Invisibilia is a NPR podcast which explores," the invisible forces that control human behavior." Its hosted by Lulu Miller, Hanna Rosin, and Alix Spiegel.
If you're into psychology and love learning about new psychological research, this podcast is for you.
I originally discovered this podcast because my psychology professor had us listen to a couple of episodes for class. Now taking a radio class, I discovered my love for listening to podcasts as I walk around my college campus. Invisibilia was my first podcast, and its taught me a lot about myself and psychology.
Here's my list of my favorite episodes of Invisibilia.
9. The Secret Emotional Life of Clothes
This episode is about the affect clothes have on the way others see you. One story is about a guy named Cas that started wearing sunglasses when he was young to stop the bullies. Surprisingly enough, it worked. Another story was about the work of Professor Adam Galinsky. His experiment asked the question if wearing a doctor's white coat increased performance.
8. The Problem with the Solution
This episode is about how humans look for solutions to all problems. This episode of Invisibilia begs the question if all problems need to be solved. The NPR reporters talk to people in a small town in Belgium where families take in mentally ill patients. Instead of trying to fix them, they coexist with them.
7. Flip the Script
In this episode, Invisibilia explores "noncomplementary behavior", which is shown best by the first segment of the episode: a robber shows up to a small gathering and makes a fuss. One of the people at the party offers the robber a glass of wine. They talk to him for a little bit, then he leaves peacefully. One of the main stories for this episode is how the police in one small town in Europe stopped Muslim teenagers from going to Syria by treating them with kindness.
6. How to Become Batman
This episode is about Daniel Kish, a blind man who can "see" by clicking like a bat. Kish believes that the blind don't reach their full sense potential because they rely too much on those that care for them.
5. Fearless
Half of this episode is about a woman with a calcified amygdala who doesn't feel fear. The other half of the episode explores why people have a fear of snakes: the way they move. And finally, the last part is about how human can actually smell fear.
4. The Personality Myth
This episode tacks an age old question: what makes us, us over time? The main story is about a man in prison and how he completely changed himself for the better. However, people still don't perceive him as a changed person. One psychologist tells us that who we are depends on our environment.
3. Entanglement
This is an episode I found insane, but captivating. Part of the episode is about a woman who has Mirror Touch Synestesia. She is an empath to an extreme where she physically and mentally feel other people and their emotions. She can't even eat with her family because it feels like they are shoving food in her mouth.
2. The Secret History of Thoughts
This episode is about how therapeutic methods have changed over time. Freud, method 1, believed that thoughts mean something. Method 2 is that thoughts are something that needs to be combated. And method 3 is that thoughts mean nothing; they are meant to be observed and then let go. The main story of this episode is of a man who thinks violent thoughts obsessively and his journey to getting help through various therapeutic methods.
1. Frame of Reference
This episode struck me more than the other episodes did. It was about a woman on the autism spectrum who took part in an experiment that temporarily cured her autism. She described how all of a sudden, social contexts made absolute sense. To her it was like experiencing the world through a new set of eyes. This episode brought me on the edge of tears for this woman. The second half of the episode, the reporters talked to a comedian who described how his dad's life experiences made him cold and logical when it came to dealing with the racism that targeted him in his early years. He realizes now that there are pros and cons to his father's prospective. One con he describes is if no one ever got angry about, for example racism, then nothing was going to be accomplished. When you live with a perspective that "it can always be worse" then you are less likely to act and rise up.
Thank you Invisibilia for the wonder stories and ideas you put in head. Because of your inspiration, I have chosen psychology as one of my majors.
Listen to all the Invisibilia episodes here: its well worth it.
