Infusing science, practical skills, and joy into diversity discussions!

Diverse Joy ® Podcast
& Educational Video Series

With Dr. William T. L. Cox & Dr. Amber Nelson

Diverse Joy Podcast with Dr. William T. L. Cox & Dr. Amber Nelson
Dr. Cox and Dr. Nelson in a promotion photo from an episode of season 1 of Diverse Joy

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!

Dr. Cox and Dr. Nelson pose for a promotional photo; he is wearing a silver blazer and glasses, she is wearing a black leather jacket and glasses. They are seated at a table and their hands are resting on the table.

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.

Meet the Diverse Joy Team

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.

Listen to Diverse Joy

William Cox William Cox

Unpacking the Science and Controversy around "Implicit Bias"

March is Disneybound* month, something Amber enjoys every year, so for this month’s episode, we got dressed up as Chip (Will) and Dale (Amber) from Disney’s Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers!

What’s bringing us joy this time? Will shares about how much joy cosplay brings to him, and getting to inhabit a character who’s someone other than himself - even if it’s a villain. And Amber talks about the joy she got from taking some of the high schoolers she mentors to Atlanta to tour HBCUs and helping them realize they could go to those types of schools.

This episode’s main discussion focuses understanding what implicit bias is, and the controversy around the Implicit Association Test (IAT), and the ways in which it gets used without proper context and how that can create bad data (and how it negatively affects meta analyses of stereotyping and bias research). The discussion topic leads into the audience question where Will explains terminology variations regarding unintentional bias versus unconscious bias vs implicit bias (and how and why he prefers “unintentional bias” but for our purposes, they’re essentially the same thing).

This episode’s habit-breaking skill is to Be Mindful of Your Input, because your social environment and the media all influence how you think, particularly related to marginalized or stereotyped groups. This discussion carries us into story time, where Will relates a story about a very young White boy whose only regular exposure to Black folks was on the TV show COPS and how that lead to an embarrassing situation; and Amber shares about a time she accidentally assumed a name that was difficult for her to pronounce belonged to the only Latin intern in her group, but she acknowledged the mistake and explained how it happened - rather than trying to ignore the error - and the intern graciously understood and forgave her.

The episode wraps up with Amber’s joyful recommendation of Trixie Motel the motel (and then home) makeover show staring Trixie Mattel!

*Disneybounding: If you are bound for (traveling to) a Disney Parks property, Disney does not allow adults in costumes (unless it’s a special event), so fans will create versions of Disney character outfits using “everyday clothes” rather than costumes, hence Disneybounding.

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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!