Unusual Practice

Why are hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets of France? And why does the protest reveal far more than anger about prices or politics? In this episode of Unusual Practice , we go beyond viral clips, claims of an “immigration crisis” and the easy search for a villain to explore why France’s streets may function as its real parliament. From the October 17 anniversary of the 1961 Pari...

Something happened in a government building this month that proves, better than any think piece could, exactly how much smarter the machines have gotten than us. It has nothing to do with chatbots. For centuries we had one reliable fact to hide behind. We were the smartest thing in the room. This week that fact got tested twice, once by a machine, once by the people supposedly still in charge of i...

Why do otherwise rational people spend all this time and money on something that eventually becomes expensive pee? Bianca Bosker,  Cork Dork Does expensive wine actually taste better? Or did you hear the price first and decide to enjoy it? Somewhere in Paris, a table full of adults is holding glasses of something they quietly dislike, nodding along while a man in a linen jacket calls it "auste...

You've taken the test. Lion, otter, golden retriever, beaver, or some version of it with an eagle and a peacock instead. Every offsite has one. Someone hands you a laminated card, you circle the words that sound most like you, and you walk away pretty sure you're the lion. This episode isn't about that test. It's about what that test was quietly built to avoid telling you, and what...

You already know the feeling. The job you used to defend at dinner parties now makes you change the subject. The goal you'd have sold a kidney for a year ago barely registers. And your brain, being unhelpful as usual, has decided the problem is you. This episode makes the case that it isn't, using a two thousand year old translation error, a very tired monk, and a word the church has been...

A machine now gives better comfort than your therapist. Better feedback than your editor. Beats you on a creativity test more often than not. This episode makes the case that losing to it might be the best thing that's ever happened to you, and by the end, you'll understand exactly why nobody should be relieved to hear that, and exactly why you should be.  Visit our hub: https://unusualpra...

You didn't choose your apartment. Or your skincare routine. Or the restaurant you're about to book. Something else did, and it's been running the same script on millions of people at the exact same time, while convincing every one of them it was their idea. This week: the mechanism behind why everyone suddenly looks, talks, and lives the same... and the one uncomfortable question that...

How a Lie Becomes a TED Talk! The most-watched TED talk of all time is a lie. So is the marshmallow test. So is basically everything you think you know about willpower. This is the episode that ruins your favorite psychology facts, one receipt at a time. Visit our hub: https://unusualpractice.carrd.co Other site: https://unusualpractice.podview.com Main site: https://practicecharli.com

You've been sold a lie wrapped in olive oil and slow drone footage. For twenty years, “Blue Zones” have been the gospel of the wellness world - five magic regions where people supposedly live to 110 on beans, purpose, and good vibes. We follow a UCL demographer who did the one thing nobody else bothered to do - check the paperwork - and unravel a story that runs through a mummified man collect...

In 1983, a neuroscientist discovered something that should’ve ended a philosophical argument dead on the spot: your brain starts acting before you feel like you’ve decided anything. This week, we connect that experiment to a brand-new 2026 discovery that shows even your most basic sensory brain regions are quietly entangled in decisions you think you haven’t made yet, plus what a West African orac...

Power or money have to just be enough so that nobody in the room dares say "are you sure about that." This episode is about what happens the moment someone, a billionaire, a president, the imposing voice in your friend group, gets enough authority that people stop correcting them. The psychology of why proven success curdles into blind conviction, why entire rooms go silent at the exact mo...

Financial infidelity is ending more relationships than actual affairs, and nobody's talking about it. We break down what people are really hiding, secret accounts, secret debt, secret cards, and the exact kind of money argument Kansas State University found is the single strongest predictor of divorce. Not sex. Not in-laws.... Money. If you've ever kept a number from your partner, this one...

You finally got the calm, consistent love you said you wanted. So why does it feel like nothing? This is Prince Charming Syndrome, and most of what's written about it gets the diagnosis backwards. It's not about being too picky to find him. It's about finding him, and feeling bored. We get into the actual wiring: the "lovemap" a psychologist named John Money says gets built before you're six, why...

You did everything right. Therapy, boundaries, the work. So why does being fine feel like something's wrong? This episode breaks down hedonic adaptation, the psychology finding that humans recalibrate to a stable baseline no matter how much life improves... and why a nervous system trained on chaos doesn't recognise calm as safety, it recognises it as a threat to investigate. We unpack str...

Trauma doesn't just affect your personality. Neuroscience shows it physically restructures the brain, your threat responses, your attachment patterns, your humour, your drive - into what we call identity. So when therapy works, what exactly gets dismantled? https://unusualpractice.carrd.co https://practicecharli.com

Everyone talks about missing the person who left. Nobody talks about missing the version of  you  that only existed inside that relationship. The one who had that specific laugh, that mapped-out future, that whole self... gone. This isn't heartbreak. This is identity death. And your brain is grieving something it can't even name yet. Science explains why.

Nobody joins a cult. They think they're joining a community. By the time they realise the difference... it's already too late. In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli breaks down the truth in cult psychology: the people who get recruited aren't broken, damaged, or gullible. Research shows they're typically intelligent, middle-class, and caught in an ordinary moment of vulnerabi...

Thirty million people bought  The Secret . A NYU study then showed positive visualisation actually makes performance worse. So what exactly is going on? In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli dismantles one of the most commercially exploited ideas in modern wellness (manifestation) - and rebuilds it from the ground up using real science. We cover why focused intention shifts what you notice a...

Your brain isn't broken... it's addicted. And the thing it's hooked on? Familiar pain. In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli breaks down the neuroscience of why suffering becomes a habit, and why happiness can feel genuinely threatening to your nervous system. We're talking negativity bias, amygdala hijack, masochistic equilibrium, and the cortisol loop keeping you stuck in cycles you  know...

Last episode, we gave you eleven names. We promised to go deeper. Since then, the list has grown to thirteen, and Congress has said more names are coming. The FBI briefing deadline passed with no public answers. And one city keeps appearing in this story: Huntsville, Alabama, the Rocket City, where researchers die. In this episode, we go all the way inside Amy Eskridge, the 34-year-old antigravity...

Eleven scientists. NASA. MIT. Caltech. Los Alamos. The nuclear weapons complex. The Air Force. All DEAD or missing between 2023 and 2026. The White House called it  "pretty serious stuff."  The FBI opened an investigation. Congress wants answers. But why did it take two years, and a missing general, for anyone in power to pay attention? IN MEMORY OF GREAT MINDS This episode is dedicated...

Everyone's panic-searching "AI taking jobs” , but host Charli is asking the question nobody else will: what if AI didn't steal your career, it just exposed that you were already checked out? Backed by Gallup's bombshell finding that 80% of the global workforce is disengaged, this episode of Unusual Practice connects the AI anxiety spiral to a deeper meaning crisis hiding underneath it...and it get...

There's a specific kind of disorientation that only comes with real success: you built the thing, you run the thing, and somehow the thing is running you. This episode dismantles the psychological trap of accumulated success- the slow drift from a life you designed to a subscription you're paying with your autonomy, and why the higher your status, the harder it becomes to notice the cage. ...

You didn't build a team. You built an audience. This episode exposes the hidden architecture of how high-performing leaders accidentally fill their organizations with people who are professionally dependent rather than genuinely driven, and why the difference is almost impossible to see from the inside. Drawing on organizational psychology, the science of homophily, and the documented paradox...

Why Scaling is Often a Sophisticated Form of Avoidance 3 Part series for professionals. Most CEOs scaling into new markets aren't executing a strategy but rather running from a question. This episode deconstructs the psychology behind expansion as avoidance: why high-performing leaders confuse movement with progress, how "overthinking the next opportunity" becomes a sophisticated dodge for the one...