“Every day we are influenced in countless ways by the world around us, and most of this flies completely under the radar of our conscious awareness” From Neuroscientist and Stanford Professor, David Eagleman’s, The Brain: The Story of You.

Welcome back to Season 10 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (that’s finally being taught in our schools today) and emotional intelligence training (used in our modern workplaces) for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 5 years ago with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to uncover the most current research that would back up how the brain learns best, taking us ALL to new, and often unimaginable heights.   
Welcome back! For those who tune in each week, you might have noticed this was the FIRST time we’ve taken a break with this podcast since we launched. It’s always been important for me to produce content every week, but this past month, we travelled to some places where there wasn’t always internet, so I decided it would be a good time to take a break, and think about where we began with this podcast, and where we are going, creating a clear vision moving forward, and putting our season theme of Part 2 of Going Back to the Basics into practice.
If you look at the image in the show notes, you can see where the vision for this podcast began by making a connection with the six social and emotional learning competencies[i] that you’ll be familiar with if you are in the field of education, or paying attention to the research.  These competencies include Growth Mindset, Responsible Decision-Making, Self-Awareness, Social-Awareness, Self-Regulation and Developing Relationships, and hundreds of research studies[ii] have confirmed positive outcomes for our next generation of students, adults and communities who implement these competencies.  Instead of covering social and emotional learning topics only for this podcast, (that I saw publishers begin to cover more thoroughly than I ever could on my own, using their research to prove efficacy), I decided to connect what I saw as “the missing link” for health, well-being, productivity and achievement on this podcast—an understanding of our brain, that I call Neuroscience 101.

Reflecting back on almost 300 episodes written, recorded and produced from June 2019 to today, it’s easy to notice the growth that has unfolded along the way, that I share on EPISODE #279[iii] on “Lessons Learned After Hitting the 300,000 Download Mile Marker,” or “The Top 10 ALL Time Most Listened to Episodes on Podcast.” I can’t miss out on EPISODE #233[iv] where we covered the “Top 12 YouTube Interviews” as chosen by YOU! These are all good ones to review.
In addition to the growth noticed over the years from feedback that YOU, the listener would send me, I also noticed a shift with the content in our interviews over the seasons.
In our early interviews, we were introduced to books, ideas and strategies that would orient us to the understanding of the brain and help us to break down topics like improving student success with Dr. John Dunlosky’s[v] research, or trauma in our schools, that we saw with EPISODE #168[vi] with Dr. Bruce Perry and his book What Happened to You, or EPISODE #60[vii] with Dr. Daniel Siegel on “The Benefits Behind a Meditation Practice.”  We moved through the research, season by season, covering the topics that I thought would help us to all gain a better understanding of the mind-brain-body connection.
Then, the focus turned towards health and wellness in 2020, which was an unexpected turn for me, but one that made a huge impact on me personall