PsychSessions: Conversations about Teaching N' Stuff

Bernie's Dad: Personal Reflections is a short-form, reflective podcast hosted by psychology educator Eric Landrum that explores the surprising parallels between a 35-plus-year academic career and life with a new puppy named Bernie Sanders. Through brief, one-word–titled episodes inspired by psychological descriptors, Eric offers thoughtful, often warm reflections on teaching, growth, patience, and professional identity. Blending humor, insight, and personal storytelling, the podcast invites listeners to pause, reflect, and recognize connections between their own careers, relationships, and everyday experiences. Original music generated with Suno.

Bernie's Dad: Personal Reflections is a short-form, reflective podcast hosted by psychology educator Eric Landrum that explores the surprising parallels between a 35-plus-year academic career and life with a new puppy named Bernie Sanders. Through brief, one-word–titled episodes inspired by psychological descriptors, Eric offers thoughtful, often warm reflections on teaching, growth, patience, and professional identity. Blending humor, insight, and personal storytelling, the podcast invites listeners to pause, reflect, and recognize connections between their own careers, relationships, and everyday experiences. Original music generated with Suno.

Bernie's Dad: Personal Reflections is a short-form, reflective podcast hosted by psychology educator Eric Landrum that explores the surprising parallels between a 35-plus-year academic career and life with a new puppy named Bernie Sanders. Through brief, one-word–titled episodes inspired by psychological descriptors, Eric offers thoughtful, often warm reflections on teaching, growth, patience, and professional identity. Blending humor, insight, and personal storytelling, the podcast invites listeners to pause, reflect, and recognize connections between their own careers, relationships, and everyday experiences. Original music generated with Suno.

Bernie's Dad: Personal Reflections is a short-form, reflective podcast hosted by psychology educator Eric Landrum that explores the surprising parallels between a 35-plus-year academic career and life with a new puppy named Bernie Sanders. Through brief, one-word–titled episodes inspired by psychological descriptors, Eric offers thoughtful, often warm reflections on teaching, growth, patience, and professional identity. Blending humor, insight, and personal storytelling, the podcast invites listeners to pause, reflect, and recognize connections between their own careers, relationships, and everyday experiences. Original music generated with Suno.

Bernie's Dad: Personal Reflections is a short-form, reflective podcast hosted by psychology educator Eric Landrum that explores the surprising parallels between a 35-plus-year academic career and life with a new puppy named Bernie Sanders. Through brief, one-word–titled episodes inspired by psychological descriptors, Eric offers thoughtful, often warm reflections on teaching, growth, patience, and professional identity. Blending humor, insight, and personal storytelling, the podcast invites listeners to pause, reflect, and recognize connections between their own careers, relationships, and everyday experiences. Original music generated with Suno.

Bernie's Dad: Personal Reflections is a short-form, reflective podcast hosted by psychology educator Eric Landrum that explores the surprising parallels between a 35-plus-year academic career and life with a new puppy named Bernie Sanders. Through brief, one-word–titled episodes inspired by psychological descriptors, Eric offers thoughtful, often warm reflections on teaching, growth, patience, and professional identity. Blending humor, insight, and personal storytelling, the podcast invites listeners to pause, reflect, and recognize connections between their own careers, relationships, and everyday experiences. Original music generated with Suno.

In this episode Garth interviews Des Robinson from Tarrant County College in Arlington, TX (with special guest host Noland White) at NITOP 2026. They discuss Des's career and service, including teaching since 2000 and, more recently, rotating off APA's Committee on Associate and Baccalaureate Education (CABE) after a three-year term as co-chair. They discuss CABE's role in shaping undergraduate psychology education through resources such as Guidelines 3.0, the Intro Psych Initiative, and Project Assessment, and emphasize raising awareness of APA teaching resources. Des describes CABE's recent focus on integrating AI skills into undergraduate education and helping students use AI ethically, aligning with workforce needs and potential updates to the Skillful Psychology Student document. The conversation also highlights NITOP's community, Des's formative experiences, mentorship stories, and early publisher-consulting work. [Note: Portions of the show notes were generated by Descript AI.]

In this episode Garth interviews Lisa Diamond from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT. They discuss teacher-centric talks on sexuality and gender amid heightened scrutiny and safety concerns for instructors and students, especially as anti-DEI laws have eliminated campus resource centers, and classrooms may be the only remaining gathering places for marginalized students. Lisa believes that textbooks quickly become outdated and that psychology must be taught as an evolving social science with imperfect methods and shifting lenses. She emphasizes that humans are spectrum-based but prone to flawed categories; identity labels can be personally, socially, and politically meaningful yet differ from scientific groupings. She traces how research categories historically excluded bisexual and non-binary people and notes that large-scale data revealed bisexuality as a majority pattern within LGBTQ populations. They discuss how algorithms and social media fuel polarized realities, and Lisa advocates using discomfort awareness, empathy, in-person dialogue, and structured student interactions to counter bias and teach through controversy. [Note. Portions of the show notes were generated using Descript AI.]

In this APA Publishing-PsychSessions paretner series, Garth Neufeld interviews Wendy Grolnick and Benjamin Heddy about their APA-published book (with Frank Worrel) Motivation Myth Busters. They discuss pervasive misconceptions such as believing some people simply aren't motivated, relying on rewards or pressure, and assuming people accurately know how good they are, emphasizing consequences like fundamental attribution error, resistance to coercion, and miscalibrated self-efficacy. They highlight research-based motivators tied to competence, autonomy, and relatedness; the importance of empathy, mastery-oriented environments, personal relevance, value (attainment/utility), and managing cost; and using structured choice rather than too much control or total freedom. They address students who coast, action creating motivation, structural inequities, and practical classroom uses including reflections, case studies, misconception assessments, and a motivation decision-tree tool. Watch the webinar here.

In this re-release episode, Garth sits down with members of the APA's Introductory Psychology Initiative (IPI) Working Group on Student Learning Outcomes & Assessment: Jennifer Thompson, Kristin Whitlock, Jane Halonen, Sue Frantz (not featured), and Eric Landrum. Together, they explore how the project took shape, the leadership behind it, the move toward a thematic revolution, and what it means to take a content-agnostic approach to teaching psychology. Note. Portions of the show notes were generated by AI.

In this Sidebar 32 episode Garth and Eric discuss what it means to reach the milestone of 250 episodes of the flagship series for PsychSessions. We reflect on choosing the podcast name and tagline, the value of longevity in building a brand, and the podcast's graphic identity, crediting designer Cale Livingston for the original pink figure-ground logo and newer circular logo used across our additional series. They discuss how the show enables more personal "n' stuff" conversations with colleagues than typical conference chats, recalling memorable moments that are preserved in audio. They introduce a "Re-release" series to reshare early episodes for new listeners and note their near-perfect every-other-Tuesday release schedule with one accidental blip. They highlight partnerships yielding 15–20 series and over 600 total episodes, their minimal editing approach (with occasional removal of "ums"), and the podcast's accidental role as historian for teachers of psychology. [Note. Portions of these show notes were generated by Descript AI.]