Bounce! Conversations with Larry Weeks

You make hundreds of decisions a day. Most of them invisibly. A few of them under real pressure, with incomplete information and no clear right answer.
So how do the people who do this for a living like firefighters, surgeons, military commanders, and get it right when the stakes are highest?
That's the question Dr. Gary Klein has spent his entire career answering. Not in a lab. In the field. With people whose next call might be life or death.
Gary is a cognitive psychologist, a Senior Scientist at MacroCognition LLC, and the Chief Scientist at ShadowBox LLC. He's one of the founding figures of naturalistic decision making, the study of how people actually decide in the real world, under time pressure and uncertainty. He built the Recognition-Primed Decision model, which has been incorporated into Army and Marine Corps doctrine. He created the PreMortem method of risk assessment, endorsed by Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler. 
He's the author of several influential books, including Sources of Power, The Power of Intuition, Streetlights and Shadows, Snapshots of the Mind, and Seeing What Others Don't, a fascinating deep dive into how insight actually works.
Malcolm Gladwell put it simply: "No one has taught me more about the complexities and mysteries of human decision-making than Gary Klein."
In this conversation, we get into everything from how Gary personally works through a tough decision to when you should, and shouldn't, trust your gut. We cover the value of first-person expertise, the difference between knowledge and knowing, how to use a pre-mortem, and why more information doesn't necessarily mean better decisions. Then we spend time on AI: what happens when people start outsourcing their thinking, and what might get lost in the shuffle.
I also ask him to audit my use of his framework for managing uncertainty  because there's a lot of that going around right now.
Some highlights from the episode:
02:35 The White House Situation Room (and why he can't talk about it)

05:17 Writer's block, pen and paper, and how Gary structures his thinking

07:37 Walking through a real decision: the medical scenario

10:53 Intuition: when to trust it, when to question it

13:00 Pattern matching, mental simulation, and the Recognition-Primed Decision model

18:00 The AI concern: outsourcing decisions and eroding expertise

18:42 The pre-mortem: how it works and why Nobel Prize winners endorsed it

22:35 The 80/20 of decision making: build experience and frame the problem

27:12 AI and the younger generation: old fogey worry or real risk?

31:49 Why curiosity about failure is the thing AI can't replicate

33:06 Tacit knowledge: the invisible layer AI can't scrape

39:07 Five sources of uncertainty — and tools for managing them

42:36 Wrapping up: the cognitive dimension and what makes humans indispensable

We go from the mechanics of expert decision making to a surprisingly urgent question: in an age of AI, what happens to the skills you never knew you were building?
Enjoy!

Prof. Philip Goff is a British philosopher, author, and professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. He was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Central European University and the Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham.
Philip is also the author of Galileo's Error: A New Science of Consciousness, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, and his most recent, Why? The Purpose of the Universe, is the touchstone for this episode.
We're covering some lofty territory today: from the hard science of physics and cosmology to the deep waters of philosophy, religion, and the question of God.
Some highlights from the episode:
06:16 Framing the big questions: purpose, consciousness, and the value hypothesis

10:00 Fine-tuning theory: dark energy and the "casino" intuition

12:54 Meaning: Frankl, suffering, and why questions matter

16:52 Agency and teleology

24:18 Mystics and mystical experience across traditions

28:04 Consciousness and panpsychism

28:52 The 'Why' book tension: cosmic purpose, hope, and meaning

30:14 Returning to religion: becoming a 'heretical Christian'

31:32 Meaning as beauty, gratitude, and 'pronoia'

34:06 Scientism and other ways of knowing

37:47 Religion as social technology: community over doctrine

39:23 Orthodox mysticism + Anglican flexibility

41:19 Prayer: orientation vs. supplication

45:08 Meditation: creative energy without certainty

51:04 Reflections on affordances and enacted meaning

Quick note: at the very end of this episode I tacked on a short addendum. I share how this conversation actually landed for me. 
Enjoy!

My guest on this podcast asserts that a huge chunk of our psychological stress isn't caused by what's happening but by the demands one quietly places on reality.
In this episode, Dr. Walter Matweychuk teaches me about Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), which focuses on identifying and disputing irrational, self-defeating beliefs to reduce emotional distress and change negative behaviors. Walter makes the case that REBT is not just a therapeutic modality but a philosophy for living based on emotional responsibility, resilience, and a way to stop rating yourself as "good" or "bad."
Walter is a psychologist with the University of Pennsylvania Health System and an adjunct professor at NYU who specializes in REBT. Formally trained by pioneers Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. Aaron Beck, he integrates their foundational insights into a private practice serving clients worldwide. He is the author/co-author of multiple books and writes the Intermittent Reinforcement newsletter. Beyond his clinical work, Dr. Matweychuk is widely recognized for hosting the weekly REBT Conversation Hour, a long-running public demonstration of practical cognitive-behavioral strategies available at REBTDoctor.com.
In this conversation:
What Walter learned training with CBT legends Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck
Shame vs. healthy concern, and Walter's "shame-attack" experiments
The two big engines of disturbance: "ego disturbance" vs. "discomfort disturbance"
The way dogmatic "musts" turn a bad moment into an emotional spiral
"Philosophical acceptance": how to stop personal scorekeeping
How to catch the belief that's driving a feeling in real time
The little "8 ideas" card Walter sends people
Long-term hedonism: how REBT thinks about pleasure, meaning, and tradeoffs
Secondary disturbance: the second layer of suffering that keeps people stuck
Emotional responsibility and why it's closer to freedom than "positive thinking"
If stress is often a "demand in disguise," this episode might help you spot the demand and loosen its grip.
Enjoy!
Show notes and more at larryweeks.com

Society views time as a fixed commodity, yet modern theoretical physics and cognitive neuroscience suggest otherwise. If the linear flow of time is truly an illusion, then time isn't just a resource to be managed; it's a perception to be mastered.
My guest on the podcast today, Prof. Steve Taylor, argues that time isn't experienced evenly. He suggests that where you place your attention and how you live day-to-day can change the way time unfolds, stretching or compressing your sense of it. 
Steve is a researcher in psychology and a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University. He has served as the chair of the Transpersonal Psychology section of the British Psychological Society. He writes the popular blog Out of the Darkness for Psychology Today and has contributed to Scientific American, The Conversation, and The Psychologist.
In his work on "Time Expansion Experiences," Steve explores why we experience time differently in different states of mind. We discuss everything from slow-motion accident stories (and why calm can show up in chaos) to meditation, flow states, and the mind-bending "eternal now" where mysticism and physics converge.
Highlights from the episode:
Accidents and "slow-motion" perception: Why the mind slows down in crisis.

The age gap: Why children experience long summers while adults feel seasons fly by.

Retrospective time theory: How we judge duration after the fact.

Automatization: How your brain edits reality to remain efficient.

Digital distortion: Social media's impact on your experience of time.

The power of novelty: How small changes can make life feel longer.

The "Block Universe" theory: Exploring Einstein and Minkowski's spacetime.

NDE life reviews: Examining the spatial sequence of memory.

Time cessation phenomena: What happens when time stops altogether.

The discussion moves from metaphysics to real-world advice on subjectively "lengthening" your life. Enjoy! 
Show notes and more visit larryweeks.com

We've been taught that success comes from setting goals, defining purpose, and executing a plan. But what if those very habits—the linear drive for certainty—are what keep us stuck?
Dr. Anne-Laure Le Cunff, neuroscientist, founder of Ness Labs, and world-leading expert on mindful productivity, has an alternative: treat your life like a series of tiny experiments. In her new book Tiny Experiments, she explores how curiosity, liminal spaces, and small-scale testing can transform how we handle uncertainty and growth.
Anne-Laure argues that traditional goal-setting and the "tyranny of purpose" trap us in rigid definitions of success and failure. Instead, she offers a science-backed framework for progress through curiosity-driven experimentation, an approach that replaces pressure with play and perfectionism with learning.
We discuss how to navigate the in-between spaces of life, the thresholds between who we were and who we're becoming, and why those moments of uncertainty hold the most potential for transformation.
Listen as we dive into how to build an experimental mindset that turns confusion into data and uncertainty into discovery.
Highlights 
What if the most uncertain moments are also the most meaningful?
Invisible "scripts" quietly running your decisions, and how to rewrite them
Why rushing to "figure it out" might be costing you your next breakthrough
How to turn fear of the unknown into curiosity about what's possible
The surprising neuroscience behind why smaller risks create bigger change
A four-step framework that turns uncertainty into momentum
Why chasing legacy might be keeping you from real impact right now
How to slow time without quitting your schedule
The overlooked social hack that makes personal growth exponential
What happens when you start studying your own life like a scientist
If you're in between, unsure, or just restless, this conversation is for you.

Anne-Laure shows that uncertainty isn't a problem to solve; it's the raw material of discovery.