This is a compilation of all the episodes of my People Who Read People podcast that are related to understanding psychology and behavior in games and sports.
Game/sports-related episodes:
- Poker tells:
- A talk with Brian Koppelman, writer of Rounders, Billions, and more: We talk about how he got into poker, his interest in deciphering human behavior and finding clues, poker tells in Rounders, and more.
- A talk with Dara O’Kearney: this was an interesting talk with Dara, co-host of The Chip Race podcast (the most popular poker podcast), about how he’s used poker tells in his career and how his views on tells have changed over time.
- A talk with Brandon Sheils: I talk with Brandon about the university research he did on poker tells.
- A talk with poker player Laura Eisenberg, focused on a specific behavior she encountered on the way to winning the 2021 WSOP Ladies Event.
- Learnings from studying nonverbal behavior in sports, with Philip Furley. Furley has done a lot of research into the role of nonverbal behavior in various sports, and we talk about the wide range of his work, with a focus on making practical use of those findings.
- Reading opponents in tennis, with Carlos Goffi: Goffi is a well known tennis player coach who wrote a famous tennis book with John McEnroe. He talks about reading the mood and actions of tennis opponents.
- Reading tells in football, baseball, & other sports, with Jon Hoefling. Sportscaster and analyst Hoefling talks about Ben Roethlisberger’s tell, and other well known sports games tells.
- Reading tells in football, with Larry Hart. Larry is a football coach, and we go in-depth on what kinds of behaviors are important to pay attention to in football. We talk about the role that studying game tape plays, and about anxiety in sports.
- Reading opponents in Secret Hitler, and other social deduction games. I talk with a skilled social deduction game player about the strategies and behaviors she makes use of.
- Reading opponents in the videogame Apex Legends, with Brandon “Nocturnal” Singer: Brandon talks about how big a role predicting opponent behavior plays in multiplayer fighting games.
- Reading behavior in fencing, with Seth Baldwin. We talk about the role of luck in fencing matches, and how much psychology and predicting actions are a factor. (And a little bit about poker.)
- Reading tells in Rock Paper Scissors, with Jason Simmons, aka “Master Roshambollah.” Though a little joking in nature, there are some good tidbits in here about predicting what opponents will throw and how to influence what they’ll throw.
- Reading opponents in MMA and jiu-jitsu, with Robert Drysdale. Well known fighter Drysdale talks about predicting opponents behaviors, reading confidence levels, and more.
For my main podcast page, see behavior-podcast.com.