The Psychology Podcast Joins iHeart & Prepares Your Brain For Life

 There are hundreds of psychology podcasts for those who either need mental health assistance, indulge their curiosity about how the mind works, or how to identify and avoid mental traps such as confirmation bias, hindsight bias, availability heuristics, The Dunning-Kruger effect or, the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

The Psychology Podcast with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman has the virtue of the most self-explanatory and facile name for a genre podcast in the industry. The title sells itself. 

Thankfully for listeners, in the last ten years since the podcast began, Kaufman has delivered high-level conversations about multiple facets of psychology. 

After almost a decade, Kaufman has taken the plunge. iHeartPodcasts and Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, have announced that the Psychology Podcast, joined iHeartPodcasts on January 18. New episodes will launch every Thursday, and fans can binge previous seasons and episodes on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.  

iHeart tells us: "With over 30 million listeners since its inception, The Psychology Podcast brings does bring science-backed conversations that can help listeners better manage their lives."

Prior guests have included neuroscientists Andrew Huberman, Antonio Damasio, and Lisa Feldman Barrett; Linguist Noam Chomsky, psychologist Angela Duckworth, therapist Esther Perel, Nobel-prize winner Daniel Kahneman, and organizational psychologist Adam Grant. 

The roster of guests may be one of the most salient benefits of the show because it is an impressive list. Kaufman is a solid interviewer and knows how to guide his guests through a cohesive dispensation of the facts and concepts they are trying to communicate.

One of my favorite episodes is a recent one with Dr. Carol Dweck. Author of one of my favorite books, Mindset (The New Psychology Of Success), Dr. Dweck is a leading researcher in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her research examines the role of mindsets in personal achievement and organizational effectiveness. 

Another superb show was one in November 2023 with Angela Duckworth, who is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She has advised the White House, the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs. More recently, she founded the Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development in children. She is the author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, another of my favorite books.

Duckworth researches self-control and grit, which is defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Her research has demonstrated that there are factors that can be more predictive of success than IQ. In the episode, they covered some of her findings on grit, including academic and popular misconceptions of this work. They also discussed research on standardized testing and self-control. 

“The Psychology Podcast is on a mission to help people live a more meaningful, self-actualized, and fulfilling life,” said Dr. Kaufman. “Through conversations with some of the world’s top scientists and self-actualizing people from a wide range of fields, the show provides listeners with the scientific tools and knowledge for self-improvement. As the podcast has grown, it has made sense to join forces with the number one podcast publisher—iHeartPodcasts. We are pumped up for this next chapter of the podcast.”

Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is known for his research on intelligence, creativity, and human potential. He is the founder of the Center for Human Potential and the founder of Self-Actualization Coaching. Dr. Kaufman has authored 10 books, including Choose Growth (with Jordyn Feingold).

The psychology podcast is a show worthy of your ear time. It's not Hidden Brain or Speaking of Psychology, but then both those psychology podcasts set a high bar for excellence.

The Psychology Podcast will join the iHeartPodcasts’ existing roster of ear worthy psychology podcasts, such as On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Therapy for Black Girls with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, Pushkin’s The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, A Slight Change of Plans with Dr. Maya Shankar, and Unbreakable with Jay Glazer.