Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

The expectation effect, with David Robson

Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

Show Notes

Can the way you think about your body, change the way it works? Can a positive outcome about ageing, actually cause you to live longer?

I’ve been curious about the mind-body axis for a while, and then I read The Expectation Effect by the award-winning science journalist and author, David Robson about how our expectations can shape our experience - and I was fascinated.

Using dozens of jaw-dropping studies throughout history, David explores how thinking a certain way about something, can change the way your body responds. Now, you cannot think yourself fitter, happier, richer. This is not The Secret. But you can also harness the power of your brain’s predictive machine, to live a healthier, longer, life.

David and I discuss the power of ‘reframing’, the effect of placebos and nocebos and the incredible impact of self-affirmation in young people, and how it can shape their entire future. I hope this episode gives you some tools to take away.

The Expectation Effect by David Robson is out now

Hosted & Exec Produced by Pandora Sykes Production by Joel Grove

More from Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

Apr 30, 2024

So many women experience a postpartum mental disorder after having a baby. For me, it was postnatal depression. For Catherine Cho, it was postpartum psychosis.

Apr 30, 2024

Feeling demotivated? Aimless? Without meaning, or purpose? According to sociologist and psychologist Corey Keyes, you could be languishing.

Apr 30, 2024

What does the term ‘sociopath’ mean to you? Serial killer? Social outcast? Or wait - is that a psychopath?

Apr 30, 2024

The homogenisation of popular culture is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. In my 2020 book, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? (which spawned this very podcast), I wrote an essay called Get The Look - inspired by a wildly successful Zara polkadot dress - about how internet culture is encouraging young women to dress as facsimiles of one other.

Apr 30, 2024

I’m really interested in talking about the gnarly parts of the beauty industry - where things like tanning and hair removal actually come from. In the last series, Jessica DeFino debunked many myths about make-up and skincare. This season, I talk to journalist, author and broadcaster Afua Hirsch about beauty’s colonialist ideals and how she sought to break up with them.

See all episodes →