Diverse Joy ® Podcast
& Educational Video Series
With Dr. William T. L. Cox
& Dr. Amber Nelson
Infusing science, practical skills, and joy into diversity discussions!
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Episodes of Diverse Joy Release the First Wednesday of Each Month
Published episodes can be found below, by following the podcast wherever you get podcasts (links for various podcasting platforms are available below) or by subscribing to @BiasHabit on YouTube for the video version.*
*The audio-only podcast features the same content as the video version, minus some additional visuals.
Follow Diverse Joy on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Threads, and Bluesky.
Get notified about new episodes by signing up for our newsletter or by following (“subscribing to”) the show in your podcasting app or on YouTube.
Infusing Joy into Diversity Discussions
Diverse Joy is the official podcast of Inequity Agents of Change.
Cohosted by Dr. Cox and Dr. Nelson, with occasional guests, Diverse Joy is a free monthly podcast and educational video series. In each episode, the cohosts share some of the joy from their lives, discuss a diversity topic, answer audience questions, teach an evidence-based bias habit-breaking skill to help you in your efforts to reduce bias and promote inclusion and equity, and more! Their goal is educate while keeping you entertained, and most of all, to infuse joy into diversity discussions.
Diverse Joy is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally, many teachers and professors use the educational videos in their classrooms, and many organizations use Diverse Joy as a monthly diversity activity. As its title implies, it focuses on infusing joy back into diversity discussions. Joy is both practical and scientifically justified as a weapon against bias.
Submit Questions and Topic Ideas for an Episode of Diverse Joy
We use audience questions in each episode of the podcast; if you have a question related to a topic in the realm of bias, diversity, equity, or inclusion, please send it our way!
If you have a relevant topic idea that you think would be a good subject for one our episodes’ main discussions, we’d love to hear it, too!
You can also just share your joy with us!
Please submit any of the above ideas using this form, and it may be featured on a future episode!
Season 1 of Diverse Joy was sponsored primarily by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number R35GM128888. The content is solely the responsibility of the speakers and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Production is also supported by donations to our nonprofit, Inequity Agents of Change.
We Also Have Merch
If you’re interested in supporting our organization, we also have Diverse Joy merchandise available. Your purchase supports production of Diverse Joy - and helps us spread the joy!
Meet the Diverse Joy Team
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![Diverse Joy promo photo of Dr. Cox]()
William T. L Cox, Phd
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![Diverse Joy promo photo of Dr. Nelson]()
Amber Nelson, PsyD
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![Eric Roman Beining's headshot]()
Eric Roman Beining, MFA
The Diverse Joy theme and interstitial music was composed and performed by Jay Arner
Guests of Diverse Joy have included:
Sandy Eichel, a wealth management advisor and international speaker; they’ve been on to discuss “What is Professionalism Anyway?”, trans* and nonbinary identity related topics, and in our April 2025 episode, recognizing and correcting your own biases!
Nicki Vander Meulen, a lawyer focused on disability issues and the first-ever openly autistic person to be elected to a school board in the United States; she’s been on to discuss disability desegregation in schools, and how the Americans with Disabilities Act (the ADA) has lead to accommodations to help everyone.
Valeria Martinez, an immigration attorney; she was on the November 2024 episode to discuss an array of topics and history related to immigration in the United States, as well as the role of the law in mandating fairness, asylum seekers, the definition of migrants as compared to refugee.
Bernie Hoes, an educator; he was on earlier this year to discuss “Living Black History” and how Black identity is not a monolith.
Diverse Joy Episodes
Listen to Diverse Joy on your favorite podcasting app (or watch on YouTube) with the links in the carousel below; or use episode pages here with embedded media players for the audio or the video for each.
Episodes are listed in reverse chronological order, with our most recent episode displayed first. Once you’re on an episode page, you can navigate to the next episode (in either direction) from that page. And episodes are tagged with relevant keywords to help you find related episodes!
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Joy as Resistance and Bias Reduction
The main discussion topic this episode is how joy can be used as a scientifically validated tool against bias and “joy as resistance,” to fight injustice and oppression (but real, genuine joy, not performative or toxic positivity). Our bias habit-breaking skill encourages us all to Approach Biases as Habits to be Broken. We recommend “Sinners" for its themes of joy as resistance (also, Halloween).
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Alpha, Boomer, Millennial: Learn about Generational Biases
In the 2nd season finale of "Diverse Joy", Dr. Cox & Dr. Nelson talk generational bias and age discrimination, while celebrating the 40th anniversary of "The Golden Girls" in September 2025. This episode's bias habit-breaking skill is to Broaden Your Input via Media to help expand the types of experiences and people that you're exposed to for the purposes of reducing bias and creating inclusion.
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Diverse People Bring Diverse Perspectives
Amber & Will discuss the benefits that diversity brings to organizations: Teams with more diversity tend to have more creative, transformative solutions to problems. Later, stories of the “Pet to Threat” phenomenon (coined by Dr. Kecia Thomas and her colleagues) that often pushes diverse people out of organizations. And this episode’s bias habit-breaking skill is to Track the Data. And more!
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Moving From Surviving to Thriving: Addressing Bias Impacts on Mental Health
It's a BIPOC Mental Health Awareness month episode: Will and Amber discuss the ways that bias can cause mental health issues, whether that bias comes from outside influences or from within oneself; Will shares a story about accidentally expressing bias and working through it with the folks to learn how to avoid doing it in the future (AKA Retrain Reactions); and a question about representing groups that aren't your own.
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Guidelines for Fair and Legal Employment Practices! With Guest Nicki Vander Meulen
June means it's Gay Pride Month! Amber and Will invited back Nicki Vander Meulen, Esq. to discuss diversity and legal issues in the hiring process. Our question is “Why are Pride or Heritage months important?”, with an answer about how many social groups and how their contributions are sometimes overlooked. Because bias is more likely to happen while being spontaneous, the skill is Think Ahead.
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Healing and Understanding Intergenerational and Collective Traumas
This episode has a lot of talk about Star Wars (the Skywalkers are the epitome of intergenerational trauma, right?) The discussion focuses on epigenetics and the ways in which events like the murder of George Floyd create collective trauma for members of related group. Learn to Broaden Your Input via Images in the Environment: increase representation in your physical and digital environments.
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Discovering Room To Grow! With Guest Sandy Eichel
It's spring, so let's talk about discovering room to learn and grow from mistakes; constructive feedback is a good thing that you should be able to accept. The question covers pronouns and using "they" as a default until you know someone's pronouns. This episode's habit-breaking skill is Don’t Rely on Personal Objectivity: We’re better served by being mindful of ways biases may influence us.
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Unpacking the Science and Controversy around "Implicit Bias"
Dr. Cox and Dr. Nelson discuss what implicit bias is and the controversy around the Implicit Association Test (IAT), including how it is often used without proper context; this episode's bias-habit-breaking skill is to Be Mindful of Your Input and how the media and other types of input you receive can influence how you think, particularly about marginalized and stereotyped groups.
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Living Black History! With Guest Bernie Hoes
This Black History Month episode's main discussion topic focuses on the idea of Living Black History, and how Blackness is not a monolith, it touches on code-switching and the tyranny of categories. Guest Bernie Hoes is Black and gay, so the question is about that intersection; the habit-breaking skill is Don't Try to Ignore Group Statuses: acknowledge how they affect the lives of people.
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
Joy in Challenging Beauty Standards
Our main topic this time is Beauty Standards and the Halo Effect (and we use the Netflix show "You" as a prime example of the later). The bias habit-breaking skill in this episode is to Adopt a Cumulative Perspective on Bias, wherein you should acknowledge that your "one time slip up" is actually probably one of dozens of "slip ups" that a person has been the recipient of that day. And name bias!
Click through to watch or listen to this episode, and see a gallery of related images!
