might even say that i'm pretty emotionally stable now i wouldn't you know even i wouldn't even say i'm neurotic anymore which is fascinating yeah yeah i considering that that was a big part of my identity for so many years yeah yeah was there something there that was especially helpful do you meditate do you well i i i do think living in california for five years and uh and yeah getting a meditation and uh living in such a chill environment helped um coming back to new york is is an interesting experience for me but you really perceive a lot of differences between those two places huh they're like night and day scott i want to talk i want to turn to um another point that you've drawn from your 11 years of hosting the psychology podcast that is, I know, very near and dear to your heart, which is creativity. And this idea that creativity is a really vital dimension of human flourishing. And it's been such a consistent thread in your work, you know, and your thinking. And I wonder why, if you could talk a little bit about why you feel creativity is so important and so valuable i think creativity is everything you know uh to be able to bring into existence things that have not existed before is uh is is we do that automatically just by existing and um i think to be alive is a creative experience and you know well freud said uh love and work work and love are the cornerstones of humanness i think uh i don't think work is a cornerstone of humanness i think creativity is i think it's if i may modify freud i think it's love and creativity love and creativity are the things uh to live to live a good life um you know feeling uh love for an activity you're doing or for a human you know um but really uh having that uh that sense of aliveness usually is correlated with a sense of you're creating things of value in the world. What I like about your approach to creativity is that you don't seem to feel that it's restricted to, you know, artists or writers or musicians, but that all of us humans are creative in a sense. Do you agree with that? Yes. I don't think creativity is limited to a particular field of study there might be some fields where we don't want intense creativity like pilots but or tax accountants but nevertheless if we do view creativity as divergent thinking and the ability to come up with lots of solutions to a problem maybe we do want that everywhere we want the potential the the ability for divergent thinking not just convergent thinking which is the ability to come up with a one-way answer um and also uh with divergent thinking a lot of um a big part of divergent thinking is being able to come up with the problem in the first place knowing what being able to see that there's a problem um there are a lot of problems that people don't even see as problems wow that's interesting i do think creative people are very good at uh at picking up identifying problems yeah yeah steve jobs is good at that Yeah, yeah. Did you feel that putting together your podcast was a creative endeavor? Oh, absolutely. We sat first. I mean, it was such a new thing in the podcast space. Right. You know, I mean, there was a period of years where it felt very fresh and it felt very something special, you know. Now like you said everyone and their mother has a podcast and psychology content is well everyone a psychologist I mean I see so many people who are just so much more famous than I am on Instagram who are not legit psychologists just talking about everything they know we interestingly enough you know it's interesting when i when i got into this and i created this i wanted it to really show why expertise matters and really shine a spotlight on a lot of my a lot of nerds who are who are having their head down in the laboratory and are doing careful work it feels like these days we're living in the age of everyone's an expert if that makes sense yeah everyone just all you have to have is confidence and and that what you're saying is true and that's enough to uh for others to really take you seriously um and it's it's you know no shade but it's uh it's just it's an observation well i think it's been that's one of the great things about your podcast is that for those who want those listeners who want evidence-based, you know, experimentally generated evidence, you know, of what were these ideas behind what these ideas that we're talking about. Your podcast has always been a place to go for that. Well, thank you. That certainly was the intention. Yeah, yeah. I wondered, you know, just back to this question of your podcast as a creative enterprise, did you feel like you at first were figuring out how to talk to your guests and then eventually you settled into like a kind of um a pattern or um you know a a practice that that at first you were doing your best to work out yes i learned on the fly you know it's not like i went to podcasting school um and there weren't that many other examples out there um i i just committed myself to being myself you know my quirky you know self and um and authentic you know really matter to me um and i started uh you know if i may be so bold to say i i felt like i had a knack for it i felt like uh it suited me you know um to get out of the laboratory and have conversations and show my enthusiasm for science and psychology i love being a public science communicator and i uh many years concomitant with my podcast. I wrote a popular blog at Scientific American, Psychological Day at first and then Scientific American. So it all kind of fed into each other. It was a very nice period of my life. Yeah. I think it's always been apparent that you were enjoying yourself. You were very interested and engaged and eager to talk to these people. And I think that really showed. Thank you. Yeah. It's always one reason that I've enjoyed your podcast. um yeah um so another point that you make about uh or that you've pulled out of of what you've learned across hosting the psychology podcast is that emotional intelligence vulnerability and having self-compassion for your dark side is important and i i would love to hear you talk about the dark side i know you've done work on um well you know not not so much the dark triad but the light triad am i saying it right is it triad triad triad um so i'm sort of i'm sort of curious what you might have to say about the dark side what what why having self-compassion for our dark side is important yeah i've done i've done quite a lot of research in both the light triad in the dark triad um in order to validate our light triad we had to do a lot of research on the dark triad yeah and i think that uh the point there is that you often see goodness in its contrast to the opposite you know i don't know uh if the concept of evil makes a lot of sense or if we can really define it but um in my attempts to um to to see what uh what the light side of personality is yeah we really took a deep dive into traits such as narcissism Machiavellianism other psychopathy when I talk about when we talk about the dark side we also think about things like just depression or thinking about anxiety the field of positive psychology calls them negative emotions and they contrast that with positive emotions such as contentment and joy and happiness but I don't really like the artificial labeling of certain emotions as uh negative and others as positive i think that we have emotions that are uncomfortable we have emotions that are comfortable you know or some emotions that are static you know um that we i'd like talking about the experience more and and really understand how all these emotions really can um uh can be positive in certain contexts um my colleague Todd Kashtin and Robert Bishwas-Diener wrote a great book together on the upside of your dark side. And Todd was on the early days in my podcast talking about the dancing with your dark side, I think is what we titled the episode. And yeah, I really agree with that perspective that um being able to that there are many things we can do to um in to acknowledge accept um and so have self-compassion for the size of ourself that we may have shame over or the um uh or we or that make us feel uncomfortable uh there's uh this idea of uh the handshake practice with your beautiful monsters as sharon salzberg talked about on my podcast and she talked about her work from from a very it's a very buddhist concept the idea is you shake hands you know i was in charge of that they kind of shake hands in a cordial way with your monsters your inner demons yeah you say you know i see you um uh and a lot of these uh richard schwartz also dick schwartz when he was on my podcast we talked about his approach and um there's this idea of you know you welcome them in you you ask them what do they want you know what what kind of role are they trying to to play in in your inner in your inner life um or in your outer life as well what they try to play here either and um uh mark bracket who was who's been on a couple times i believe talking about dealing with your feelings and emotional intelligence i would include as a component of all this yeah yeah well if i may ask scott is what aspect of your dark side have you developed compassion for oh lots of aspects um you know i look at a lot of my prior suffering with uh with a real compassionate lens and um i don't you know there are things that would be so easy for me to like watch earlier interviews and just cringe and it'd be easy to do that it'd be easy to do that um because there's lots of things i've done that are cringeworthy and i don't think that's uh the relationship i want to have with my prior self so i think that uh you know being able to kind of watch versions of me that were in development but we're also trying my best um with the limited knowledge i had at the time about limited wisdom you know we're always limited in our wisdom right right right um is uh you know just with a heavy heart and uh just uh with a lot of love and um you know like really i love that quirky guy and uh i'm also glad that i've learned a lot of lessons and i've also been able to um you know, step into new versions of myself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you know, one of the words in that phrase that the point that I made was we talked about emotional intelligence, we talked about self-compassion for the dark side. And the third point there was vulnerability. And something that's always struck me about you, Scott, is that you're very in tune with your vulnerability, you're very open about it, you share it, which I think is such a gift, you know, in a culture in which vulnerability is often covered over with a, you know, image of everything's, everything's great. Everything's, you know, I've got every, I've got, I'm on top of everything, you know, and I've, I've always felt like you've been brave enough to share that you're, you know, a vulnerable human being. I really appreciate that, Annie. You know, that, that means a lot to me. I'm not one of these, you know i'm not gonna name names but like when he's like there's these polished you know self-help gurus that just never seem to have say any everything is so perfect you know every hair is always in place perfectly everything they say is perfect everything they say their audience they get a million people being like you're a genius that you said something you know so banal. Um, but it's like, um, do you know what I mean? I do. I do. And I just, that's just not me. And, uh, and I just want to be me, you know? Yeah. So a sixth point that, um, you pulled out of your 11 years to hosting the podcast, Scott, is that relationships, connection, and social context matter and continually shape our minds. So we've been talking a lot about sort of individual traits and states here, but relationships, they're so important. Could you talk a little bit about how that theme has played out across your years hosting the podcast? Yes. The idea of relationships playing a huge role in our human flourishing and our contentment in life is backed by so much research a lot of people my from sonia lubomirsky who's been on the podcast um uh to again sharon salzberg you know talking about uh love and connection and having a open heart uh there there's just so much exciting research on that um uh my head's going through there's so many people who have you know we had Ben Ryan who was on recently talking about the neuroscience of social connection Cassie Killam who's really talked about the importance of social connections so Cassie is rocking that and yeah I mean it's been a really big theme repeating over and over again on this podcast it's inescapable and it's not just feeling a sense of belonging but it's also I like to distinguish between belonging and a sense of belonging and a sense of intimacy or relatedness where um you and the other person there a real mutuality there a real um uh growth mutual growth on both ends uh with belonging you may feel like you belong to something um a group an organization a political you know thing And you go to a meeting and you dissent you know or say I don think I agree with the party line here And they say, you're out. You know, that's not a relationship. That's not a relationship. So, yeah, I think a lot of people are obsessed with belonging and the need to belong. You know, like DEI, belong, belong, belong. I think that, you know, not just belonging, but connection matters. a lot too yeah yeah would you say that the you know all the research on the importance of relationships has affected you in terms of how you you know prioritize relationships or how you spend your time oh yes i mean for sure i mean i i treasure my friends i mean you know of course and um there's just nothing better than than just getting together uh with your friends and uh who your particular type of friend you know a friend who accepts all of you you know and and i do have friends like that you know yeah shout out jordan feingold dan learner unconditional krista striker yeah there yeah yeah there are people in my life you know where just they just let me be me yeah they will not only that they admire it yeah yeah and vice versa Yeah, that's wonderful. Well, this last point that you've pulled out is just so Scott, you know, it's such the essence of SBK. And so I'll read it here. The ultimate aim of psychological insight is not just to fix problems, but to orient life toward growth, meaning and connection. And this really makes me think of your book, Ascend, right? Was that the title? Transcend. Transcend, sorry, that was building on Maslow's work. Could you talk a little bit about that? I really, that was a strand of your work that I especially, resonates for me. Thanks. Thanks, Annie. Yeah. You know, the questions of what is a good life have permeated my consciousness for a long time. I really like the humanistic psychology way of thinking about it. They really focus on being over doing and focus on what really matters. You know, what really matters, what really makes us feel whole and alive, experientially alive is what the humanistic psychology are really interested in understanding and knowing. and knowing and yeah in my book transcend i reimagined maslow's hierarchy of needs from a static pyramid that he never drew um to a sailboat that's dynamic you know the sailboat metaphor needs the kaufman sailboat metaphor where you you know you're you're moving in the ocean and uh or the sea of life and waves could come crashing down on you at any time there could be winds you don't know what's going to happen once you open that sail and you start moving towards your desired port but if you don't have a clear vision of what port you want to sail to you know you're not going to be moving in that direction at all and so it's very important to have a very clear vision of where you want to go have a purpose and move with purpose live your live live your purpose yes day in and day out stay true to your values and and also acknowledge that we have basic needs that sometimes we may have our days where we need to close that sail and focus on just plugging the holes in the boat. And that's okay. And that's okay. You seem like someone who's very much living his purpose, Scott. I mean, would you... Oh, thanks, Annie. If you had to put your purpose in a sentence, what would you say? Well, I really want to empower all people to realize their higher potential. I mean, it's really as simple as that. There's nothing more exciting to me than when I have a coaching client. I created a form of coaching in recent years called self-actualization coaching, where we really help people get in touch with the most alive, unique, creative center of their being is the way I put it. It's also, that's how Karen Horny put it, one of my favorite psychoanalysts, neo-psychoanalysts who really challenged Freud. But yeah, so I think really helping people get in touch with that unique center of their being. And there's nothing more exciting to me than when I see someone have this aha moment of wonder and awe within themselves at what they already have within them. you know, or they're, they see a higher possibility for themselves and maybe they didn't see it themselves or maybe other people didn't see it in them, but they see it in themselves. And I think that to enable all people to have that is, you know, that's my purpose. Yeah. Yeah. That's, and that has been from your very first, well, it was Ungifted, your first book. That was my first book for a general audience. Yeah. I mean, that was really about, as you said, being able to recognize strengths and talents in oneself, even when other people haven't. You know, really powerful. That's true. I feel seen. You feel seen. So looking back across 11 years of the podcast, Scott, I know you were saying like there's been so many guests. Are there a few moments that stick out to you? something that a guest said that really is still ringing in your ears or that you find yourself repeating or remembering? Can you think of any moments that really stand out? You know, look, after so many episodes, what starts to remain are these threads that we discussed today. I'll be honest, the individual people, you know, as much as we want to think all of us are going to it's our name that you know our monuments gonna last is that really what's most important you know it's it's the fact that i you know we've had i've had over the years so many obviously every single one of my guests over four you know i don't want to single out anyone here in this in this the ending of this of this episode i want to make the point that they've all significantly contributed to the canon of truth yes um and these patterns that we talked about today i think are you really nailed it you know that these seven um really form the clusters if you did a factor analysis of holy episodes which is a nerdy statistical technique um these are the major themes um this podcast has has covered and that stand out to me as the message that I think taken together from everyone, the collective knowledge of 470, well, I guess this is episode 478 of the Psychology Podcast. Wow, wow. That's a lot. That's a lot. Well, I want to ask you, Scott, about what's next for you, but not necessarily in terms of specific projects. I want to know what are you excited about? What do you want to find out still? You know, I know there's so much left to be discovered. What are you excited about and thinking about in terms of the future? Well, one thing is taking my self-actualization coaching program in new directions. We're continuing to train coaches and we have a six-month certification program, but I want to branch out into other areas like education, having teachers view themselves as self-actualization coaches and managers. um so in the business world i'm getting increasingly interested in the future of leadership um and particularly human-centered leadership and i have a edited book i'm doing with chris shipley coming out next year on the future of human of leadership yeah really uh in the age of ai and in the age of such uncertainty um what does it look like where we keep our humanity you know yes um and i also have been really getting into mentalism and magic And so I'm still trying to figure out ways of incorporating my mentalism burgeoning skills into my keynote speeches and performances and things to really inspire people to realize the depths of their human potential. Yeah. You know, I'm not sure I know what mentalism is exactly. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? It's mind reading. Mind reading? Oh, okay. Well, you know, the field of mentalism is a sub-branch of magic that includes your ability to make predictions about what someone is going to think, your ability to read their minds of what they're currently thinking, and the ability to influence what they're going to think and influence. So it's those three areas. Now, is the mind reading literally you're going in their brain, you're reading their thoughts? No. But there's deep, complex methods and various things that you combine to give the appearance of real mind reading and real magic. And at the end of the day, the most exciting thing is being able to create a sense of awe and wonder in people and let them see that things that seem impossible are actually possible. And that's the thing that excites me the most about the field of mentalism. Oh, that's so cool. Will the podcast interviews continue to be available after the show? The psychology podcast will still be available, the whole back catalog. and what happens to the feed and what happens next to the podcast will be revealed at some point. Well, Scott, it's been such a pleasure talking to you about your 11 years hosting the Psychology Podcast. I want to congratulate you on the achievement of all those years of wonderful interviews that you've been bringing to people. And thank you for allowing me to be your first guest and your last guest it's it's been a real honor for me thank you annie thank you for being my first and last guest of this iteration of life um you know you may be a guest you may you may be the first guest of something else you never know but uh you know life is uh is a funny thing it's it's simultaneously growth oriented and cyclical if you know what I mean. Well, the ascending spiral, that's the much that I like. You keep returning to the same things, but hopefully at a more evolved level. That's right. And that's, you know, maybe some people argue that's multiple lives as well, and not just the point of this life, but that may take us to another realm for a different podcast. Annie, it's been such an honor talking to you today, and I love these themes. They really do a great job capturing the spirit and essence of the psychology podcast and i want to really thank the listeners um who made it all possible for so many years who've supported it um and uh yeah my my uh from the bottom of my heart thank you so much uh to everyone for um yeah making this podcast possible and i did it all for you guys thanks god