Posted on November 6, 2009 by Dara
Each language has a toolkit to help us learn what to pay attention to.
So argues Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky during this episode of the Stanford University radio show Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature) (website, iTunes).
Boroditsky studies how the languages we use influence the way we think. And she’s come up with some startling [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Idea of the week, Lectures, Linguistics, Psychology, University podcast | Tagged: Lera Boroditsky, Stanford University | Leave a Comment »
Posted on October 14, 2009 by Dara
Why does the “talking cure” pioneered by Sigmund Freud and his students help relieve anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses?
Freud famously taught that psychotherapy helped the patient achieve catharsis, or purging of the emotions. This was helpful, Freud thought, because he imagined that our emotions exist in a closed hydraulic system like a steam [...]
Filed under: Books, Health, Idea of the week, Psychology, University podcast, Writing | Tagged: catharsis, positive psychology, psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud, Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness | Leave a Comment »
Posted on October 7, 2009 by Dara
UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner thinks we Americans are definitely touch-deprived. In lecture 8 of his excellent course Human Happiness (feed), Keltner presents evidence that when we touch each other, we feel less stressed, more altruistic and well — happier. He’s talking here about casual everyday touches, everything from a bear hug to [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Courses, Idea of the week, Psychology, University podcast | Tagged: Dacher Keltner, language of touch, positive psychology | Leave a Comment »
Posted on October 5, 2009 by Dara
University of California San Diego is offering a record 63 courses available for free download on its podcast website this quarter, enough to fill your mp3 player for months to come. But carpe diem, seize the day. Most of these riches will only stay on the website until the end of the quarter (roughly mid-December), [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Art, Courses, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, University podcast | Tagged: David Peterzell, Ivan Evans, Matthew Herbst, UCSD, Victor Magagna, William Norman Bryson | Leave a Comment »
Posted on October 2, 2009 by Dara
UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner is the real deal — the kind of professor I wish I’d seen more often in my university days. Not only is he a cutting-edge researcher in the field of human emotion, he’s also a gifted teacher, who gives well organized, interesting lectures and who has a flair for [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Courses, Distance learning, Psychology, University podcast | Tagged: Dacher Keltner, human happiness, positive psychology, UC Berkeley | Leave a Comment »
Posted on September 21, 2009 by Dara
Psychologist Matt Walker has some bad news for students who don’t crack the books until the night before the big exam. Not only are students who “pull an all nighter” groggy and punch-drunk the next day, they also significantly degrade their memory circuits and impede the learning process.
That is the big take-home lesson in Walker’s [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Courses, Idea of the week, Psychology, University podcast | Tagged: Eleanor Rosch, Matt Walker, sleep | 2 Comments »
Posted on September 18, 2009 by Dara
The fall 2009 semester at UC Berkeley is in full swing and I am newly returned from a trip to Europe. Here are a couple of promising courses I’ve been sampling as I’ve been recovering from jet lag.
Psychology of Dreams (website, feed).
Are dreams a window into the spirit world, a key to the unconscious or [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Courses, Distance learning, Psychology, University podcast | Tagged: Dacher Keltner, dreams, Eleanor Rosch, happiness | Leave a Comment »
Posted on April 30, 2009 by Dara
If you’ve been following UC Berkeley Professor Ron Hendel’s excellent course The Bible in Western Culture (feed), you know that he’s been looking at understandings of the Bible, beginning in ancient times and moving through the Middle Ages into modernity. In the last couple of weeks we watched as Enlightenment thinkers like Spinoza and Herder [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Bible, Courses, Idea of the week, Jewish studies, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, University podcast | Tagged: Jonathan Haidt, Ron Hendel, The Happiness Hypothesis | 2 Comments »
Posted on March 9, 2009 by Dara
Dan Ariely, a best-selling author and professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, is always fun to listen to. He has a lilting, mischievous voice with just a hint of a Hebrew accent– rather like an Israeli leprechaun.
He often appears on American Public Media’s daily news show Marketplace, explaining how people are “predictably irrational,” which [...]
Filed under: Economics, Idea of the week, Psychology, University podcast | Tagged: Duke University | Leave a Comment »
Posted on March 4, 2009 by Dara
The last day of class for winter 2009 at UCSD is Friday, March 13. Soon after that most of the course podcasts at the UCSD podcast website will disappear.
Some courses you might want to grab before it is too late:
Enlightenment, Romanticism, Revolution/1660-1848 (website, feed) Eric Watkins.
This interdisciplinary course covers the philosophy, literature, science and art [...]
Filed under: 5-star professors, Courses, Distance learning, History, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology | Leave a Comment »