Stories of Impact brings back some of our favorite conversations this season. Today, we continue our series about how citizens can understand and heal polarization, with a conversation with Dr. Sean Westwood. Dr. Westwood studies American politics and how partisan conflict manifests in the United States, its consequences and its origins.

Read the transcript of this episode

Learn more about the research
Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts

Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube
Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org

Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

We're back this episode for our second timely interview focusing on political polarization, wrapping up in conversation with Dr. Kurt Gray, professor of moral psychology and neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill, and the director of the Deepest Beliefs Lab in the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. Moral psychology is the descriptive understanding of our moral judgments, or concern with not just how people should make moral decisions, but how they actually do. Why does this matter?

In Dr. Gray's words:
"To understand our contentious and divided political moments where people are unwilling to discuss politics across the aisle or entertain even that the other side is a reasonable human being in the way that you feel about yourself and your own side.

We do disagree already when it comes to politics. But where does this political disagreement come from? …Once you get that, then you can understand where this political animosity comes from. But it's really a question of moral disagreement. And for that you need to understand our moral psychology."

Read the transcript of this episode

Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts

Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube

Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org 


Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

Our intention on the Stories of Impact Podcast, whether flora, fauna, homo sapiens, or otherwise, the variety of subjects we've featured across 120+ episodes has underscored our commitment to people's progress and well-being. (It's certainly enriched our wellbeing to tell each story!)

But is well-being the same as flourishing, or does one lead to the other? How do we know what flourishing is? What do people actually need to flourish? Times are tough; IS anyone actually flourishing?

To answer those questions, we're turning today to two international researchers who are leading a ground-breaking study on human flourishing: Dr. Tyler VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Francis Lehman Loeb professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Dr. Byron Johnson, director of The Institute for Studies of Religion and a distinguished professor of the social sciences at Baylor University.

• Read the transcript of this episode
• Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts
• Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube
• Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org
• Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

When Joshua Plotnik was a kid, he wanted to become a veterinarian and day dreamed of a future caring for animals large and small. By the time he got to college, he eagerly worked with every type of vet he could think of, from small animal vets to large animal horse veterinarians. On a summer break from his undergraduate studies at Cornell University, he interned as a zookeeper at the Central Park Zoo, and a mentor there encouraged him to reach out to the internationally-acclaimed primatologist Dr. Franz de Waal, known for his research on cooperation in primates. When the young student approached Dr. de Waal to ask if he might take him on as a PhD candidate, Dr. de Waal extended an invitation — the chance of a lifetime. Dr. Plotnik started researching chimpanzee behavior — where a lot of psychology researchers land, he says.

But Dr. Plotnik's interests soon expanded to question how those similarities evolve across these different species, if it's not due to a common ancestor?

With that fascination driving his work, Dr. Plotnik soon asked  Dr. de Waal for his support setting up a field site where he could immerse himself in researching the behavioral flexibility of one the largest animals he'd worked with yet: Elephants. And so, for the last two decades, Dr. Plotnik's research has focused on wild and captive elephants primarily located in Thailand. Now an associate professor of psychology and the director of the Comparative Cognition for Conservation Lab at Hunter College, City University of New York, he's currently wrapping up a years-long study about elephant intelligence.

• Read the transcript of this episode
• Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts
• Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube
• Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org
• Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

Are animals capable of feeling joy? How do we know? What is joy? Dr. Erica Cartmill wants to find out. She's the Indiana University professor of cognitive science, animal behavior, and anthropology that long-time listeners to Stories of Impact will recognize from conversations we've had in the past about her studies of diverse intelligences and humor in apes. Today, we'll learn about one of her latest collaborative projects — a first of its kind multidisciplinary study: Joyful by Nature, on the evolution and the function of joy in animals. She's joined in conversation by Dr. Colin Allen, Professor of Philosophy at University of California Santa Barbara and Dr. Heidi Lyn, Joan M. Sinnott Professor in Psychology and Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama. This team of expert researchers shares why it's both timely and important to move the science of animal emotion forward.

• Read the transcript of this episode
• Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts
• Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube
• Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org
• Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

In remembrance of Jane Goodall (4/3/34 - 10/1/25), we're bringing back our conversation featuring her life and legacy.

Luminary Dr. Jane Goodall for decades made significant contributions to not only the scientific world, but arguably, to the entire planet.

When 26-year-old British-born Jane Goodall began field studies of primates in Tanzania in July 1960, she was the first researcher to observe chimpanzees in the wild, and she remains the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees. Her rigorous and creative approach quickly gained the attention of the National Geographic Society, which awarded her first grant, and has passionately championed her work in the decades since. Despite never getting a college degree, Dr. Goodall was accepted at Cambridge University, earned her PhD in ethology in 1966, and spent decades in the Gombe Stream National Park studying chimpanzee communities, eventually becoming the only human to ever be accepted into a chimpanzee society.

In her 90 years, Dr. Goodall was a legendary conservationist, galvanizing educator, UN Messenger of Peace, and an inspiring writer and public speaker. Her curiosity, empathy, wisdom, protective heart, and unshakeable hope reflect the best of humanity, and even though her conversation was short, you'll hear all of those exemplary characteristics embodied in her voice and story.

• Read the transcript of this episode
• Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts
• Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube
• Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org
• Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

"If you ask most people what's the most morally profound, significant, meaningful thing in your life, they'll say something about the way that they have been taking care of children or parents or friends, or people who are ill, or spouses. There's something very distinctive about it. It's just intrinsic to the human condition is that we're going to be babies, we're going to be ill, we're going to be old. That just comes with the territory of being human, and care seems to be a way of allowing us as a community, as a species to negotiate these kinds of transitions, to make the transitions work."

Dr. Alison Gopnik is a professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading researcher on caregiving. Today, we explore her international research project designed to "think about the way that we care for other people."

Read the transcript of this episode
Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts
Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube

Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org
Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

The world today is grappling with enormous challenges: how will we allow artificial intelligence to impact society? How hot will we let the planet get? How do we stop the conflicts making life for so many so painful? We are not powerless. These are decisions that humans are capable of making, though no one person can solve such existential questions on their own. To solve the world's problems, to take care of each other and create a better future, we have to decide to work with each other to do it.

Dr. Bahar Köymen, senior lecturer of psychology, communication and human neuroscience at the University of Manchester, studies the emergence and development of human reasoning. As a developmental psychologist, to better understand how humans develop collective reasoning, Dr. Köymen is taking an unusual approach: studying children.

Read the transcript of this episode
Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts
Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube

Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org
Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation