83 - Coping with Exams

If you’re a student struggling to cope with exams or a parent supporting one, this episode is for you. Just in time for the year 12 exams, we’ve prepared a crash course on how to cope with anxiety in the lead up, on the morning of and during an exam.
Listen for practical tips, how to know when to take a break and ways you can calm down once your in your exam.

In this episode we cover how to cope:

During study periods

The night before/morning of an exam

During the exam

Afterwards if you have another exam

This episode of Two Shrinks Pod was sponsored by Calabash.
Visit https://calabash.courses/twoshrinkspod to access a free talk

80 - This Episode Could've Been an Email

This episode we’re covering our professional gripes with a thin veil of science and talking about work research. Join us for a light-hearted, research based whinge about frictionless spaces for nomadic workers (or hotdesking), how meetings interrupt us, documentation makes us burnt out and just how judgemental we all are about email signatures. To wrap up, Hunter proves a point about windfarms to a random farmer he met on a plane and Amy waxes lyrical about comfort food.

Work Research:

The demands and resources arising from shared office spaces

Settlers, vagrants and mutual indifference: unintended consequences of hot-desking

Meetings and more meetings: the relationship between meeting load and the daily well-being of employees

The impact of time spent on the electronic health record after work and of clerical work on burnout among clinical faculty

How Impactful Is Presentation in Email? The Effect of Avatars and Signatures

TWCA:

The Pattern of Complaints about Australian Wind Farms Does Not Match the Establishment and Distribution of Turbines: Support for the Psychogenic, ‘Communicated Disease’ Hypothesis

Exploring comfort food preferences across age and gender

79 - Sarcasm

This time on 2SP we’re taking a look at sarcasm through 4 research articles. How does it develop in childhood? Are some cultures really more sarcastic? Can make us more creative? And, can emojis help avoid awkward misunderstandings of sarcasm when we text?

After a delightful break with some sparkling shiraz, Hunter laments the impact of clutter on productivity and Amy talks about whether people feel more safely attached to their pets or their partners.

Sarcasm Research

The highest form of intelligence: Sarcasm increases creativity for both expressers and recipients (Huang et al, 2015)

Saying what you don’t mean: a cross-cultural study of perceptions of sarcasm (Blasko et al, 2021)

Emoji as a tool to aid the comprehension of written sarcasm: evidence from younger and older adults (Garcia et al, 2022)

Development of children’s ability to distinguish sarcasm and verbal irony (Glenwright & Pexman, 2010)

TWCA

Romantic partners and four-legged friends: an extension of attachment theory to relationships with pets (Beck & Madresh, 2015)

The impact of office clutter on remote working: “I can’t work with all this stuff!” (Ferrari et al, 2021)

78 - I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Productivity Guilt with Madeleine Dore

Struggling to get anything done? Constantly torturing yourself over what you could’ve achieved if only you had a routine, stuck to a schedule, magically became a more productive, focused person? You’re not alone.

Join us for a chat with Madeleine Dore: Melbourne journalist, interviewer and creator of the Everyday Routines project.. She takes us through how to approach our days creatively, why we get stuck and how even the most prolific creatives battle with their routines.

Want to hear more from Madeleine?

We loved her book, I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: On Letting Go of Productivity Guilt:
https://www.murdochbooks.com.au/browse/books/other-books/I-Didnt-Do-The-Thing-Today-Madeleine-Dore-9781922351500

You can find her interviews, podcast & other work at:
https://extraordinaryroutines.com/

Her instagram is: @extraordinary_routines

76 - How to help your anxious kid

This episode we’re giving a crash-course for parents on how to help your child when they’re anxious. Amy talks us through what kids’ anxiety looks like, how to begin to calm things down and when to call in the experts. Listen for practical, doable tips on what to do when your kid’s anxiety is overwhelming them or you. To finish up, Hunter talks about and Amy is inspired by Twitter to talk through drop bear survival.

Parent resources:

Best bubble solution with a wand that’s attached to the lid: https://www.bigw.com.au/product/ultra-premium-amazing-bubbles-6-pack/p/789862
Books: The Whole Brained Child, Parenting from the Inside Out
Australian parenting programs: Tuning in to Kids, Bringing up Great Kids
ACF free parenting booklets: Connected Parenting, Mindful Parenting
A book for kids about anxiety & what’s happening in their brain: Hey, Warrior

Things we came across:
Holiday spending
Drop bear tracking

73 - Why do we laugh?

This week we’re returning to an everyday psychology topic and pondering why we laugh. In classic Two Shrinks style, we talk through four pieces of research: preschoolers laughing with their friends, personality and laughter, ridicule in family and funeral workers’ use of laughter.

As always we finish up with things we came across: Amy freaks out about robot-human interaction and Hunter delights in a letter to the editor.

Research:

Social Facilitation of Laughter and Smiles in Preschool Children

Do extraverts ‘like to laugh’︁?: An analysis of the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ)

An Initial Study on How Families Deal with Ridicule and Being Laughed at: Parenting Styles and Parent–Child Relations with Respect to Gelotophobia, Gelotophilia, and Katagelasticism

I Nearly Died Laughing: Humor in Funeral Industry Operators

TWCA:

Robot Humor: How Self-irony and Schadenfreude Influence People's Rating of Robot Likability

Narratives with Robots: The Impact of Interaction Context and Individual Differences on Story Recall and Emotional Understanding

Development and Testing of Psychological Conflict Resolution Strategies for Assertive Robots to Resolve Human–Robot Goal Conflict

Designing Social Interactions with a Humorous Robot Photographer

Hunter’s book recommendation: In Moonland by Miles Allinson

Letter to the editor