Imagine this. You have a letter of acceptance in your hand, and one of rejection… which one are you going to brood over? If you’re like most writers, you’ll take the rejection to heart, while discounting the positive news. There seems to be something about human nature that focuses on the sting of rejection while negating the good stuff. But why?
With Dr. Susan O’Doherty on tonight’s illustrious panel, we’re probing the hidden depths of the human psyche to find out the evolutionary basis for our fear of rejection – maybe there’s a good reason for it, after all?
Joining Dr. Sue (New York) are of Donna Ballman (Florida), Dave Bartram (England’s West Country) and – yes, she’s back! – our own Eve Harvey (Edinburgh). Truly, a rare and renowned international panel for your delight and edification.
Topics covered and links include:
- Nude baby hedgehogs – whatever next?
- The UK Government wants you to hire (not buy) your shoes, dresses and suits
- Being grumpy makes you think more clearly
- Why we need imaginary monsters when the world already contains enough real ones
- Your subconscious mind is more attuned to negative messages than to positive ones
- Anne Rice says angels are the new vampires: has she gone batshit crazy?
- Forget Twitter, the pull towards long, slow narratives is hard wired into our biology
This week’s titles for the Commissioning Meeting are:
DR SUE
“The Astral Plane: Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena”
Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1854-1934DONNA
“The King Nobody Wanted”
Norman F Langford, 1914-EVE
“The Mormon Menace”
John Doyle Lee, 1812-1877DAVE
“The Hohenzollerns in America”
Stephen Leacock, 1869-1944
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
If you liked this show, please take this time to ReTweet it using Twitter (see the ReTweet button underneath) and share it with others. You may also want to follow us to stay up to date with all our shows. And please feel free to leave your comments below!
Picture by rubyblossom
Subscribe to our shows by Email
Support Litopia with a generous donation!
Easy way: just click the PLAY button under each show. 
Simply fill in the form under each show and bingo! You’re a critic!
Litopia receives no public funding. For the price of a latté a month, you can keep us going. 
Litopia is the winner
of the first Golden Twits Award for excellence in social media. 
I may have to skip the next episode that features Dr. Sue unless someone asks her to back away from her mic a bit or gets her a pop filter. All that p-popping is like nails on a chalkboard to me. And that’s too bad because I find what she has to say interesting.
[...] podcasts available, Litopia is worth the time and listening. Recently they did a podcast entited, The Joy of Rejection. Some of things worth reciting, which I’ve long agreed [...]
Gathering together a collection of authors from all over the world, usually on a wide variety of computers and connections, is always going to be a bit technologically challenging, I’m afraid. We’re basically trying to do what until recently used to be the exclusive preserve of large international broadcasters. While we do try to produce audio that’s as good as it can possibly be, sometimes the technology gods defeat us.
Dr. Sue wasn’t in her usual place this week, which may account for some of the “popping”. We do post-process the audio to make it as clean as possible, but on this occasion it wasn’t up to the mark.
Thanks for your feedback!