Psychobabble

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of deliberately deceiving investors. Why is the conversation now about feeling sorry for her? Her new documentary, You Can See Everything, presents a softer image: a mother facing separation from her children. In this episode of Psychobabble, I examine that sympathetic portrait alongside her conduct, her deposition footage, and the evidence of deliberate fraud. Using the triarchic model of psychopathy—boldness, meanness, and disinhibition—I explore the personality traits behind deception, exploitation, intimidation, and calculated image management. Did Holmes believe her own claims? What does her response to scrutiny reveal about accountability? And why do motherhood and allegations of abuse change how people interpret her actions? A closer look at Elizabeth Holmes, female psychopathic traits, and the behavior that sympathy can lead people to overlook. Subscribe to Psychobabble with Spier for more psychological case analysis and honest discussion of female psychology.  Please leave a rating and a review! That would help me a lot!

Are women's political choices driven by too much empathy—or by the pressure to agree with the group? If empathy explains their politics, why can it disappear when the victim challenges the cause? In this episode, I question whether "suicidal empathy" adequately explains what we're seeing. From women's suffrage in Switzerland to footage from the French protests, I examine a different explanation: sensitivity to social consensus, the rewards of belonging, and the willingness to punish those who disagree. I discuss research on conformity and social influence, why women can enforce conservative values just as fiercely as progressive ones, and how protecting the group can take priority over compassion for the individual. Listen to Psychobabble on  I would be very grateful if you leave a rating and a review!  Listen ad-free by subscribing on Substack: https://hannahspier.substack.com/podcast

Even Republican women blame men for the challenges women face. Tom Golden presents survey data suggesting that this attitude reaches across political parties and age groups—and we discuss what happens when blaming men replaces examining your own choices. I'm joined by Janice Fiamengo, Tom Golden and Jim Nuzzo for a conversation about feminism, female accountability and false accusations. Starting with the public reaction to the Cornell 7 case, we examine how accusations against individual men become sweeping judgments about men generally, and how claims of victimhood can shield women from scrutiny. We also discuss blame and resentment in relationships, regret and reputation, what false-allegation statistics actually measure, university investigations, and the use of trauma explanations to dismiss contradictory evidence. I would be very grateful if you would leave a rating and a review! Thank you so much! Want to listen ad-free? Subscribe to Psychobabble on Substack: https://hannahspier.substack.com/podcast

I'm joined by Dr Fiona Girkin, a researcher specialising in female psychopathy and dark personality traits, whose doctoral research examined workplace bullying in the community services sector. We discuss relational aggression, weaponised victimhood, revenge, parental alienation and the difference between everyday selfishness and calculated abuse. We also explore whether feminism, social media and a lack of accountability are rewarding destructive behaviour and how to recognise warning signs in workplaces, friendships and romantic relationships.  

The Cornell 7 case has become about much more than what happened that night. Jane Doe's lawyer says her behavior afterward — including initially describing the encounter as consensual — is a "textbook" trauma response. Across social media, people are making the same argument: contradictory behavior after an alleged assault doesn't undermine the trauma narrative; it may actually confirm it. But is that what the research shows? In this episode, I look at how the definition of trauma has expanded, what PTSD was originally designed to describe, what studies of forcible rape survivors actually find, and what happens when a psychiatric explanation becomes so flexible that almost no evidence can count against it.