• Episodes

    Episode 081: Prozium Has to Be a Play on Prozac, Right? Equilibrium (2002)

    Join Alex as he takes a solo look at the post-war fascist future of no emotions in Equilibrium (2002), Kurt Wimmer’s 1984-esque future where a city-state has outlawed emotions. The film stars an up-and-coming Christian Bale, Taye Diggs, Sean Bean (blink-and-you’ll-miss-it), with Emily Watson and Angus MacFadyen. After World War III, fascists thought war and crime were emotions’ fault, so they developed a drug that suppresses emotional extremes, and if you don’t take it everyday, read books, or participate in culture, well… Clerics come and act as judge, jury, and sometimes executioner! What do theories of emotion have to say about the portrayal of emotion in this film, and is its take accurate from psychological perspective?…

  • Episodes

    Episode 077: Metascience, Faith, and Confirmation Bias… in Space! Contact (1997) with Jacob Miranda

    Join Alex and guest host Dr. Jacob Miranda as they explore the metascience, confirmation bias, and the nature of faith vs. science in the sci-fi epic, Contact (1997). The film, directed by Robert Zemeckis and cowrote by Carl Sagan himself, stars Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway, a SETI scientist who helps discover a message from the stars. The film also stars Matthew McConaughey, a religious person who acts as a foil for Ellie’s scientifically-oriented mind. Confirmation bias reins in all aspects of this film, but the commentary also includes a a healthy dose of metascience and the open science movement, especially what is part of the current discussion in Psychology — the replication crisis.…

  • Episodes

    Episode 005: On Podcasts, We Wear Pink—Mean Girls (2004) with Olivia Aspiras

    Join Alex and Olivia Aspiras in discussion of the psychological concepts in Tina Fey’s masterpiece Mean Girls (2004), starring Lindsay Lohan, Tina Fey, Rachel McAdams (Amy Adams), and Amanda Seyfried in her first film role. The limit does not exist on the amount of social psychology we can discuss. We thank you for being so obsessed with us!

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