Finding Focus

In 2009, an old man died in a California nursing home. His obituary included not just his given name, but a long list of the pseudonyms he’d been known to use. In this classic 2019 episode, we trace the life of Riley Shepard, a hillbilly musician, writer, small-time con man and, ...  Show more

Last week, we looked at the hidden beliefs that can leave us feeling stuck in life. This week, in the second part of our conversation with behavioral scientist Dave Evans, we talk about radical acceptance. Dave shares why accepting reality as it is can be so difficult — and why i ...  Show more

Does being distracted create the life and world you would like to live in? The world is full of distractions and it’s only getting better and better at distracting us. Distractions come in many forms, thoughts, feelings, our phones, friends, relationships, food, just to name a fe ...  Show more

Your brain is powerful, but it’s limited. Sometimes it’s able to tell you exactly what you feel, how you can respond to a challenge, or how you can create ideas. Other times, it can’t. Enter Annie Murphy Paul, an acclaimed science writer whose book The Extended Mind: The Power ...

How do you focus a distracted mind?

Attention and focus come up a lot in the Kwik Brain community. In the world of dings and pings, staying on task can become increasingly difficult, especially when your to-do list is a mile long. But attention exists to help you not on ...

Ventriloquism: The Science of Dummies: It's time to rediscover ventriloquism, the surprisingly deft art of illusion that relies on a keen sense of comic timing and obsessive technique from the performer, as well as a buy-in into the illusion from the audience member. Why do we ...