Podcast – Curious Mind, Curious Brain

Did you hear the one about the bank robber who thought it would help to squeeze lemons in his eyes right before his crime? The psychologist David Dunning did, and it made him try to explain why people do dumb things.

This is the story of patient H.M., a polite man without a memory, and the brilliant but often overlooked scientist who put him on the map.

What happens when you put three delusional men, all of whom believe that they're Jesus Christ, in the same room? In the late 1950s, a psychologist at a mental hospital in Michigan got the chance to find out.

About a century ago, a scientist had a dream in which he devised an experiment. He forgot the dream the next morning, but it still managed to win him to Noble Prize, and ultimately to save his life.

The working title for this week's episode was "Hitler's Hysteria," which I liked for it's alliteration. The term hysteria is generally frowned upon now. It's a lot less offensive, and a lot more effective, to call these sorts of conditions conversion disorders, or somatization disorders...

This week, I talk about the doomsday religion that social psychology Leon Festinger studied in the 1950s. His studies led him to develop his theory of cognitive dissonance. The concept of cognitive dissonance has been with us for a long time (Wikipedia points out an example from Aesops Fables), but Festinger was the first to coin the term. In doing so, he launched a line of research that has been really fascinating...

This week, I talk about the chain of events that lead to the serendipitous discovery of valproic acid. Valproic acid is one of the key ingredients in Depakote, the most widely prescribed antiepileptic (seizure-controlling) drug in the world. I introduced the topic by talking about a recent lawsuit against Abbott Laboratories, the company that makes Depakote, for illegally marketing their product...

This week's podcast tells the story of Hans Berger, a German scientist during the first half of the 20th century. Berger (which a German speaking friend of mine assures me is pronounced "BEAR-grr") thought he had a psychic experience while he was in the military, and that experience lead him to spend the rest of his life studying the brain. Eventually, he invented the EEG, that device that doctors hook up to a patient's head to get a bunch of squiggly lines...