Sugar and The Brain (Rebroadcast)

Summary

Why is it hard to have just one of those delicious slices of pound cake over the holidays? It turns out it has less to do with the creamy butter and more to do with the way our brains react to those white sweet grains of sugar.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss the ways our brains respond to sugar by releasing a nice amount of dopamine.

While we may think this dopamine is supposed to make us feel good, what the chemicals in our brains are trying to do is to teach us that this sugar is a good thing and that we want more of it for our survival.

This might have been beneficial to us a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, but with sweets in every candy dish, gas station, and coffee shop around the corner, craving sugar has its consequences.

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November 29, 2024

Critical Thinking: The Foundation

We hear the term “critical thinking” often but may take for granted that we don’t think very critically about what it means. With this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Art Markman, Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy begin a series on the psychology of critical thinking by talking about what it takes to get started.

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November 22, 2024

The Critic

When looking for a good restaurant or trying to figure out what film to watch or book to read, a good critic can be very useful. However, distinguishing between a critic and an influencer can be tricky. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Art Markman, Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy talk about the psychology of the critic.

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November 15, 2024

Social Decision-Making

From a very early age, we learn to take cues from our environment as to how we should feel about things; we look to our parents to give us a sense of safety, and we laugh when others laugh. However, in our society today, with everything from laugh tracks to bot-generated likes, assessing the validity […]

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November 8, 2024

The Psychology of Uncertainty (Rebroadcast)

When we’re anxious, we have a heightened awareness of negative things in our environment. In contrast, we tend to notice more desirable things when excited. Coupled with the media landscape today, it’s easy to see how emotions can spiral every time you look at your phone. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, […]

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November 2, 2024

Media and Trust

We evolved to learn how to trust people, but we didn’t evolve in an environment with the Internet and AI, which means that it can be difficult for us to discern fact from fiction quickly. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Art Markman, Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy talk about what this […]

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October 25, 2024

Assessing Risk

We’re not great at assessing risk, especially using ratios and percentages, but as Art Markman, Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy ask in this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, does it matter?

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October 18, 2024

Base Rate Neglect

Often, when we hear warning reports associated with certain foods or behaviors, we think we understand what is good or bad for us. However, as Art Markman, Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy discuss in this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, base rate neglect, we don’t have a clear understanding of what that means.

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October 11, 2024

Time: Audience Q&A

The Texas Science & Natural History Museum hosted a live taping of Two Guys on Your Head, with the whole Two Guys team, Art Markman, Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy, to discuss the Psychology of Time. It was a wonderful conversation! In this fourth and final installment of the series, we take questions from the […]

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