PsyberSpace® - we help you understand your world
by Dr. Leslie Poston, Research Psychologist: Applied Psychology, Media Psychology, Organizational Psychology
Make Yourself Useful: The Psychology of the Founder Reflex
About this podcast
PsyberSpace® is a weekly psychology podcast for curious people who want to understand why the world feels the way it does, online and offline. The show helps you name what you’re seeing and feeling, understand the science behind it, and figure out what to do next.
If you've ever wondered what makes "reply guys" tick, why we fall for emotionally manipulative language in politics, why meetings suck, why comfort can keep us stuck, why limerence hits so hard, or how music and media reshape your brain, you’re in the right place. New episodes drop every Monday to help you understand your world a little better each week.
PsyberSpace looks at how psychology, media, and big systems shape everyday life. Some weeks it’s algorithms, AI, and social platforms; other weeks it’s work culture, gender and power, climate anxiety, grief, or the way capitalism sets the baseline for what “normal” looks like. Each episode breaks down how these patterns show up in real people’s bodies and minds—and what you can do to respond with more clarity, care, and agency in your own life, work, and community.
2025 Webby Award Honoree
2026 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee
2025 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee
2024 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee
Episodes
The newest 20 of 133 episodes
- Make Yourself Useful: The Psychology of the Founder Reflex · 24 min · Season 3 Episode 38The Founder Reflex: Why White Progressive Spaces Reward Starting Over Supporting Why do white women in progressive spaces so often start something new instead of joining what…
- Training Grounds: The Rapist Pipeline · 38 min · Season 3 Episode 37The Cornell Seven, Frat Chats, and the Rape Pipeline: How Institutions Protect Men Who Harm Women Dr. Leslie Poston returns from a two-week break to work through the Cornell…
- The One Person Problem: Why We Blame Villains and Wait for Heroes Instead of Fixing Systems · 25 min · Season 3 Episode 36Beyond Blame and Savior: Why Systems, Not Individuals, Drive Outcomes When something goes wrong, we look for the person who caused it. When we want something fixed, we look for…
- Wired for War: The Psychology of Leaders Who Choose Conflict · 25 min · Season 3 Episode 35War, Power, and the Psychology of Leaders: Dark Traits, Moral Disengagement, and AI-Driven Distance Dr. Leslie Poston argues that war is a predictable failure of leadership…
- Fear, Politics, and Getting the Science Right: Terror Management Theory Revisited · 19 min · Season 3 Episode 34Terror Management Theory, Replication, and How Science Updates What We Think We Know Dr. Leslie Poston discusses Terror Management Theory (TMT) as a framework for understanding…
- The Personality Test Industrial Complex: The MBTI Problem · 23 min · Season 3 Episode 33Why MBTI Took Over Corporate Culture Despite Weak Science, and What to Use Instead Dr. Leslie Poston traces how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator became a multi-million-dollar…
- Why You're Stuck: The Stories We Tell Ourselves · 22 min · Season 3 Episode 32Why Some People Bounce Back: Narrative Identity, Redemption Stories, and Getting Unstuck PARTICIPATE IN MY POST DOC RESEARCH! CLICK HERE. Dr. Leslie Poston explains that…
- Specimen in a Petri Dish Part Two: Body Control as Political Power · 23 min · Season 3 Episode 31Body Policing as Authoritarian Power: From Fascist Propaganda to TikTok Pipelines In Part One, we asked who gets to decide what a woman's body should look like. In Part Two, Dr…
- Specimen in a Petri Dish: The Psychology of Public Body Policing · 21 min · Season 3 Episode 30Why Society Feels Entitled to Comment on Women’s Bodies, and the Harm It Causes Jenna Ortega sat down to talk about her career. Within a day, the internet was only talking about…
- Be Cringe, Be Free: The Psychology of Refusing to Perform · 16 min · Season 3 Episode 29Be Cringe, Be Free: Authenticity, Shame, and the Cost of Performing the Self "Be cringe, be free" sounds like a joke about dancing badly in public. Dr. Leslie Poston makes the…
- Gotcha Culture: Why Catching an AI Cheater Feels So Good · 17 min · Season 3 Episode 28The Psychology Behind AI Call-Outs and False Certainty Dr. Leslie Poston examines why people react with such gleeful certainty when an AI detector flags someone's writing, even…
- Coded to Exhaustion: The Hidden Cost of Outsmarting the Algorithm · 21 min · Season 3 Episode 27Algospeak and the Cost of Speaking Under Algorithmic Suppression When millions of creators have to say 'unalive' instead of suicide and use a grape emoji instead of talking about…
- What We Lose When Knowledge Has to Pay Rent · 17 min · Season 3 Episode 26Education’s Value Beyond Jobs: Critical Thinking, Humanities, and the Real Jobs Crisis Host Dr. Leslie Poston argues that education’s value is not defined by whether it leads…
- Love Languages Were Never Scientific · 19 min · Season 3 Episode 25Why Love Languages Went Viral Without the Science to Support Them Millions of people can name their love language. Almost none of them know the man who invented the concept…
- Why We Keep Falling For Moral Panics · 19 min · Season 3 Episode 24Moral Panics as Effort Shields: Why Outrage Replaces Action Why do we grab onto moral panics so eagerly, and then quietly drop them the moment they stop being convenient? In this…
- Why We Reject New Evidence That Could Directly Help Us: The Semmelweis Effect · 20 min · Season 3 Episode 23The Semmelweis Effect, COVID Cognitive Decline, and Why Evidence Struggles to Spread Host Leslie Poston explains the Semmelweis effect (reflexively rejecting strong evidence…
- The Age of Uncertainty: What Workplace Instablity is Doing to Your Brain · 16 min · Season 3 Episode 22Sustained Uncertainty at Work: Why It Hurts Your Brain and What Helps Host Leslie Poston discusses sustained workplace uncertainty and its psychological effects, citing an APA…
- Sounds Deep, Says Nothing: The Science of Bullshit Receptivity · 15 min · Season 3 Episode 21Bullshit Receptivity: Why We Trust the Wrong Words Host Leslie Poston discusses “bullshit receptivity,” a peer-reviewed construct describing susceptibility to impressive-sounding…
- The Credibility Trap: Why We Trust Confident Wrongness · 19 min · Season 3 Episode 20The Credibility Trap: Why Confidence Beats Correctness Host Leslie Poston is back after a hiatus to move PsyberSpace to a new weekly Thursday schedule and explains why people…
- Propaganda: Nobody's Immune · 13 min · Season 3 Episode 19How Propaganda Uses Your Values Against Your Brain: The Passport Revocation Example Host Leslie Poston explains that no one is immune to propaganda, using her own initial…







