Front Porch Book Club Podcast
Grab your book and iced tea and join the Front Porch Book Club, your no-commitment, casual, and eclectic podcast about books. We examine the relationship between characters, the worlds they live in, and what that means to us.
Latest Episode
118: Bryan Denny Rerecorded
Dr. Bryan Denny joins us to further our understanding of emotional regulation research, particularly research that combines traditional diagnostic approaches with neurobiology. Bryan is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Rice...
118: Bryan Denny Rerecorded
Dr. Bryan Denny joins us to further our understanding of emotional regulation research, particularly research that combines traditional diagnostic approaches with neurobiology. Bryan is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Rice University and Director of the Translational Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. Bryan 's research is a fascinating complement to our book this month: Ethan Kross's SHIFT: MANAGING YOUR EMOTIONS SO THEY DON’T MANAGE YOU.
Bryan's research seeks to understand the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms that underlie successful and unsuccessful emotion regulation across a spectrum of healthy and clinical populations. He is interested in utilizing the results of basic investigations into these processes in order to design and examine novel interventions focused on improving real-world emotion regulation outcomes in a variety of contexts.
Bryan tells us he has always been interested in the brain and how it works, but he didn’t know a person could study that in college. He took Intro to Psych 101 from Brian Knutson, an affective neuroscientist, and switched his major. From his collegiate studies through his PhD, he became really intrigued in the application of fMRIs in understanding the brains processes in emotion regulation via brain imagining studies.
Bryan explains several emotion regulation techniques and describes situation, strategy, person contingencies and how research may help understand what strategy is helpful for who in what situation. This knowledge may help individuals, but also will help clinicians in their practice, as well.
Bryan says some people have the notion that emotions are things we can turn on or off, but a lot of research is focusing on acceptance. Bryan’s work is currently looking at psychological distancing which may be a key component of mindfulness. A psychological distancing mindset helps individuals identify their stressors in real time to help not become swept-up in emotions. You can do this for yourself, but also for others to influence their emotional state.
Bryan then tells us about the longitudinal emotion regulation research conducted by his lab, the Translational Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (T-SCAN). He is interested in long-term interventions and has recently been focusing on populations such as caregivers of persons with dementia and also of bereaved persons.
To know what the appropriate tool is for a situation is for a person calls for more sophisticated models about how emotion and emotion regulation work. Then, delivering through clinicians and through targeted drugs, but also through education and phone nudges and other modalities could help people cope more adaptively.
About Front Porch Book Club
I honestly was blown away by the deep dive Nancy and Linny did into SPARKS LIKE STARS and really appreciated the personal perspectives they brought.
Nadia Hashimi, Author
Every month the Front Porch Book Club features two episodes on our selected book. In the first episode Linda and Nancy introduce the book and discuss their thoughts. In the second episode, Linda and Nancy are joined by the author or an expert to delve deeper into the book. Our book selections are eclectic: fiction, autobiography, history, memoir, investigative journalism, and classics. They are books that give us insights into how we may be more intentional, creative, and loving.
Recent Episodes
77: Stories for My Kids
We're leaning into Mother's Day month with Stories for My Kids: Learning to Yodel and Other Life Lessons, by first time author Ileen Dunivent. This charming and warm memoir tracks Ileen's life from a mischievous Rocky Mountain tomboy to a crazy in love teenager to a...
76: Jennifer Cumming on Carrie Soto is Back
We learn about mental skills athletes use to compete at the highest levels. Dr. Jennifer Cumming, former competitive athlete and now sports psychologist and professor, describes techniques for building mental skills. She trains professional and recreational athletes,...
75: Carrie Soto is Back
Carrie Soto is Back, by best-selling novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid, plunges us into the world of professional tennis. We meet retired phenom, Carrie, who decides to return to the circuit to defend her Grand Slam titles record. Carrie's singular focus on her tennis...
74: Dr. Sara Brenneis
We take an incredible journey through Spain's 20th century, the setting of this month's book, The Shadow of the Wind, with our guest Sara Brenneis, an Amherst professor specializing in this era. Delving more deeply into Spain's social, political, religious, and...
Meet The Hosts
Growing up, Nancy always had her nose in a book. She never remembers not loving to read books. Linda, on the other hand, hated libraries and spent her childhood trying to lure Nancy away from books into some other activity that she thought would be way more fun. That’s right – we’re sisters. Nancy was more of an introvert and Linda was more of an extrovert. But, somewhere along the way, Linda started loving books and Nancy started loving talking about books. Nancy is a recovering academic in Nebraska who writes and Linda is a licensed counselor in Pennsylvania.