(In a delightful twist, my new segment got stitched together with a rebroadcast of an older episode featuring the incomparable @elijfinkel.bsky.social, one of my grad school professors, whose work on marriage is captivating. I couldn’t ask for a better Hidden Brain buddy!)

along with Amber Gayle Thalmayer and myself. We have written an introductory piece that frames the goals for the issue. Thanks to our publisher, all contributions are available for free to all readers. Please share it widely!

This project was created during a discussion at our annual event for the PSPR Editorial Board & Emerging Editor Board and took almost two years to bring to reality. It was overseen by the journal’s first two Editorial Fellows, Stephen Baffour Adjei (from Ghana) and Pegah Nejat (from Iran),

HUGE congrats, Bill! What a fantastic department you're going to (and what a fantastic one you're leaving behind too). They are lucky to have you!

If you or someone you know is interested, please email me: jadler@olin.edu

It doesn’t need to be an extreme story, just an everyday experience of feeling stuck in a story other people were telling about people like you. Thanks! (Here's the brilliant original TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie introducing that concept: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ih...)

Books take a really long time to come into the world, so look for this one in February 2027. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to talking with YOU to shape this book about identity!

And, while I have missed @olincollege.bsky.social, I want to give a HUGE shout-out to my community of Fellows in the Newhouse Center at @wellesley.edu this year, who have been the most dreamy colleagues to work alongside on this project.

I’ll be working with the amazing Executive Editor, Anna Paustenbach. And none of this would have been possible without my stellar agent at #UTA, the Co-Head of Publishing, Christy Fletcher.

I couldn’t be happier to have landed at PRH Avery. Their slogan is “We publish nonfiction that doesn’t just change the conversation, it changes lives.” And that’s precisely what I hope the book will do.

Tentatively titled “Identity Theft: Who We Are & Who We Might Become,” the book will use compelling stories of what I’m calling “identity theft” (when you lose narrative authority over your life) to illustrate the science of narrative identity & to push our thinking about identity in today’s world.

My husband and I are flying with our kids from Boston to DC next week to see it as a family, since we loved it as a family!

As a personality psychologist and a theater kid, I can tell you the reference is not to Mischel, but to Shakespeare. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio says “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

And is it “comprised of,” “comprised by,” “comprising,” “composed of,” or “composing”??

You tagged me instead of the Jonathan Adler you intended.

It is a vital paper, folks! Give it a read!