Today I'm talking with Hollie Raynor, who is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition and the Interim Assistant Dean of Research in the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences at the University of Tennessee. She has a BS in Foods and Nutrition from San Diego State University, an MS in Public Health Nutrition from the University of Tennessee, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Buffalo. She is a registered dietitian and a licensed psychologist. Her research interests are on identifying the best methods to implement dietary factors that enhance satiation and translating lifestyle intervention into practice-based settings.

We discuss some of the unique modern day challenges and opportunities we face when it comes to our health, our strange perception of portion size and overall food preferences, the relationship between physical activity and diet, and much more!

Today I'm hanging out with returning guest, Herman Pontzer. Herman is the author of "Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy". He investigates the physiology of humans and apes to understand how ecology, lifestyle, diet, and evolutionary history affect metabolism and health.

This week I talk with Associate Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at The University of Minnesota, Emilie Snell-Rood.

Emilie’s lab takes both a basic and applied approach to understanding insect responses to environmental change. Currently, a number of her projects consider roadsides as habitat for insect pollinators, studying interactions between nutrients and roadside stressors in the development of butterflies and bees.

We talk about diversity in butterflies, the process of metamorphosis, and how butterflies learn. Further into the episode we get into how modern life drives evolution including agriculture, cities, and toxins.

Jessica Brinkworth returns to Here We Are for her 4th time to give us an update on COVID! We talk about the spread of misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, booster shots, the neurological and cardiac side effects of COVID, the danger in over-exercising while infected with COVID, the new Omicron variant, the naïve guidance from the CDC, and a whole lot more!

Jessica is an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research addresses the physiological consequences of the human experience and evolutionary past, particularly those that affect innate immune system function.

Today I talk to returning guest, Emily J Willingham, about her book "The The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto, to Companionship, A User's Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter". We talk about the neuroscience behind resilience, exercise, mindfulness practice, social interactions, breathing, the uprising in popularity of the wellness community and supplements, and the future of neurotropic research.

On a very special episode of Here We Are, I talk with wonderful friend and fellow comedian, Duncan Trussell.

Check out Duncan’s Podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour and his psychedelic animated series, The Midnight Gospel on Netflix.

We chat about science and mysticism, tradition and rituals, meditation and development over a lifespan.

This week I am speaking with Douglas Noll, author of the book *De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less* which was the winner of the Book Excellence Award for 2017.

Douglas E. Noll. is a full time peacemaker and mediator, specializing in difficult, complex, and intractable conflicts. He has a Masters Degree in Peacemaking and Conflict Studies.

Doug tells me all about the Prison of Peace Project which aims to help inmates develop peacemaking skills to reduce violence and promote peace within their prison community. We also dive into anger, emotional validation, and reading emotional data fields.

More resources from Doug
https://dougnoll.co/hereweare

This week, Shane is talking with Dr. Zlatan Križan, Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University, and Barrett Klein, Professor of Biology at UW-La Crosse who are meeting for the first time to film this incredible episode that crosses both their fields of research.

Dr. Križan directs the Sleep, Self, and Personality Laboratory (SSPeL) that examines how sleep and personality intersect with social behavior and self-regulation.

Barrett Klein is the head of The PUPATING LAB is where he studies insect behavior, sleep biology, and explore the ways in which insects have affected humans throughout history.

In the full episode they quantify sleeping, dreaming, and their causes. They discuss sleep across different species, as well as how much sleep humans need, and how we can get the most out it!

Here We Are turns 8 years old! To celebrate, I decided to do record a solo episode talking about how I got into science and comedy, feeling out of place throughout my childhood/early adulthood, and why I started the Here We Are Podcast.

This week I am speaking with Associate Professor of Economics at The University of Tennessee Knoxville, Charles Sims. We discuss the economics of covid-19, climate change, carbon taxes, and the uncertainties that come along with major decision making.

This week I am speaking with Evolutionary Biologist and Author, Henry Gee. Henry is also the Senior Editor of the scientific journal 'Nature'. He has published a number of books including his latest which just released, 'A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters'.

In this full episode we talk about writing processes, the origin of life on Earth, extinction events, as well as mammalian evolution. At the end of the discussion we speculate wildly about what the Earth might look like over the next billion years.

On this week's episode of Here We Are, I am talking with Gregory Zuckerman. Greg is a Special Writer at The Wall Street Journal. He's an investigative reporter who writes about business and investing topics. He's also the author of A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine.

We talk about the history of vaccine research, pharmaceutical companies, and conveying information to the public, as well as the next big scientific advances.

This week I'm speaking with authors of The Knowledge Illusion, Steve Sloman and Phil Fernbach.

Steven Sloman is a cognitive scientist at Brown University who studies how people think. Phil Fernbach is a cognitive scientist and professor of marketing at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The book explores why we think we know so much more than we do, and the profound implications for individuals and society.

Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little?

In celebration of Halloween I'm speaking with Mathias Clasen, a scholar of horror fiction and associate professor in literature and media at Aarhus University in Denmark. Clasen’s research integrates horror study with the natural and social sciences, in particular human behavioral biology and evolutionary and cognitive psychology.

In this episode we talk about classic horror tales, why we love feeling scared, and the evolution of classic horror icons. This is the great conversation for those who love horror and those who are nervous to face their fears. If you're the latter, check out Mathias' newest book 'A Very Nervous Person's Guide to Horror Movies'.

This week I talk with Nicholas Coles, A research scientist at Standford University. Nicholas is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in affective science and the emerging field of meta-science. In affective science, Nicholas seeks to understand the social, cognitive, and physiological processes that underlie the conscious experience of emotion.

In this episode we talk about what emotions are, cultural differences in emotional experience and why faking a smile is so exhausting. Plus we discuss multiple studies on embodied cognition.

Thanks for watching and being an inquisitive being!

Today I am speaking with Coltan Scrivner, who is a researcher at The University of Chicago in the Department of Comparative Human Development and a Fellow at the Institute for Mind and Biology. We talk about horror, anxiety, why some people enjoy scaring themselves for fun, and I take Coltan's Morbid Curiosity Test!

Today I'm speaking with Adam Willcox from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His lab focuses on the human dimensions of biodiversity conservation, endangered species management, and protected areas management. Adam also serves with the Smith Center for International Sustainable Agriculture. We discuss changing social and environmental norms, the cost of meat consumption, conserving biodiversity, and how traveling can change your worldview.

Today I'm speaking with Sean Doody, who studies reptiles and conservation biology theory! We talk about the evolution of reptiles, the difficulty with studying reptiles' blizzard, yet surprisingly active, social lives, and what we could learn from lizard's unique limb regeneration abilities.

Sean co-wrote the book "The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles" with Gordon M. Burghardt who was also recently on the show. You can check their book out here: https://amzn.to/3od8ZAT

How much of our personality is bound to our genetic makeup, and how much can we actually change about ourselves? Is there any hope for the notoriously unconscientious personalities in the world? What can we learn about the evolutionary motivators built-in to our goal-directive behaviors?
Dr. Colin DeYoung, associate professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, joins the show to discuss all of that and more.

Emily Willingham joins me today to talk all about the evolutionary pressures that lead to the variety of penis designs we find in nature. Her new book, "Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis" will be available to purchase along with her other fascinating books on her website at http://www.emilywillinghamphd.com/