50 episodes listed below
Psychology for the systems people stop noticing.
PsyberSpace is a psychology essay series about the mental habits hidden inside ordinary life. Leslie Poston connects brain mechanics, social norms, technology, and power, moving from cafes and meetings to public health, work culture, disability, wealth, and media harm.
PRESS PLAY
PsyberSpace is a psychology show with the shape of a spoken essay. Leslie Poston usually takes one familiar phrase, reflex, or social habit and presses on it until the hidden machinery shows. The show is not built around banter. It is built around argument. A topic such as common sense becomes a way to examine whose experience gets treated as obvious. A slogan like give 100% becomes a route into burnout, moralized work, and the old idea that productivity proves worth. The paradox of progress becomes a warning about public memory and the way success can make its own safeguards look unnecessary. PsyberSpace often begins in daily life, with traffic, offices, media feeds, cafes, or the background rules people stop noticing. From there it moves into psychology, naming mechanisms such as cognitive ease, the forgetting curve, cultural bias, or the impulse to explain harm through illness. The show is careful with concepts, but it is not neutral in tone. It has a clear moral charge. Episodes on everyday eugenics, mental illness stigma, debate content, and billionaire accumulation ask who is protected when society calls something normal, efficient, inevitable, or merely successful. Technology and media appear as environments that change incentives, not as shiny gadgets. Workplaces appear as psychological systems. Aesthetics are treated as cues that shape mood, focus, and emotional regulation, not as luxury decoration. The pacing is measured, dense, and direct. Short declarative conclusions land after longer explanatory passages. The show can be uncomfortable because it resists comforting explanations. It is best for listeners who like psychology connected to culture, policy, media, and power, with enough everyday detail to keep the ideas grounded. PsyberSpace makes the familiar feel newly accountable.
Made for: For listeners who want serious, accessible psychology applied to culture, technology, media, work, and public life. It fits people who prefer structured analysis over chatty interviews.
What sets it apart: PsyberSpace links cognitive mechanisms to social consequences with unusual bluntness. It does not stop at naming a bias or behavior; it asks who benefits when that pattern goes unchallenged.
If you've ever wondered what makes "reply guys" tick, why we fall for emotionally manipulative language in politics, why meetings suck, or how music can reshape your brain, we have the answers! Tune in to PsyberSpace® every Monday morning and understand your world a little better each week. PsyberSpace explores the evolving landscape where psychology, media, culture, and digital technology converge. Each episode unpacks the impact of tech on our minds, our culture, our work, and our society. We explore pressing topics like the ethics of virtual spaces, misinformation and disinformation, media psychology and marketing, the psychology of business in the age of AI, the influence of social media…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Leslie Poston makes psychology a practical lens for seeing how private habits, shared language, technology, and power shape one another.
PsyberSpace: Understand Your World turns psychological concepts into pointed arguments about ordinary habits and public power. Leslie Poston builds each episode around a clear proposition, then moves from recognizable experiences to research and social consequences.
Common sense gets cross-examined here, right where you hoped it would end the meeting.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Convenience can blur connection, and the episode makes a clear case that the lost friction matters.
This episode treats convenience as a quiet trade: birthdays, friendship, and creative work all get easier, but the ease has a price. Leslie Poston draws a direct line from Facebook birthday prompts to generative AI, arguing that frictionless interaction can look like connection…
A clear-eyed warning about AI companionship, loneliness, and the cost of frictionless comfort.
The episode argues most strongly when it ties AI companionship to a wider weakening of community: lonely people turn to chatbots for comfort, the systems answer with steady affirmation, and that ease can slide into dependence instead of relief.
A grounded look at how childhood hardship can echo through adult life.
This review treats the ACE test as a practical way into how childhood hardship can shape health, relationships, work life, and even longevity.
A clear-eyed look at why collapse can feel seductive, and what that says about power and belief.
The episode treats apocalyptic thinking as more than a passing internet pose. Leslie Poston connects it to myth, religion, prepping, billionaire bunkers, crypto-libertarian manifestos, and government policy, then pulls it back to psychology and sociology.
It makes the drag of waiting feel plain, not abstract.
It treats liminal spaces as a way to think about how waiting changes mood, attention, and self-perception. Airports, red lights, empty malls, and subways all end up in the same bucket: places where the body is there but the mind feels stalled.
A sharp look at hoarding, wealth, and control.
The episode treats billionaire accumulation as a psychological problem, not just a financial one, and that gives it real force. It starts with hoarding as a psychiatric condition built around refusal and control, then broadens the idea to billionaires, oligarchs, and tech moguls…
Common sense sounds neutral until the episode shows how much power can hide inside it.
Cyberspace takes a phrase that usually gets waved away and treats it like a real problem: who decides what counts as obvious, and why. Leslie Poston starts with that familiar shutdown line and keeps tightening the screws, showing how common sense can be tied to habit, position,…
A firm case that comfort can become a quiet barrier to growth, action, and change.
Leslie Poston treats comfort as more than a private preference, showing how it can slow growth, mute dissent, and soften accountability. The piece moves from everyday convenience to bystander inaction, then outward to the institutions and systems that keep comfort for some while…
APA's Kim Mills interviews psychology researchers on tipping, crying, and extremism.
This episode segment explores why women are often more effective leaders than men, backed by data and psychological research, yet face persistent bias in public perception.
This episode explores how everyday environmental aesthetics, such as lighting and design, psychologically influence emotions, focus, and well-being.
This episode explores a study revealing that people who admit to using AI for work tasks are trusted less than those who secretly use AI, highlighting a psychological transparency trap that punishes honesty.
This episode discusses epistemic entropy, exploring how information systems and media create instability in our sense of truth and reality.
The episode explores how perception is not passive but actively constructed by the brain through examples like the McGurk effect and Brainstorm Green Needle, demonstrating that our brains are prediction engines that shape our individual realities.
This episode segment explores the psychology of collective efficacy and sustained community resistance, contrasting it with traditional bystander effect research by examining real-world examples like Minneapolis.
This segment explores why authoritarian regimes use obvious lies that contradict video evidence, examining the psychological impact and strategic purpose of such propaganda as a tool for domination rather than persuasion.
This episode introduces a series on American authoritarianism, focusing on the psychology of expanding state violence, particularly highlighting recent deaths in immigration custody and honoring victims.
This episode segment explores the erosion of consent in digital and physical contexts, linking it to objectification and psychological harm through examples like AI misuse and exploitation.
This segment discusses how remote work, shorter weeks, and prioritizing well-being lead to better outcomes for workers and companies, supported by psychological theories like autonomy.
This episode segment introduces thought-limiting phrases, explaining how seemingly wise statements can hinder critical thinking by shutting down questions and oversimplifying complex issues.
This episode segment introduces limerence as an intense, obsessive longing often mistaken for love, exploring its psychological and neurological aspects, particularly for neurodivergent individuals, and its intensification by modern technology.
This episode explores how certain individuals, particularly those with wealth or influence, benefit from chaotic conditions in the entropy age, examining psychological patterns like hierarchy-seeking and authoritarian thinking.
This episode segment explores how engineered doubt and powerful forces are reshaping trust in knowledge, affecting areas like health, elections, and climate science, and creating a sense of shifting shared reality.
This final episode of a five-part series on the Entropy Age explores how to maintain reasonable hope and actionable tactics, from individual nervous system care to collective resistance, in the face of systemic decay.
This episode introduces a series exploring the psychological effects of living in an era of systemic breakdown, where the future feels unreal due to factors like capitalism, technology, and political upheaval.
This segment revisits the bystander effect, debunking the exaggerated narrative of the Kitty Genovese case and exploring real public courage and reactions to harm.
This episode explores the psychology and anthropology behind why people use talismans and lucky charms to manage risk, uncertainty, and stress, examining their effects on the brain and cultural persistence.
The episode discusses the Trump administration's AI executive order and warns about how authoritarianism can manipulate AI tools to reprogram reality, emphasizing the dangers of AI's convenience in various aspects of life.
This episode explores the psychology behind why people often have their best ideas during routine activities like showering, focusing on how insight works, brain changes, and the impact of modern life on creativity.
This episode explores the psychological impact of systemic abandonment and collective rage in response to political actions like an unprovoked attack on Iran, highlighting the emotional weight of living in a fractured society.
This episode explores the psychological impulse to attribute harmful actions to mental illness, examining its cultural roots and consequences for justice and responsibility.
This segment discusses the rising trend of adult children going no contact with family members for mental health reasons, highlighting statistics on estrangement and its relevance during the holidays.
This episode segment discusses the mainstream adoption of therapy speak, its benefits in helping people understand themselves through psychological terms like gaslighting and trauma, and the importance of self-diagnosis for accessing care.
This episode segment explores the science of coping in a chaotic world, questioning how to live amidst ongoing stress and introducing psychological theories on adaptation.
This episode segment explores the psychological concept of gaslighting, its origins from a 1938 play, and its application in workplace settings where manipulation and denial are used to undermine employees' perceptions of reality.
This episode segment explores how everyday eugenics subtly influences societal systems, policies, and beliefs, linking personal value to productivity and determining who is considered deserving of life and healthcare.
This episode introduces a discussion on various therapy modalities, emphasizing the importance of matching approaches to individuals and critiquing Western psychology's appropriation of marginalized community knowledge.
This episode discusses how widespread data breaches expose personal information and argues that age verification laws create additional risks rather than solving online safety issues.
This episode explores how debate content often inadvertently strengthens and spreads harmful ideas by giving them legitimacy and exposure, rather than effectively debunking them, and discusses the need for smarter strategies to reduce harm.
This episode explores the nature and functions of the inner monologue, examining how it influences planning, emotion regulation, and self-reflection, and its role in shaping personal identity and cognitive processes.
This segment discusses recent jury verdicts holding Meta and YouTube liable for harming children through platform design and exploitation, highlighting significant financial penalties and internal research on addiction.
This episode segment explores the origins and psychological impacts of the 'give 100%' phrase in American work culture, tracing it back to Protestant theology and its influence on capitalism and moral perceptions of work.
This episode segment explores the illusion of meritocracy in the workplace, discussing its psychological roots, such as the just world hypothesis, and its impact on perceptions of fairness and inequality.
This episode segment explores how to consciously engage with media during crises to support truth and psychological well-being, framing it as a form of resistance.
Host Leslie Poston explores the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) test, a 10-question assessment linking childhood trauma to adult physical and mental health risks.
Host Leslie Poston explores the psychology of microjoys—tiny, sensory moments of delight like a dog's ears or perfect light—and explains how neuroscience and decades of research show these small pleasures build psychological resilience more effectively than waiting for rare major achievements.
This episode explores how institutional and economic decay under late-stage capitalism affect people's mental models, leading to reduced trust, safety, and belief in change, as seen in unstable systems like healthcare, housing, and technology.
Host Leslie Poston deconstructs the concept of 'common sense,' arguing it's not a universal truth but a psychological and social phenomenon shaped by individual experience, position, and culture.
Host Leslie Poston investigates the psychology behind why some people actively desire societal collapse, exploring concepts like accelerationism, Christian nationalism, and how trauma, social media, and even COVID-19's neurological effects make apocalyptic thinking seductive.
Host Leslie Poston argues that the human pursuit of comfort is a major barrier to personal and societal progress.
The episode analyzes why millions of people are turning to AI chatbots like ChatGPT for emotional support and companionship, tracing this trend to systemic failures in mental healthcare, community erosion, and tech industry incentives.
Host Leslie Poston explores the psychology of liminal spaces—those in-between zones like airports, dead malls, and traffic jams that disrupt our sense of time and identity.
This episode explores the psychological impact of endless war, arguing it shrinks humanity's capacity to imagine and invest in the future.
This episode analyzes the Jeffrey Epstein network through psychological research, examining how powerful people enable systemic abuse, why society struggles to respond appropriately, and how individuals can process disillusionment when admired figures are implicated.
Host Leslie Poston explores the psychological 'paradox of progress'—the phenomenon where successful solutions to problems (like eradicating measles or implementing financial regulations) make those problems feel less real, leading societies to dismantle the very systems that created success.
The host analyzes the psychology of 'stochastic terrorism'—how public figures indirectly incite violence through language with plausible deniability.
Host Leslie Poston explores 'sneaky grief'—the disenfranchised, unacknowledged losses that linger without social validation, from pet deaths to first loves lost decades later.
Host Leslie Poston explores how technology's drive to remove friction—from Facebook's birthday reminders to generative AI writing tools—is systematically eroding the emotional labor that sustains friendships and the cognitive friction essential for genuine creativity.
This episode of PsyberSpace argues that extreme billionaire wealth accumulation shares key psychological patterns with clinical hoarding disorder.