DUST CHILD, by Nguyen Phan Que Mai, catapults us into the interconnecting lives of those caught in the brutality of the Vietnam War. We meet Dan, an American who is returning with his wife to the country where he was a young GI fifty years earlier. We are transported back in time and meet two Vietnamese sisters during the Vietnam War. We meet Fong, an Amerasian man born from a Vietnamese woman and a Black GI and the challenges he faces as an abandoned baby.

Nguyen Phan Que Mai based this novel on the stories she heard as she was writing her dissertation about the impact of the Vietnam War.

The novel is an international best-seller AND the One Book, One Lincoln selection for 2026.

Dr. Bryan Denny joins us to further our understanding of emotional regulation research, particularly research that combines traditional diagnostic approaches with neurobiology. Bryan is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Rice University and Director of the Translational Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. Bryan 's research is a fascinating complement to our book this month: Ethan Kross's SHIFT: MANAGING YOUR EMOTIONS SO THEY DON’T MANAGE YOU.

Bryan's research seeks to understand the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms that underlie successful and unsuccessful emotion regulation across a spectrum of healthy and clinical populations. He is interested in utilizing the results of basic investigations into these processes in order to design and examine novel interventions focused on improving real-world emotion regulation outcomes in a variety of contexts.

Bryan tells us what emotion regulation is and then explains some of the evidence-based techniques used to do so, citing Ethan Kross’ book and also the work of James Gross and Lisa Feldman Barrett. He compares the cognitive basis of emotional regulation to the behaviorist tradition that once dominated psychology.

Bryan tells us about his work combining cognitive research and neurobiology. Neurobiology uses technologies, such as fMRIs, to show how the brain is operating. Bryan believes there will always be a place for cognitive counseling and its techniques, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but that the addition of neuroscience opens up new ways of understanding emotions and creating interventions.

Bryan conducts longitudinal emotion regulation research at his lab, and has recently been focusing on populations such as caregivers and bereaved persons.

We loved this episode and all the information Dr. Denny shared with us. We are hopeful listeners won't be too distracted by the sometimes poor audio.

A new year means a Front Porch Book Club book that will help us think about who we want to be in 2026 and give us some idea of how to become that person! This year, we chose SHIFT: MANAGING YOUR EMOTIONS -- SO THEY DON'T MANAGE YOU by Ethan Kross.

The book was published just last year in February of 2025, and it was an instant national bestseller. It was one of Oprah's daily best self-help books for personal growth in 2025. And it was a Publishers Weekly best book of the year. Ethan Kross is one of the world's leading experts on emotional regulation. He's an award-winning professor at the University of Michigan's top-ranked psychology department, and its Ross School of Business, and he's the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory there at the University of Michigan.

Kross begins the book by telling us that what emotions are and that we have the ability to regulate our emotions. We do not have to be just victims of emotions coming and going. You can lead your life feeling very in control of your emotions and regulating them. And that doesn't mean being a robot. It doesn't mean repressing feelings. It doesn't mean wallowing in feelings. And it doesn't even mean, and this was important to Nancy, that there are bad emotions and good emotions. Rather, he says, emotions are data for us to use and regulation is about experiencing them in the proportion that you want to experience them. Leading a happy life is understanding that there's room for grief and anger and sad. A happy life incorporates the range of human emotions, but it is about regulating them. It's about understanding what it is they are telling us. Kross even talks about the wisdom of emotions. Kross tells us we are not prisoners to our emotions that there are these levers or shifters, the book is called Shift. There are shifters that we have that can be very useful.

Throughout the book, Kross reviews internal and external shifters; these are the levers to shift our emotions. He advises us that different shifters work for different people at different times. The challenge for us is to learn what works for us and when. We are all unique individuals. Kross also talks about the important role of emotion in goal setting and achievement.

Both Linny and Nancy really enjoyed this book. Linny already was familiar with the shifters, given her education and experience as a counselor. But she definitely liked the illustrations and appreciated the science-based approach and all the citations. For Nancy, a lot of the concepts were new, but she also appreciated the science-based approach.

In this episode, Linny and Nancy also review their goals from last year's ATOMIC HABITS book. Spoiler: they both report really good results!

The episode ends with Linny and Nancy wrestling over the meaning of the word "peace," and deciding that would be an excellent next book for Ethan Kross to write!