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
95: Life Lessons from a Parasite
Our book for January is Life Lessons from a Parasite by John Janovy, Jr. John is one of the world's pre-eminent parasitologists. In his book we learn all about parasites -- the minuscule life forms that live inside other organisms. We learn about the scientists that...
94: Our Implementation of Atomic Habits
James Clear's bestselling book, Atomic Habits, tells us that tiny changes can yield remarkable results. Clear writes, "The quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits. With the same habits, you'll end up with the same results. But with better...
93: Atomic Habits
Welcome 2025! In January we choose books that are about goal setting and achieving success and being the you, you want to be. Our book this month is Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear. This book is designed to...
92: 2024 Wrap-up and 2025 Preview
It’s our last episode of the year. We talk about the progress we’ve made on our personal goals for 2024. Upon reviewing them, we feel like we have experienced growth and also adopted some unexpected goals for the year. We discuss our podcast highlights from 2024,...
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.