With Friends Like These

NYU and University of Hamburg psychology professor Gabriele Oettingen explains why positive thinking can backfire, and offers a method that might work better. She is the author of “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julie Rodgers was raised in a conservative evangelical home, so she knew they’d be horrified when she came out as a lesbian in her teens. To please her family and community, she first tried to change who she was, then she tried to deny it. We talk about how she went from being a star on the “ex-gay” speaker circuit to believing that God delights in all aspects of LGBTQ people, including their sexuality. Her forthcoming memoir is “Outlove: A Queer Christian Survival Story.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trigger warning: This episode is about suicide and suicide prevention. While the pandemic has made mental health a part of the national conversation, policy makers and the public still tend to think of suicide as a matter of intervention at the point of crisis. Stephanie Wittels is on to explain why that is not the case. The second season of her podcast, “Last Day,” explores individual stories as a way of illustrating that true suicide prevention isn’t about intervening when someone’s life is at risk, it’s about making life worth living from the start. If you feel at risk in any way, please text "START" to 741-741 or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255). As we point out in the episode: If you’re thinking of reaching out but asking yourself if your situation is “bad enough” to deserve help, that means you definitely deserve help. We all do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW: Sexual violence Author Sarah Schulman joins the show to discuss her provocative and influential book, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair. She argues that both the right and left can needless escalate mere conflicts into accusations of abuse, creating victims where there are none and blaming and shaming those who might be simply misunderstood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oxford University professor of anthropology Chris Gosden joins us to discuss his book: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present. Also: We make politics disappear! Which is to say, there is NO DISCUSSION OF THE 2020 ELECTION IN THIS EPISODE. You’re welcome! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, a deep dive into how political enthusiasts’ default background noise is ruining our country. First, we hear from a former MSNBC producer who left the network after feeling like she was part of the problem. Then media critic Jay Rosen warns us about how the habits formed in covering Trump might warp coverage of whatever administration comes next. Lastly, CJR columnist Maria Bustillos helps us ponder why it is journalists who start out meaning well wind up making things worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

QAnon! What a *wild* conspiracy theory! Blood-drinking! Pedophilia! JFK Jr.! Pretty fascinating stuff! I bet you want to listen to this episode! Which is exactly why we need to rethink how the media covers conspiracies and how we think about them. George Mason University disinformation researcher John Cook helps explain how we can keep toxins out of the media bloodstream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do people enter public service? How do they keep going when times get hard — or they wind up not lasting long in a presidential primary? Julián Castro talks about injustice, strategic voting, and his new podcast, “Our America.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s easy to feel superior to John Allen Chau, the evangelical Christian who died attempting to bring the Bible to the North Sentinelese. We should ask ourselves if maybe it’s a little too easy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might think being obsessed with politics — watching cable news, reading political blogs, and, er, listening to political podcasts — is a good thing! Historian Claire Bond Potter isn’t so sure. She joins us to talk her book, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We begin our “Good Intentions” series exploring the origin of the impulse to help. The good news is that empathy and altruism appear to be instinctive reactions to the pain of others! The bad news is that it’s super-easy to divert or suppress that instinct (hint: the President does it all the time!). USC neuroscientist Leo Christov-Moore explains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eva Hagberg thought she knew who she was: a smart, overachieving loner on her way to literary fame. Then her brain went boom (technical term), and she had to reevaluate her relationship to achievement, to herself, and to the people that loved her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two founders of the Lincoln Project on their “psychological warfare” campaign against Trump, why Susan Collins must go, and how those viral ads are just the tip of the iceberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this final episode of our “Converts” edition, we revisit some past episodes to see exactly what we’ve learned about how people do (and don’t) change their minds. What have we picked up from the a cop-turned-activist, a scientist who embraced mysticism, a conservative climate change advocate, and a onetime white nationalist who marched to say Black Lives Matter? The answers may surprise you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You may know about the ways that “conversion therapy” has played out when it comes to religion. But what about the once-mainstream, secular professionals who refused to give up on the idea that their work wasn’t just necessary, but also the truly scientific approach to homosexuality? This is their story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 1990s, evangelical churches bought and gave away thousands of copies of the book, “Left Behind,” hoping its overwrought depiction of the End Times would frighten unbelievers into the arms of Christ. That is not what happened. Amy Frykholm, author of “Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America,” explains what did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julie Rehmeyer is a science writer who studied math at MIT. She also lives with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a disease that many doctors treat with skepticism bordering on derision. So when traditional medicine couldn’t help her, she had to try treatments science couldn’t support. Julie’s book is Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thousands of people crowding public venues to hear the word of the Lord. Men fainting, women claiming to be healed, all rejoicing at being “born again.” When you think of “converts,” this may be what you picture, because it’s a familiar scene — more familiar than you may realize. The quintessentially American revival meeting was born before the country itself, in the mid-1700s, during what we call today “The First Great Awakening.” Our guest this week is Thomas Kidd, a historian at Baylor University of The Great Awakening and colonial society. I brought him on to walk us all through the specifics of it, and to speculate on how the American thirst for spiritual change reverberates today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former mayor of Minneapolis Betsy Hodges comes on to talk about how the Rodney King uprisings started her journey to anti-racist activism — and what happened when, in 2015, her anti-racist ideals ran up against the realities of governing a city rocked by the shooting of a black man by white police officers. Her piece on the King uprisings is here. Her op-ed in the New York Times about how white liberals stand in the way of progress on police violence is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would turn a passionate, witty feminist into a xenophobic white nationalist? This week’s episode tells the story of Cordelia Scaife May, the eccentric heiress whose fortune underwrote both the Pittsburg Children’s Museum and the most influential network of immigration restrictionists in American history. Our episode owes much to the New York Times’ investigative report on Scaife May last year, [“Why an Heiress Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out”] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices