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Air Dates: September 11-17, 2023

Every generation seems to lament the decline in public virtues, morality, and decency. But Adam Mastroianni argues that those perceptions are generally not rooted in reality.    

Mastroianni is an experimental psychologist and author of the science blog, “Experimental History.” He earned his doctorate in psychology from Harvard in 2021, and his work has been covered everywhere from The New York Times to “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” He is originally from Monroeville, Ohio (pop. 1,400). Outside of science, he’s also a stand-up and improv comedian, he has done over 140 escape rooms, and he once came in second on a British reality show about hosting dinner parties.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Mastroianni takes time to discuss his blog, “Experimental History.” He says, “so now I run a community where people are doing this all over the world, doing sciences in their backyards, building labs, which I think is really exciting because I think we’ve been missing this for a long time.” He discusses that there has been a loss of diverse approaches in science, and many ideas haven’t been explored because they don’t fit the conventional model of a scientific journal.  

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at ������. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.