Research Matters Podcast

Dr. Evan Forman is a professor of psychology at Drexel University and a director of the University’s “WELL Center” (Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Science), an interdisciplinary clinic, research, and training center dedicated to developing and sharing innovative solutions to treat obesity, poor diet, sedentariness and disordered eating.   In this Episode you'll learn: How to create fertile environments for collaboration How to hire stellar project coordinators How to incorporate behavioral tasks into interviews How to have your values guide your research decisions What Evan does to start and end a productive day How to think about research at a meta-level

Today’s interview is with Dr. Matthew McKay. Dr. McKay is a co-founder of New Harbinger publications and a professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. For those who don’t know, New Harbinger is one of the largest publishers of mental health related books. Through New Harbinger, he pioneered the very idea of client workbooks and has written many himself. In addition to being an active researcher, the main thing I wanted to interview Matt about was how he has been able to write more than 30 professional and self help books, which have sold more than 3 million copies. My goal in this interview was to learn how he can write so many books and also to get an insider’s view on how to get a book published in the mental health space. Dr. McKay began his career publishing a range of books (e.g. business manuals, children’s books) for a small publishing company he created with a friend. He accidentally  stumbled into the world of self-help books when helping his then-girlfriend turn her pamphlet on stress

I’m pretty sure that Jonathan Bricker has more research funding to study Acceptance and Commitment Therapy than any other researcher (it’s hard to confirm this as there is no central database). For this alone he’s a person worth interviewing. He’s also interesting as a researcher who deeply considers how research can help us scale psychosocial interventions to reach millions of people, and thus apps and websites feature prominently in his research. If you are interested in learning how to do clinical research that scales, then this is a guy you want to pay attention to. If you don’t trust me that he has ideas worth spreading, then maybe you’ll trust the over three million views of his TEDx talk on the science of self-control. Meet Dr. Jonathan Bricker Dr. Jonathan Bricker received extensive training in helping people who struggle with anxiety and substance use addictions, through his PhD program at University of Washington, and through serving as a research therapist in a large National Institute of Health (

Dr. Kelly Koerner is currently the Creative Director of the Evidence-Based Practice Institute, a company she founded. Her work combines technology, design thinking, and science to improve mental health care and help clinicians implement evidence-based practices.  After graduating from University of Washington, she was one of the earliest pioneers of Dialectical behavior therapy as the first CEO of Behavioral Tech, the main organization responsible for research on DBT and it’s training. After this, rather than going into academia, she instead decided to found a company that could use science to develop products that would allow for scale and public health impact. Part of what I am aiming to do with this podcast is to interview the outliers, the people who take a different approach to their research and career. It’s the outliers that often are the ones from whom we can learn the most groundbreaking strategies and approaches. Kelly is certainly an outlier in terms of how she approaches her research and in terms

For this show I interview Dr. Mike Twohig, a professor at Utah State University. I’ve known Mike since the end of graduate school where I first observed the remarkable ways in which he goes about his research. One thing I have always admired is that he somehow manages to be extraordinarily productive, while at the same time living a balanced life. For example, in addition to being an incredibly productive researcher, he’s a devoted family man and has some hobbies that take up many hours of his time each week. I also know that he rarely works on weekends.